JovialJman - Why do we sleep?

A father and his child sleeping kind of makes me sleepy.

We all spend about a third of our lives asleep, but why do we even sleep? It is unproductive and a waste of time, are there any good points in the sleeping argument, well we shall discuss just that.

Many surveys have proven that we spend about a third of our time asleep. This is due to the fact that we should try get 8 hours of sleep, which is a third of the day. Sometimes you sleep in and other times you go to bed late, it should all balance out and give you that golden number of 8 hours of sleep. Now this is for the average person however, since there are some that spend as little as 5 hours asleep to feel rested ad others as much as 11 hours.

We know the affect of not sleeping, and anyone who has pulled an all nighter should be able to agree with me here, you feel cranky or irritable the next day and feel exhausted more than normal. After not sleeping for one night you can see such a massive difference, so what if you stayed awake for longer? Well as the list goes after 24 hours without sleep it would be comparable with being legally drunk, slurred speech, some loss of coordination and thinking. 

2 to 3 nights without sleep, you can expect muscle twitches (as your body expects to be asleep by now), blurred vision, impaired judgment, micro sleeps (sleeping for a very short time without knowing it) and nausea. 

After 4 days you will be extremely irritable and start hallucinating with delusional episodes.

from 6 to 8 days, your arms and legs will start to experience tremors. you will have memory lapse and not know who you are. 

9 to 11 days without sleep you will have fragmented thinking episodes, (start a sentence without finishing it) and you will be unresponsive for some time.

When new symptoms appears, the previous ones just get worse so after 9 days without sleep things are really bad.

There are some people who have claimed to not have slept for more than 33 years but non of these have been proven whereas some have been proven to sleep for about 2-4 hours a night and they regarded that as not sleeping at all. The Guinness World Record for staying awake is held by Maureen Weston at 449 hours (that is 18 days, 17 hours) but Guinness does not make or confirm any more records for this, because this may severely impact your health. Scientifically documented record however stands at 264 hours, ( or 11 days), without any use of stimulants of any kind, and this record is held by Randy Gardner, and he was studied by scientist while he under went this experiment.

Now since we know what happens what happens when we don't sleep lets talk about why we must/do sleep. This has gone unanswered for many years as it was a very tough question to answer but studies have recently shown some insight into it. Years before they thought that the brain was telling your body what to do and was giving moisture away in the process and sleeping was the time where the body gave this moisture back to the brain, and they were not very far off.

This Ted video Show a good explanation by Jeff Iliff

If you are at work and cannot watch the video, then I shall try my best to explain. All organs have needs and all of these needs need to be filled for the organ to stay healthy. First it needs a supply of nutrients, which is carried by the blood, all organs get blood via the veins including the brain. Then all the organs needs to get rid of waste material. Now this is done by the lymphatic system, now this system does not go to the head, so the brain must use a different way to get rid of these waste products that are different from any other organ.

Now as Jeff says in the video, it is very beautiful the way it is done. There is a clear liquid that surrounds the brain, and this liquid carries the waste material to the surface of the brain then shoots it into channels that run through the brain again, which is on the outside of the blood vessels, now instead of creating a whole new system, (which space does not allow in the head), it uses a system that is already there to its advantages, after it has traveled through the brain it is deposited into the lymphatic system that is connected to the other organs which in turn puts it into the blood then disposed of.

Now the reason that we sleep is because of that. After we fall asleep our busy minds can take a rest, this allows the vessels in the brain to shrink a bit which allows more space around the blood vessels so the waste material can exist much faster. The reason it doesn't do it while we are awake is due to the fact that our brain needs all the nutrients and space for thinking power to keep us alive in the dangerous world we live in and saves the cleaning of our brain for a time where it can afford to not think.

Speaking of sleep now, I would like to mention that the sleeping habits that we have these days are very different since the invention of artificial lights. Oddball has talked about this topic in this TCSA post but does not contain some new information. A study has been done to show that since our species originated from around the equator, our bodies are very suited of 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness. So since we have moved to every corner of the globe (since spheres do apparently have corners) and we travel a lot and are in the presence of artificial light, our sleeping patterns have change drastically.

The natural sleeping pattern is actually sleeping twice per night, going to sleep at about 8 and waking up at 12 then falling asleep again at about 2 and rising with the sun. those 2 hours that are spent awake was used as like a time to talk to your loved ones or just spend like a meditative state in your bed. Those who have reverted back to that pattern, have commented that they felt more awake during the day then they have ever been before. But since of our busy lives I don't think that many people can afford to revert back to that sleeping pattern as it would seem very unproductive, which is why we have the sleeping pattern of a constant 8 hours now.

