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Comment by TheAceOfHearts | Hacker News Reader

I really enjoyed his book Why We Sleep, but I think it important to inform people about the criticisms that have been been raised against some of his claims [0]. If you listen to him remember to take claims with a grain of salt. HN discussion from two months ago [1].

The thesis is still solid though: sleep is incredibly important for your health.

[0] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

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I take most claims by experts with a grain of salt or two. If you listen to the podcast, he basically covers the fundamentals of sleep hygeine (which are not controversial) and provides references for further study. He is also very careful to point out speculation vs evidence, and correlation vs causation.

>sleep is incredibly important for your health.

do you have a citation on that? Sleep deprivation makes people sleepy and it does seem to have negative cognitive effects, but I'm not aware of evidence of negative health effects of lack of sleep.

Right, this is more controversial than people think. I've seen studies that you don't actually see a higher rate of mortality until the hours are ridiculously low. Like less than 4 hours, on average

Has walker responded to this?

The answer is sort of ambiguous; see this Andrew Gelman post for details: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/12/26/whassup-wi...

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