Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This fascinating, thought-provoking study discusses the central role of sleep in our lives. After probing the scientific literature, Wiley and Formby, researchers at the Sansum Medical Research Institute, conclude that "the disastrous slide in the health of the American people corresponds to the increase in light-generating night activities and the carbohydrate consumption that follows." Our internal clocks are governed by seasonal variations in light and dark; extending daylight artificially leads to a craving for sugar, especially concentrated, refined carbohydrates that, in turn, cause obesity. More seriously, lack of sleep inhibits the production of prolactin and melatonin--deranging our immune systems and causing depression, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The authors prescribe sleeping at least nine and a half hours in total darkness in the fall and winter and switching to a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein, vegetables, and healthy fats. They support their arguments with 100 pages of notes and by tracing the progression of disease from hunter-gatherers to our high-tech society. Despite its somewhat strident, all-knowing tone, this illuminating work is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.
---Ilse Heidmann, San Marcos, TX
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The lightbulb put us out of sync with nature. Way back when, people spent the summer sleeping less and eating heavily in preparation for winter because light triggers the hunger for carbohydrates. Now, with light available 24 hours a day, we gulp down food all year long. So, Wiley and Formby assert, it is light, not what we eat or whether we exercise, that causes obesity--and diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Indeed, eating bacon, ham, butter, and eggs for breakfast doesn't impair health, and exercise can make you fat. If we considered our waking periods as equivalent to the long days of summer and the short ones of winter, we would avoid those health problems. Wiley and Formby offer three steps for improvement, but they aren't optimistic, because the light-driven speed and intensity of contemporary life may be too much to overcome. Still, try, first, plugging the leaks in your psyche; then, because you will have lost weight, resisting carbohydrates; and, finally, swallowing a few pills and helpful foods. William Beatty --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Atria (February 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671038680
• ISBN-13: 978-0671038687
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #63,785 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Thought it Was a Diet Book, February 24, 2000

By	Ester Klien (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival (Hardcover)

If anything, Lights Out is done a disservice by it's own publicity. From the cover and the following reviews, I thought it was yet another wanna-be fad diet, only this one was reffered to as "the drool on your pillow diet." Ouch. I'm not one for diet books or self help. I only read it in the first place because I couldn't get my mother to stop reading it out-loud. Actually, to my grate surprise, Lights Out is a thoughtful, and provacative treatment of evolutionary biology. It explains how we work on a molecular level, and explains why we're the way we are from cave men on down. It explains things as as pragmatic as why you should go to bed, and why dieting always makes people fat and crabby. As well as overwhelming things, such as why the so-called diseases of civilization have singled us out, why we're speeding our own end as a species THROUGH medical advances, and basicly why evolution sucks. At first the theories seem no less than brillient, but once read, take on an erie quality of common sense, leaving the reader wondering why no one else knows any of this. That's when the book gets scary- apparently everyone knows (the FDA, the Surgon General, everybody) and the rest of us haven't been told for some seriously sick reasons. It reads like a mystery novel, so I don't wanna give too much away. But the bottom line is my mother can't be everywhere, reading out-loud at everyone, so it's up to you to go check it out for yourselves. It's well worth the trip.

70 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Important Information, yet terribly written, July 7, 2002

By	Kenneth Stuart (Northern California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have to agree exactly with Leslie of Texas' review below.

The basic information and premise of the book - that staying up late decreases production of melatonin in our bodies, and messes up our hormone system's balance in other ways as well - is potentially crucial to our health. That is why I give this book 4 stars, despite the terrible writing.

The author has a writing style that I believe comes from not really understanding much of what she is writing - I was particularly struck by the sentence in the Acknowledgements thanking her daughter for spending "countless hours explaining physics, chemistry and math to her old mom". This was a surprising admission, considering that a good portion of the book attempts to lecture the reader about a variety of unrelated topics that are not really understood by the author (or any other pop science writers) - including chaos theory and many other recent areas of scientific thought, taken wildly out of context.

The important information to get out of the book, is that 10 years of research at the National Institute of Health have confirmed that modern man's tendency to go to sleep much later than sunset disrupts the body's natural cycles, and this causes a variety of health problems due to the effects on the critical hormone system of the human body. Levels of melatonin, prolaction, leptin, cortisol, insulin, dopamine and serotonin are all affected.

The essential recommendation of the book is - during fall and winter - to try and get at least 9.5 hours of sleep by going to sleep as soon as possible after sunset (ie by 9 or 10 pm), and the rest of the year to also try and get to sleep as soon as possible after sunset.

The other recommendations are the same as can be found in the books by Drs. Eades, ie follow a low-carbohydrate diet and do weight lifting exercise instead of aerobics.

I agree that it is unfortunate that this important research is presented in such a poorly written fashion, and mixed up with so much extraneous opinion.

130 of 144 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lights Out: Have We Been Kept in the Dark?, January 31, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival (Hardcover)

Wiley and Formby rely on scientific and evolutionary truths to formulate their theory that the dawn of artificial lighting and the resulting 24/7 culture have played havoc with our health. Sleep deprivation is only part of the theory: Not sleeping when we're supposed to (ie. when the sun goes down until it comes back up again) interferes with hormone levels. Those irregular hormone levels create food cravings -- for the wrong kinds of foods, which leads to obesity -- along with depression, high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer. Although the cover insinuates that this is primarily a diet book, it is so much more. It's an entertaining roadmap that shows us how we can eradicate the diseases that plague modern man and woman by paying attention to the natural cycles of our body and of the planet. If that sounds too New Age-y for ya, consider that there are 97 pages of endnotes and scientific references. But all that science doesn't mean it's a ho-hum read: The writing style is quick and clever, and references to evolutionary truths, quantum physics and molecular biology are completely comprehensible, thanks to the authors' personal and personable style. I've not read this theory anywhere else; other researchers have alluded to sleep deprivation, but none I know has actually been able to prove like Wiley and Formby that it is the reason we are all dying of the same diseases.