The Importance of Sleep
Is sleep important? Do we really need sleep for our bodies to function? How much sleep do we need? All these questions lead us to an interesting topic, sleep. We mainly sleep to gain energy for the next day. At least that’s what studies suggest. The truth is our brain is always active and learning while we sleep. It repeats everything we learned through the day, over and over. Our brain is processing all the new information collected by using a system known as the Sleep Cycle. The sleep cycle consists of three stages, but the most important stage is the third one which is called REM, an abbreviation for Rapid Eye Movement. During this stage, your brain is almost as active as awake. This is due to the fact your brain is forming memories and processing information. “Sleep is intimately involved in learning.” (Medina, 52) That’s because your brain is sealing the information for you to remember in the future. An experiment was conducted with a rat and a maze and later on tested with college students. The experiment proved that when being interrupted while sleeping, people tend to have concentration problems the next day due to the fact sleep plays an important role in learning. This experiment captivated me. It was incredible something we thought was resting really ended up being part of the learning process.
Sleep is more important than widely understood. It helps us concentrate, stimulate our brain, and learn. It sounds crazy to be learning while we sleep but it is true. Nevertheless, sleep continues surprising us with its marvelous abilities. Besides contributing to our learning process, sleep, as you may have heard, provides energy to our body and brain helping us feel fresh and active. Yet the problem plenty of us face is feeling sleepy and tired through the afternoon. This fatigue isn’t bad. The issue comes when we start overexposing our brain through work. The book Brain Rules by John Medina states that sleeping at work after lunch is quite good. Studies say most people try to carry on with the day feeling tired and overwhelmed making people waste more time than usual on things. Besides, scientists say sleeping even a small amount in the afternoon improves the productivity of your brain, making you speed and finish things faster.
Sleep acts differently in different people as some may need just a few hours to recuperate their energy and others require four or even six hours more. You may not worry if you sleep all day or if you barely sleep. We all have different bodies and, even though our organisms are the same, they act differently. “Essentially, it comes down to whatever amount of sleep is right for you.” (Medina, 48) Some people need more hours of sleep than others because each body, as you now know, recharges at different speeds. You may not believe this, but people can get called by a certain name depending on their sleep. People who stay awake at late hours in the night get called owls as their sleep characteristics are similar. And people who wake up early and prefer doing the things in the morning are named larks. There are also people who are in between the larks and the owls, they have characteristics from both and that’s totally fine.
Sleep is crucial. It is the moment where our brains process the information learned throughout the day. Sleep is part of the learning process, and it keeps your body active and your brain stimulated. If sleep is so important, then why don’t people sleep the minimum amount of hours at least? The answer is more complicated than you may think. There isn’t a certain amount of hours the human body needs to charge up. As I mentioned before, every human is different and requires different amounts of time for their body to gain batteries for the day. On the other hand, the question is incorrect, people keep asking this wrong question over and over again, the correct question according to scientists from the book Brain Rules by John Medina is, “How much sleep don’t you need?” (Medina, 47) This question may seem confusing at first, but it’s correct! The truth is your body will experience sleep loss when you don’t sleep the hours needed by your body. Each human needs certain hours of sleep for their brain to process the information learned through the day and charge up new batteries for the next day. You may not worry if you sleep just 5 hours or maybe 9 hours, that’s normal we are all different. In conclusion, people aren’t sleeping the required hours because there aren’t any required hours. Each person should get to know his body and brain to know the number of hours they need to avoid sleep loss. I hope you get to know your brain and apply this information in your real-life and remember sleep can be more powerful than you thought.
As I have mentioned throughout this whole article, sleep is extremely important. The thing is society is not collaborating with this as the workload and the schedules make everyone feel tired during the day. This issue has become more common in the last few months where we have to be working from a virtual scenario. Schedules have become crazy during this quarantine and plenteous people began to experience sleep loss which can, in the future, cause people to get sick. Working and studying from virtuality has been a complete challenge, especially talking about rest periods. Work has increased since the start of quarantine and people have barely time to rest and, in some cases, sleep. Sleeping has huge importance in the energy it provides to each person and society is not collaborating with it. People have to work tons of hours making the body feel tired in specific, the eyes and brain as people have to be looking at a screen 24/7. Society should be more conscious of the consequences of sleep loss. They should be more flexible with schedules and lower workload. This modification could even bring better productivity and quality of the workers and student’s work.
Bibliography:
Brain Rules by Jhon Medina
https://www.spd.org.sg/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HS1-e1549004344206.jpg
“Brain Charge — Google Search.” Google.com, 2011, www.google.com/search?q=brain+charge&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiT6_H0-KrtAhVccjABHbGMAYYQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=brain+charge&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzICCAAyAggAMgYIABAFEB4yBggAEAgQHjIGCAAQCBAeMgYIABAIEB4yBggAEAgQHjIGCAAQCBAeMgYIABAIEB4yBggAEAgQHjoECAAQQ1C0WViobWD7b2gAcAB4AIABwwGIAeIIkgEDMC43mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=LkDFX5OcOtzkwbkPsZmGsAg&bih=701&biw=1168&safe=active&ssui=on#imgrc=9nZqwiHVXPbglM. Accessed 30 Nov. 2020.
