WHAT IS SLEEP?

Sleep is an essential part of the natural rhythm of life. This is proven by the experiment of taking any single cell from the body and isolate it in a petri dish, it will maintain the 24-hour pattern as well which show that we should sleep and not resist it.

In fact, resisting and interrupting the sleep and the natural rhythm of life could be extremely detrimental. The sleep/wake homeostasis and the circadian rhythm or also known as the 24 hour body clock are the systems that responsible for our sleep cycle. When a need for sleep is developing, the sleep/wake homeostatic system will signal our bodies. However, there is no fixed amount of sleep required for everyone, and at different stages throughout the lives, different people might need differing amounts of sleep.

A group of brain cells that respond to light and dark will form the circadian rhythm by regulating the timing of sleepiness and wakefulness. Majority of adults feel some strong urges to sleep between 2 pm to 4 pm and 1am to 3 am and adolescents frequently experience "sleep phase delay," which causes these urges to be later in the day as compared with adults.

Sleep can be differentiated into five stages which consists of 4 non-rapid eye movement stages (non-REM) and 1 rapid eye movement stage (REM). These stages range from light sleep in stage 1 to the final REM stage of sleep which is when our dreams occur.

WHY DOES SLEEP MATTER?

Sleep is crucial for all the living organisms. The biological urges such as hunger and thirst are undeniable, but we are still able to choose and control the urges. However, for sleep it is more involuntary, like breathing which we are unable to deliberately stop it, our body will take over the control and force us to breathe out and continue respiration. Sleep is unavoidable which we are unable to stay awake for long period of time.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF WE DO NOT SLEEP?

There are three consequences of sleep deprivation which are sleepiness (insufficient sleep), unavoidable disturbance of staying alert and lastly there will be a marked deterioration in our performance and at risk towards cognitive impairment when we have insufficient sleep. Finding suggest that sleep is not always a whole brain phenomenon. It is more to cellular repair that will occur in the region of the brain that is not involved task.