All
human beings – old, young, sick, healthy – need sleep. Thus, everyone
should have an interest in this natural phenomenon. However, most people
never question what sleep is and why they must get it. At the ripe age of
18 years, I thought it was high time I understand why I am always craving sleep
and why I feel noticeably better when I get a certain amount of it. This
paper will explore what goes on in our bodies when we’re in this ambiguous
state called “sleep”, why it is necessary to function, and how much we should
be getting. Scientists
have yet to determine exactly why people sleep. However, they do know that
humans must sleep and, in fact, people can survive longer without food than
without sleep. And people are not alone in this need – all mammals, reptiles
and birds sleep. Scientists have proposed the following theories on why humans
require sleep:
Sleep may be a way of
recharging the brain. The brain has a chance to shut down and repair neurons
and to exercise important neuronal connections that might otherwise deteriorate
due to lack of activity.
Sleep gives the brain
an opportunity to reorganize data to help find a solution to problem, process
newly learned information and organize and archive memories.
Sleep lowers a
person’s metabolic rate and energy consumption.
The cardiovascular
system also gets a break during sleep. Researchers have found that people with
normal or high blood pressure experience a 20 to 30% reduction in blood
pressure and 10 to 20% reduction in heart rate.
During sleep, the
body has a chance to replace chemicals and repair muscles, other tissues and
aging or dead cells.
When a person falls
asleep and wakes up is largely determined by his or her circadian rhythm, a
day-night cycle of about 24 hours. Circadian rhythms greatly influence the
timing, amount and quality of sleep.
In children and young adults, growth
hormones are released during deep sleep.
For
many small mammals such as cat, sleep has other particular benefits, as it
provides the only real opportunity for physical rest, and confines the animal
to the thermal insulation of a nest. In these respects sleep conserves much
energy in such mammals, particularly as sleep can also develop into a torpor,
whereby metabolic rate drops significantly for a few hours during the sleep
period. On the other hand, humans can usually rest and relax quite adequately
during wakefulness, and there is only a modest further energy saving to be
gained by sleeping. We do not enter torpor, and the fall in metabolic rate for
a human adult sleeping rather lying resting but awake, is only about 5-10%.
HOPE EVERYONE WILL HAVE A GOOD SLEEP AND GET IT'S BENEFITS..
:))
JAY
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