By Akpeli Othuke Andrew
Is extra works, anxieties or life worries robbing you of much-needed sleep? I just reflected back to my school days with so many academics works to tidy up. In a bit to meet up with revision of the day’s lecture, presentation of papers, writing of thesis and sourcing for information needed for a project work, I had one very good friend – My Alarm Clock! Which I fondly referred to as “A Horse Whip” because it posses the potential of cutting short the ever strong urge to have a straight eight hours sleep in the night with its blaring sound as if it was originally designed to be used as a horn for a moving train travelling at 120 kilometres per hour.
But while struggling to conquer these; be it extra work, anxieties and life worries, you need to know how important sleep is to the human system. When asleep, your brain goes through several phases of sleep called the eye movement every 60 to 90 minutes. During these phases, the brain is more active and researchers believed that some kind of self-repair is been carried out by the brain. Some experts say that when the sleep cycle is interrupted and sleep is lost, it has a cumulative effect on the human body which affects the brain and causes inefficiency.
The brain has the mechanism to cause sleep to occur when the body has not had enough of it, resulting to what is called microsleeps. Stimulants such as caffeine can block the chemical compound that signals the need for sleep for a short time. According to Toronto Star, “no matter what you happen to be doing, your sleep deprived brain will periodically go into the first stage of sleep for anywhere between ten seconds and just over a minute at a time.” Imagine driving a car at 50 Kilometres per hour and experiencing a ten seconds microsleep. During this period, you would have travelled the length of a football pitch.
During sleep, the body produces T cells that fight against pathogens; so depriving yourself of needed sleep can weaken your immune system. Leptin which is a hormone which helps to regulate appetite is also produce during sleep.
Indeed, the body needs sleep as much as it needed proper exercise and good nutrition. So try as much as possible not to deprive it.
Feel free to add your comments on the importance of sleep in the box below.
