Only a decade ago, sleep was a relatively overlooked pillar of health. Most of us treated it as simple downtime – a period of inactivity in which we “recharged our batteries”. Medical advice at the time was quite basic: get eight hours or so a night and you would be fine.
That mindset shifted dramatically in 2017 when British neuroscientist Matthew Walker published the bestseller, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. It was a wake-up call that brought the science of slumber to the masses, popularising the idea that sleep is not a passive state.
