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Sleep, the care-charmer
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Sleep can provide pleasant relief to many an illness
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Sleep tight
Like hunger and thirst, sleep can be considered as a major, principal biological drive. It cannot be ignored or neglected at any stage of our life. Sleep is universal and serves a primordial purpose, so vital to preserve physical and mental health of living beings. In sleep, the head bobs; eyes cease to flutter and the muscles of the whole body slump. Deprivation of sleep causes physical and mental problems and faster deaths than those deprived of food. Humans with undeniable drive to sleep make up the lost one by sleeping deeper and longer the next chance they get it.
Researchers say that fruit flies sleep up to 12 hours a day. Recently, results from sleep studies in human and animals have begun to lead to some promising explanations. Researchers are finding that sleep may help babies learn the placement of their limbs at the proper places and adults to fix up new memories in their brains.
Sleep is wonderfully restorable. It gives the brain time to replenish energy stores. It may also allow recuperating from the learning it does during the day.
Or, perhaps, sleep may do some combination of all these things. After a day of hectic work we drag ourselves to bed and then wake up after seven or eight hours later, alert, revitalised, energetic, happy and recharged.
One of the primary functions of sleep is to repair the cerebral cortex from the wear and tear of consciousness.
Army psychology and strategy reveals that soldiers learn complex battle manoeuvres and operations skills comparatively in a better way, while they sleep.
Individuals without sleep for periods of 72 to 98 hours might experience increasing psychological disorganisation for time, place and feelings of depersonalisation.
The strategy to induce sleep is to eat plain carbohydrates like potatoes, corn, bagels and muffins, which will trigger the sleep-inducing brain chemical serotonin.
Sleep is costly, for in sleep, we neither take care of anyone around us, nor protect ourselves.
When an animal sleeps, it is not taking care of its young and not indulging in self-protection. It neither eats nor procreates.
Sleep allows us to process, consolidate and retain new memories and skills. The more one sleeps, the more improvement he shows, which really is a nice linear relationship.
If somebody throws a curveball at a person and ask him to explain the differences between the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, he would be better off, having got some sleep.
DR. C.P. SOMASUNDARAM
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