The average person sleeps for 25 years of their lifetime.
This means that we spend about one third of our lives asleep.
We go to sleep every night, without thinking about it, but why is sleep actually so important for our bodies?
To get to know the science of sleep, we have to answer several different questions.
Why do we even sleep?
When you think about it, it's been pretty dangerous for our ancestors who had to live in the wild to lay down and sleep for several hours a day, totally unprotected.
Even until today, there are many different theories as to why we sleep, but this is a question that scientists are still researching and arguing about!
The most popular theory is that we sleep to restore ourselves.
A very important part of this is so-called Brain Plasticity.
During the day, we experience so much - all our senses are being flooded with information.
At night, our Brain saves and memorizes important events, while selecting others that won't make it into our long-time memory.
What triggers sleep?
Obviously, exhaustion is the most simple answer and has something to do with our natural desire to sleep, so that our muscles and tissue can restore!
Light is a very important factor that triggers sleep.
The supra-chiasmatic Nucleus, a small cluster of cells inside our Hypothalamus, is very sensitive to light. When its dark, hormones like Melatonin are released that make you feel sleepy - and the other way around. When it's light, hormones like Cortisol that make you awake are being released.
Scientists suggest that there are other factors as well - but research isn't finished yet.
How much sleep do we need?
You might heard this a thousand times before, but yes, 8 hours of sleep every night is recommended for an adult.
Researchers have tested how 4 hours, 6 hours or 8 hours of sleep affect us.
The group of participants that had 8 hours of sleep at night over the course of several weeks performed very well and was completely healthy.
The ones that had only 6 hours of sleep had a similar reaction time to someone that's drunk!
And the participants who only had 4 hours of sleep each night had a delayed reaction time and major concentration issues.
Also, the concept of Sleep Debt influences how much sleep we really need.
This theory states that a few nights of good sleep can make up for some nights where we didn't get enough sleep. So sleeping for 10+ hours after an all-nighter is totally normal and will help your body restore totally.
Only when sleep deprivation lasts for weeks or months, you won't be able to make up for it by sleeping more afterwards!
What happens in our body if we don't get enough sleep?
Sleep deprivation makes our Amygdala more alert than normal - this is the part in our brain that tells our body to be prepared for danger. This also shuts down the pre-frontal cortex, the part in our brain that makes us think logically.
This means that sleep-deprivation makes us extremely anxious and lessens our concentration - our body is so alert that even the slightest disturbance like a car that drives by loudly can totally throw us off.
After several days of sleep-deprivation, the effects get much worse - our speech-control and memory decrease, and even hallucinations may appear.
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