Instructor Barry Evans will teach a course called Sleep Perchance to Dream Tuesday from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. through Humboldt State Universitys Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, a program designed for folks 50 and older.

This is about as interesting a topic as Ive ever taught for OLLI, said Evans, a former civil engineer as well as a local columnist and published author.

Sleep, he said, is the ultimate elephant in the room. Its vitally important but for something that takes up 25 or 30 years of a typical life its mostly ignored by our culture, except as a problem. For some, sleep is an enemy to be minimized, perhaps not realizing that adequate sleep is essential to our health and well-being. Others struggle with insomnia, worried theyre not getting enough sleep, popping pills or sedating themselves with alcohol. So, I wanted to give a balanced perspective, that is, an overview of the history, culture and neurology of sleep.

Sleep will cover a wide array of topics, including why people sleep and how much sleep one needs; sleep patterns of humans vs. other primates; sleep from a cultural and historical perspective; changing attitudes toward sleep; whats going on in peoples brains while theyre asleep; why people dream and do dreams mean anything; insomnia and how to deal with it; and the health dangers of getting too little sleep (with an emphasis on shift workers and school-age children).

Evans began studying sleep after learning that patterns today are quite different from years back.

I became fascinated with the topic when I first learned that our present sleep patterns are very different from those of our pre-artificial light forebears, he said. I was also shocked to learn how rapidly our sleep patterns are changing: 10 hours before the electric light (late 1800s), eight hours in 1950, 6.5 hours being the norm now.

To prepare for teaching the class, Evans read recent research on the neurology, health aspects and history of sleep in popular science books, Scientific American and other publications. He also watched YouTube lectures, scoured Google and Wikipedia and paid attention to his own sleeping patterns.

Im a world-class napper, Evans said, making up for my lack of nighttime sleep with daytime naps.

Sleep Perchance to Dream is taking place at the Humboldt Bay Aquatic Center in Eureka. The cost is $30 for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute members and $55 for non-members. To register, go to https://extended.humboldt.edu/olli.

More:
The subject of sleep - Eureka Times-Standard