Don't think sleep deprivation significantly affects your health? Think again: Healthy white rats chronically deprived of sleep eventually died after 10 days.
Most of us spend approximately one third of our lives in an unconscious slumber in which most external stimuli are blocked from our senses. Normal sleep is characterized by a decrease in body temperature, blood pressure, breathing rate, and most other bodily functions. Despite a restful body, the mind remains as vital and active during sleep as it is when awake.
It is estimated that fifty percent of the adult are sleep deprived. Many people consider sleep a luxury and believe that as adults we can sacrifice sleep in order to make time for other "more important" daily activities without suffering lasting consequences. On the contrary, sleep is tremendously important for everyone; young, old, and in-between.
Pulling an all-nighter to cram in information for a project or presentation? This strategy could backfire.
Sleep Can Make You Smarter
Harvard Medical School researchers have found that people who stay up all night after learning and practicing a new task show little improvement in their performance - and no amount of sleep the following two nights can compensate for the physical and mental toll taken by the initial all-nighter.
Related studies also showed that people who learned a particular task did not improve their performance when tested later the same day, but did show improvement after a full night's sleep.
"We think that getting that first night's sleep starts the process of memory consolidation," says Robert Stickgold, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. He explains results of the importance of sleep in the learning process, "It seems that memories normally wash out of the brain unless some process nails them down. My suspicion is that sleep is one of those things that does the nailing down."
Why Is Sleep Important?
Although our conscious sensory perception is diminished during sleep, the body uses this down-time to perform functions which ultimately increase one's work efficiency and capacity to learn during waking ours, extend one's life span, and even cure illnesses.
We are in need of sleep as much as we are in need of oxygen. Sleep enables the body and mind to rejuvenate, re-energize, and restore. It is believed that as a person sleeps, the brain performs vital house-keeping tasks such as organizing long-term memory, integrating new information, and repairing and renewing tissue, nerve cells, and bio-chemicals, including hormones (which regulate virtually all of our bodily functions).
Our immune response is also greatly facilitated by sleep, speeding recovery from infections and other immune attacks.
How Much Sleep Do We Need?
Nearly every animal sleeps based on its own unique biological clock. For humans, the amount of sleep we get is directly proportional to the amount and quality of the next day's productivity.
Severe continuous sleep deprivation has been shown to cause otherwise normal individuals to experience mental disturbances, visions and hallucinations.
Some experts suggest that the best way to determine how much sleep your body needs is by waking up without an alarm clock; others believe that an ideal amount of sleep is however much you need to wake up feeling refreshed in the morning and alert all day. On average, an adult requires 8 to 9 hours of night-sleep - in reality, many get only 7 hours or less.
How to Get More Sleep
There is no substitute for sleep. Few of us are able to sleep-in during an average work-week. If you are feeling groggy and fatigued due to lack of sleep, one strategy may be to gradually move toward an earlier bedtime.
You can do this without drastic change in schedule: To get an extra hour sleep (skip the late-night talk shows) and try going to bed 15 minutes earlier each night for four nights and then keep the last bedtime. If family or schedule commitments prevent this, try to squeeze in a nap every now and then.
