Sleep And Why You Need More Of It.
Napoleon advocated 'six hours
of sleep for a man, seven for a
woman and eight for a fool'
Whether you are teenager staying up late on the net or an executive working hard to meet those deadlines, sleep loses out on priority. What with new age work environments working around the clock and dark circles underneath your eyes have become a fashion statement. Daddy works late till night and mommy has to catch her daily TV soaps and so the kids too become accustomed to staying up into the wee hours of the night.
But why do we need sleep? I mean 8 hours a day is the recommended dosage and it so feels like a waste of time what in this fast paced world when time is worth every second in gold. I mean that's like one third of the day gone to waste right there. And that is the misconception that we all share. Our brain is equally active during the day and during the night only different parts of our brain control our body and our consciousness. In fact our body is equally is up and running while we seem lost to the world.
So what exactly is our body up to?
Sleep is an anabolic, or building, process and it restores the body's energy supplies that have been depleted through the day's activities. Sleep is also the time when the body does most of its repair work; muscle tissue is rebuilt and restored. The body's growth hormone is secreted during sleep. This hormone is important for growth in children, but is also important throughout adulthood in rebuilding tissues. Sleep is also a time for restoring mental energy. We spend all day thinking and creating, and that uses up our energy stores. It is interesting that in dream sleep the brain is actually very active. More sleep researchers think that dreams serve the function of helping to reorganize and store psychological information taken in during the day.
Sleep deprivation also affects us physically. Our coordination suffers. We lose our ability to do things with agility. Sleep improves muscle tone and skin appearance. With adequate sleep athletes run better, swim better and lift more weight. We also see differences in immune responses depending on how much someone sleeps.
The amount of sleep a person needs will vary from individual to individual. But most people require around eight hours.
No one really knows how humans evolved to sleep an average of eight straight hours each night. Factors that influence human sleep patterns probably include our physical size, muscle mass, brain size and the ability to think.
So go get that much needed sleep before it gets you.
