Understanding Sleep
For many years, there has been misconception of whether we are always active physiologically even at the state of sleep. It has therefore taken researchers a great deal to come up with convincing findings to educate people as well as convince them that we are always active and our brain keep on working even when we are asleep. This paper seeks to look into in-depth at the importance of sleep, how sleep is controlled, effects of sleep deprivation on brain and the long and short term effects of inadequate sleep.
According to National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (2007), they realized that human brains still remains active even during sleep sessions. It has also been known that our mental and physical health is dependent on how much sleep we receive and thus affects our day to day functioning. Though many people consider sleep as a state of resting, many researchers have strongly disagreed with this statement after evaluating physiological processes that occurs during the sleeping state. It is now evident that normally sleep occurs in two states namely the non rapid eye movement and the rapid eye movement. The fact that people spend more time sleeping in the early stages of development is a clear indication that sleep plays a key role in the development of the human brain (Ibid).
The modern culture that has seen more increase in competition for scarce resources can be said to have imparted into the reduction of hours that people are affording to sleep. There is a lot of work that people are finding on their hands that requires to be completed within a very short time, thus affecting the overall hours one can afford to sleep. This has led some people think that there is a way they can train their bodies to have few hours of sleep which to me is a misconception which will become clear once we look at the importance of sleep to our bodies (Serendip,2009).
Physiology of sleep
When one is sleeping he or she passes through five main phases of sleep namely: 1,2,3,4 and 5 which rapid eye movement (REM). The five stages follow one another in a cycle throughout. About 50% of sleep is spent in stage 2, 20% in stage 5 and the remaining 30 % in the rest of the stages. This is contrary to the young children who spend 50% of their sleep in stage 5. Stage 1 which is the light sleep and we can be easily awakened since the sleep drifts on and off and our eyes are slowly moving accompanied by slowed muscle movements. If one is awakened when at this stage, s/he can only remember visual images that are fragmented, and some might experience hypnic myoclonia which is sudden contraction of the muscles. In the stage 2 of sleep, movements of the eyes stop and waves of the brain become slower and are occasioned by sleep spindles (bursts of rapid waves).
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