Sleep Technology

With apologies to the mamas and the papas, the above headline is what I wrote on Twitter to my fellow Start School Later associates when I heard that California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the historic later school start bill on Sunday, Oct. 13. This bill, SB328, with few exceptions, mandates that high schools will not start before 8:30 a.m. and middle schools will not start before 8 a.m. throughout the state of California.

I recently spoke with several sleep experts about caffeine and sleep. These wonderful sleep professionals were very giving of their time and knowledge, and I thank them immensely. It is because of their willingness to share their time, thoughts and friendship that I can share this information with you.

Recently, I have been reading the book “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker, Ph.D. He not only has a passion for all things sleep, but he has a superb knack for explaining the subject matter in a very friendly and easy-to-understand manner. This is a gift for a writer of science when one is trying to reach a large audience and improve health issues by explaining such sleep topics as “synaptogenesis,” which he whittles down to a definition of “the creation of millions of wiring links, or synapses between neurons” and “an overenthusiastic first pass at setting up the mainframe of a brain” of an infant.

The information you are about to read is new. As a matter of fact, this material is so new that many doctors are not yet aware of it. Unless they are graduating this year, physicians were taught in medical school that there are no lymphatic vessels inside the skull. Others may have assumed  that there was some type of lymphatic style system in the brain but had not been taught about the definite existence of a cranial lymphatic system in humans. Much research on this issue has happened in the past five years. In fact, much has happened in the past five months.