Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

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.