Anyways, I am off to bed, so please leave a comment on your sleeping pattern and how long you have gone without sleep, down in the comments or on Facebook/Twitter. Please share this with any friends who likes to pull all nighters, or wants to in the future as I am sure they will thank you for showing them the light, (by pointing at the rising sun, Teehee). If you enjoyed today's post, and would like to see more as the are published, please like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left. Thank you for taking the time to read today's post, and I hope you have/had a really awesome day.

Sleep well people

OddballGreg - Circadian Rhythms

This picture makes about as much sense as my own circadian rhythm does these days. Still, head with a clock seemed fitting strangely.

If you've ever pulled an all nighter writing some horrific report while some weird person does their best to keep you awake, or decided that playing video games until 5AM was a good idea; then it is likely that you know the consequences of not holding to a regular sleep cycle. Lets talk about Circadian Rhythms and why they're important.

As always, some fantastic, scientifically minded individual on YouTube has done some manner of discussion with regards to the subject. Hooray. Below is a video by YouTube's very own Hank Green as he does a SciShow video on what the Circadian Rhythm is and why it's important. As always, Hank Green's demeanor in itself makes the scientific talk a fair bit more entertaining to listen to.

In the event that you couldn't be bothered anyway, the Circadian Rhythm is essentially the body's internal clock by which it regulates your need for sleep. It's also rather inherently linked with things like metabolism and energy levels. (And as such, it's kind've a bad idea to screw with it since they've linked it's disruptions with everything from obesity to diabetes and various other issues like a depression and dementia.)

So why is this interesting? For a couple of reasons really. Firstly, you've probably figured that humans don't exactly hold to their Circadian Rhythms very much. Pilots suffer from Jet Lag, Night Owls end up looking like the walking dead and I just suffer from general exhaustion. (Which is why I've yet to put up a blog post before 12PM. It's really hard getting up early when you were up until 2 making changes to a blog. Beats being a plumber though I guess.) Somehow, despite our incessant need to disregard the rhythm, our bodies manage to adapt to our lifestyles.

A little known fact is that humans are the only creatures in nature that exhibit the nature of sleeping only once each day. As stated in the earlier video, there is actually a period during the day around 2 to 4PM where chemicals in the body would make sleeping easier to do. Apart from that, there is a fair bit of evidence suggesting that taking a midday nap could be beneficial to ones well being. (And my teachers always complained that I was wasting my time when I slept in class. Teehee)

However, more interestingly, disregarding the fact that it might not be super good for you in terms of your metabolism, there are actually more efficient sleep cycles that a person can adopt with a bit of work that will allow them to reduce the total amount of time they sleep. Most humans keep to the earlier mentioned once a day sleep cycle which usually involves about 8 hours of sleep each time. (And yet we all still feel like train wrecks afterwards anyway.)

The interesting things about it is that of those 8 hours, it is only the last 2 or so hours that are technically restful for the body, due to the body having multiple phases of sleep that it goes through. The most restful phase, known as REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep, takes place in those last hours and is also the phase in which one dreams. (That's why those good dreams are always getting interrupted by alarm clocks or yelling mothers depending on your age. *facedesk*)

What's fun about that though, is if you've ever been exhausted, you might have noticed you fall into a deep sleep rather quickly. So the idea behind changing your sleep rhythms is to exhaust yourself to the point that you fall straight into deep sleep at regular intervals. If I am not mistaken, you can have as little as 2 hours of sleep by doing this and still be as rested as you would normally be on 8. The tradeoff being that these altered sleep cycles have to be rigorously held to in order to be effective. The 2 hours cycle requires 30 minutes of sleep at the exact same time each day to prevent exhaustion. There are slightly more malleable systems involving less sleep periods of greater lengths, but more than 4 periods begins to see diminishing returns as far as I am aware. 

Still, considering how much work I put into the maintenance of this blog, I don't have time to exhaust myself. Feel free to try it yourself though. If you do, be sure to let us know how it went in the comments below or via Facebook or Twitter. And of course, if you have any friends that enjoy psychologically minded articles or facts, be sure to share this article with them, I'm sure they'll appreciate it. Also, if you would like to read more interesting articles like this, (written by yours truly), do be sure to like the official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left. Regardless of what you do however, I thank you for having taken the time to read this article; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Sleep well my friends.