A good night sleep is important to preserve a good health. Studies shows that sleep deprivation over long period of time can cause lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, depression and heart diseases.
People who work shift or during the nights are most likely to suffer sleeping disorder as being OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea). Chidren who lack of sleep too have chances of having learning disorders and their cognitive abilities can be direct or indirectly affected as well.
Ever heard before someone telling your they need their 8 hours of beauty sleep? Its most important part in living healthy by having enough sleep.
Do you know that sedentary lifestyle could lead to difficulties in sleeping, Food such as alcohol, nicotine, caffeine are some interference to our natural sleeping cycle.
So, how many hours do you sleep at night? 5,6,7,8? Everyone has their own sleeping time, we need to sleep to recharge ourselves.
Sleeping will enable million of body cells to replace the damage ones and repairing work are done naturally. We tend to lose consciousness when we sleep, but our brain are ever so alert.
We tend to lose our sense of self, but our mind are active. One of these result of this activity is called dreams.
When we dream in our sleep, our eyelid flutter. This is called REM (Rapid Eye Movement). When we dream, we are not in necessarily in the dream, but we feel as though we are there watching, hearing, running or walking in the dream just like a story.
When these story become unpleasant or scary, we called it nightmare. It’s just a reflection of our subconscious self in a way.
Expert even said, once we awake from our dream, we should not immediately open our eyes, but we must keep our eyes closed for a few moments,this will keep our dream complete in our minds for a longer time.
While some develop sleepwalking, which we called it somnambulism. In every person’s brain there is sleep centre that regulates how body sleeping and waking. This sleep centre blocks off part of our brain, so we can go to sleep. But in some people, part of sleep centre get separated, and while the brain sleeps,the body remains awake. Only a few will sleep walk. One thing true about sleepwalking is they never remember eaving their beds.
People have all types of strange theories to explain sleep, many of them false. One theory said when we lie doen, the blood shifts out of brain and we lose consciousness.
But in fact, sleeping is a natural biological process that restores our body energy after it’s used up.
But there is also a chemical process involved in sleep. When muscles in our body work, two substances chemical are produced, lactic acids and fatigue toxins.
Lactic acids will slow down muscles and make movement painful, while fatigue toxins carried by blood throughout body affecting the entire, mostly brain.
One interesting experiments proved the important fole played by fatigue toxins in sleep. Scientist put a dog to work until dog is exhausted. They let the dog sleep and transfer this dog’s blood from it’s body into another wide awake dog. The second dog immediately become tired and fell asleep.
When the blood of wide awake dog tranfused into the first dog, it instantly woke up and was fresh.
Although some questions have been answered, many more still remains a mystery.
We are only beginning to learn about this strange state we all experience every night of our sleep.