Table of Contents
The Science Fair Project
In 1965, a 17-year-old Randy Gardner decided not to sleep for 11 straight days and observe what happened for his science fair project. William Dement, a scientist, was attracted to the idea and was given permission to study what happened to the boy’s mind during that time.
Randy’s mind started to malfunction, he became irritable, forgetful, nauseous, and extremely tired. After five days of no sleeping, he suffered from what could pass for Alzheimer’s disease. He hallucinated and became paranoid. In last four days, he lost motor function, his fingers trembled, and his speech slurred. But on the final day, he was still able to beat Dement at pinball (100 consecutive times).
The Battle
The brain only rests during the deepest parts of non-REM sleep (20 percent of the sleep cycle) – it is active the rest of the time. Despite this, people report that sleep is restorative. But since sleep is dangerous for us, particularly in a world of predators – it must be important for some reason.
Dement says something strange about this, “Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.” According to Dement,“Sleeping” brains, like soldiers on a battlefield, are locked in aggressive, biological combat. The conflict involves a battle between two powerful and opposing drives, each made of legions of brain cells and biochemicals with different goals. The battle, while localized in the head, takes place all over the body. It is also known as the “opponent process” model.
But this fight doesn’t just happen while we slept, but also while awake. The second thing is that these armies are doomed to combat schedule all the time. And the third thing is that no one claims victory in this war. The nearly automatic rhythm occurs as a result of the constant conflict between two opposing forces.
One army is the circadian arousal system, this army wants you to stay up all the time, but an equally powerful army also made up of brain cells, hormones, and chemicals opposes it. These fighters do everything they can to get you to sleep – they are the homeostatic sleep drive.
For most people, 16 hours of being awake is the limit for active consciousness every day – even if you lived in a cave. The longer you sleep, the more likely will cede to the drive that keeps you awake.
Larks and Owls
Some people are larks, others are owls. Larks wake up very early, have less coffee than non-larks, and go to bed early. Owls are most alert at around 6 p.m. and are most productive in the late evening. They don’t go to bed before 3 a.m. and need an alarm clock to wake up in the morning.
Owls don’t sleep as well as larks – they accumulate a massive “sleep debt” throughout life.
Larks and Owls cover 30 percent of the population, the rest are called hummingbirds – and they are on a continuum with some more owlish and others more larkish.
How Much Sleep?
We don’t know how much sleep a person needs, but we do know the numbers that disrupt normal function.
Sleeping after learning something improves recall. If healthy 30-year-olds are sleep deprived for six days (4 hours of sleep per night), parts of their body chemistry resemble that of a 60-year-old.
Sleep loss cripples thinking in every way you can measure thinking (attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity).
Naps are great for the mind. The biological drive for it is universal, and it has been shown to improve performance for some cognitive skills.
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