We continue the saga of exploring the foundations of health in this edition of Pursuing Health Pearls as we take a deep dive into the topic of sleep.We’ll start with a basic overview of the state of sleep in the US and the world. Then we’ll dig deep into how lack of sleep is implicated in disease and shed some light on the crucial role sleep plays in our health and safety. We’ll spend some time briefly outlining the important components of what signals us to sleep and what happens when we do, and then we’ll wrap up by summarizing some of the most important and simple tools at our fingertips for improving sleep quality and quantity.Please do keep in mind that this is an enormous topic, and as the title states, we are only dipping our toe in the basics of sleep and why it’s important here. Future posts may further explore maximizing sleep while doing shift work or traveling across time zones, sleep tracking, and specific sleep disorders such as insomnia or sleep apnea, so stay tuned for those!