Interesting Factoids about Sleep

~ Sleep deprivation can kill you.

~ Waking you up in the middle of REM (Rapid Eye Movement or deep sleep) will make you tired all day, even if you went back to sleep and got a total of 8 hours. If you are awakened when you are not in REM sleep, you are not as affected by the interruption.

~ Light stops the production of melatonin, which helps you sleep. Even if you keep your head covered, and any part of your body is exposed to light, you lose the benefits that melatonin affords your body in helping you regenerate.

~ Your brain and body are very busy while you sleep. Cells are repaired, ‘tanks’ are refilled (endorphin, adrenal, thyroid, etc.) Your brain takes the millions of bytes and bits of information you collected during the day and puts them in order. It busily arranges data, dumps data you don’t need, and helps strengthen your memory. Get fewer than 6 hours of sleep and these processes don’t function properly.

~ Reuters reported on a “study by German researchers at the University of Luebeck”. The study showed your sleeping brain undergoes specific changes that lead to creativity and problem-solving insights the next day. This typically happens during “slow wave” deep sleep that occurs in the first four hours of the sleep cycle–but you need a full 8 hours to gain the benefits. Waking up too soon, or being startled awake can stop or reverse the processes.

Think of your computer. What happens if you give it a complex task, say, backing up, and you turn the computer off midway through the task? Kablooey! (That’s a technical term.)

~ Teenagers need to sleep more than adults. They are getting mugged by their hormones, and their brains and bodies are assimilating huge masses of data. One scientist claims that our kids would learn better if we started school at 9AM instead of 7:30, and kept them until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. And parents might see a calmer kid if they let’em sleep when they need to.

~ And yes, you can get too much sleep. Two recent studies reported by Scientific American claim that adults who sleep more than 8 hours have a shorter life span, too. But that could just be ‘cuz their spouses killed them… (nah, that was a joke!)

~ Dr. Rafael Pelayo of Stanford University’s Sleep Disorder Clinic says unequivocally that sleep deprivation is dangerous. And sleep deprivation is cumulative. So you need to give yourself a chance to catch up! Your life depends upon it.

According to Dr. Pelayo this is what happens:

* You will have problems with memory and concentration.
* You will have problems finding the right word.
* You will become irritable.
* Neurotransmitters in your brain are altered.
* You become more susceptible to infection.
* At its extreme, sleep deprivation leads to death