 Pairpress presents the science of sleep, written and narrated by John Medina. For clear thinking get enough, not too much, sleep. Quote, no one looks back on their life and remembers the nights they had plenty of sleep, anonymous. Here's another quote, I've reached the age where happy hour is a nap, also anonymous. I sleep, Susanna Mushat Jones exclaimed, bursting with laughter. She was responding to a reporter who had just asked her a familiar question, the secret to her long life. She also mentioned eating scrambled eggs, grits and four strips of bacon, a breakfast she'd had every single morning that she could remember. She had a lot of mornings from which to choose. Jones turned 116 years old in 2015, the last living American born in the 19th century and, briefly, the oldest woman alive. She died in 2016. Though she had no children of her own and was married only once, and only for a short while, she had more than a hundred nieces and nephews to spoil. And spoil she did. As Jones put her first niece through college, a terrific investment that grew to include a doctorate, and the niece returned the favor by penning her aunt's biography. Extending her generosity, she started a scholarship fund for African American students. Born to sharecroppers in Alabama, Jones spent most of her life working as a nanny and live in Housekeeper in New York. Except for perhaps the bacon, Jones lived what most of us would call a healthy lifestyle. She never smoked, didn't drink, and saw her physician several times a year. Remarkable for this day and age, she took only two medications for blood pressure and a ream of multivitamins. She was active on her building's tenant patrol team until age 106. The source of her exclamation? She slept ten hours a night, plus naps. I'll come right out with it. There's more bad news than good news, but a little bit of the bad is preventable if we can, like Jones, practice great sleep habits. To understand the effects of sleep on our quality of life in old age, we have to know a little bit about how sleep works, why we sleep, and how sleep changes over time. In this chapter, we'll also talk about the cognitive effects of not getting enough sleep, and finally how to get the best sleep you can. Some scientists believe that sleep, if you're interested in optimizing health in both body and brain, is the single most important experience of the day, or should I say, night. Night owls and early birds. Sample complete. Ready to continue?