We spend a third of our life sleeping. And since in nature nothing happens by chance, sleeping well and sufficiently is essential for our health. Today we know that sleep has multiple roles and that, as New Scientist Matt Walker of the University of Berkeley in California recently wrote, "there is no tissue of the organism or a brain process that is not improved by sleep or not is affected by a lack of rest ".
Memories and learning
Sleeping, for example, is essential to consolidate the memory: "During the night the memories to be maintained are transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory - explains Lino Nobili, head of the Sleep Medicine Center at the Niguarda Hospital in Milan. -. The synapses, or the connections between brain cells, are reworked and this is also crucial for learning processes: after a restorative night our performance is better ". The proof is that when we have to learn something new, sleeping on it is really good: the brain at night "prunes" unnecessary connections and reinforces those necessary to consolidate what is needed, leaving room for the new experiences of the day after. «Sleep is the price we pay to learn», explains Giulio Tononi of the University of Madison in Wisconsin, who at the last congress of the Federation of the Neuroscience Societies presented data collected on mice that show how the number of synapses is 18 percent lower after sleeping than before sleep. "This explains - says Tononi - because after a night in white we have difficulty concentrating: we have less ability to store new data. So a good night's sleep is necessary after having studied something important, but also before ».
There are many aspects of sleeping that we should consider. It's also important to pay attention at the period of sleeping. Scientists suppose that everyone should sleep at minimum 6 hours, to a maximum of 12 hours.
Do you prefer to sleep in a warm room? Do you like high temperatures? It's time to change you habits! The perfect sleeping-temperature is about 18°C. It allows your blood to be more fluent and reach far organs of your body in a perfect pressure.
If you want to have a good day, pay attention to details, such as sleeping, which represent a key aspect of our life.