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SLEEP


Hello everyone...!!! Welcome back, I'm back with 2nd post. And in this post, I am going to talk about "SLEEP". Yeah..you've read it right it's "SLEEP". But what's there to talk about sleep, we sleep and we wake..isn't that it?? Now, slow down my friend there's a lot to know about sleep and......



Let's get into details.

On average, a human spends 1/3rd of his/her Lifetime sleeping. It is very important to know that most of our body growth happens when we sleep. Like body repairs itself, regrow tissues, build bones and muscles, and strengthens the immune system.

 Sleep can be divided into 2 phases:
1. Rapid eye movement(REM) phase
2. Non-rapid eye movement(NREM) phase

1. REM phase: I call this "DREAM PHASE" because our eyes work as if they were opened causing the dreams to occur in this phase. Many studies suggest that this is the stage when our brain gathers all the information from our wake period and generates new and unrelated ideas that help us perform well.

2. NREM phase: As the name suggests there will not be any movement of eyes, there will be a total of 3 stages in it varying from light to deep sleep.
  •  1st Stage:  Your eyes are closed. It's easy to wake you up.
  • 2nd Stage: Your heart rate slows down, body temperature drops. Your body will get ready for deep sleep. 
  • 3rd Stage: This is the stage of deep sleep. It's tougher waking you up. As you fall into a deep sleep, you will be heavily disturbed if you are woken up during this stage and this can cause temporary disorientation, headaches and may affect your sleep further on.
DOES LACK OF SLEEP REALLY AFFECT US:
Lack of sleep is not only bad for our reproductive, cardiovascular, and immune health but learning and cognition as well. Interestingly lack of sleep even affects us socially.
  • People who are sleep deprived tend to think of their surroundings more suspiciously and less able to understand other people's intentions. 
  • Mood swings, memory problems, poor concentration, slow reaction time feeling tired are also the issues that are caused. 
  • I could go on a little further and say that people with not enough sleep are highly prone to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's' disease, obesity, diabetes, depression...etc than others.



A GOOD DAY FOR A GOOD SLEEP: Analyzing the routine our body goes through is the best method for deciding where we exactly fall in the above-mentioned sleep ranges. 
  • Type of work, the physical strain we're going through, emotional ups and downs, mental stress we're going through, electronic usage ... etc are the factors that directly affect our mental and physical health.
  •  Also, these are the factors that play a key role in our sleep as well. To make it simpler the way we spend our day helps our body decide our sleep duration.
  •  Usage of stimulants like coffee, energy drinks, alarm clocks, and external lights including those from electronic devices interferes with our circadian rhythm or natural sleep-wake cycle. 
  • It is critical to know that people usually try to compensate for their weekday sleep loss by sleeping extra on weekends which is simply stupid. There is no way to make up for the lost sleep except that we have to sleep well each day.


EVEN POSITION MATTERS: Many pieces of research suggest that 
  • People who sleep on one side snore less when compared to people who sleep on the back. 
  • Poor sleepers spend more time sleeping on their back.
  • There is a natural curvature in the neck called "LORDOSIS", by sleeping more on the back it tends to get flattened and eventually develops into flat neck syndrome. This is caused mainly by looking down a lot of time to look into phones, or by using the pillow that is too high.
  • Lateral sleep position also helps in clearing out the metabolic wastes that are built up while we are awake.
  • In research, it is revealed that people with the neurodegenerative disease spend 50%(approx.) of time sleeping on their backs, while others spend only 30%(approx.) on their backs.
It's not completely in our hands in which position we sleep, but there are methods to get biased on lateral sleep position like setting up the pillows that make us uncomfortable if we sleep on our back, placing the ball on the back...etc. In fact, there is a therapy called positional therapy for this.

WHAT IF WE OVER SLEEP:  Even sleeping more than required can affect our metabolism. This may increase the risk of obesity, headache, back pain, hypertension, heart disease, and other metabolic syndromes.

CONCLUSION: Actually, it's funny that people willingly give up their sleep. It's reasonable if this sacrifice is made for professional or academic purposes, but it's ridiculous if you give up sleep for reasons such as binge-watching, chit-chatting, partying, and other non-essential activities. But that's entirely up to you because you have your own brains and bodies to think and act.

Thank you..!!!
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