Everybody needs to sleep. Some people need at least eight hours of sleep a day, others are satisfied if they sleep four or five hours, one way or another, the truth is that it is not possible to live without sleep, this is one of the basic needs of the human being. human beings, so lack of sleep can have very harmful effects on our body, including death.
If we go a few days without sleeping an hour, our body will be very affected, in addition, sleeping a few hours has negative effects, which can generate problems in our emotional, physical and cognitive sphere. the dream we lose does not recover; If one day you’ve only slept three hours, even if you take a nap, the effects of lack of sleep will always be present and the nap itself can even make the situation worse.
- It is clear that sleep is absolutely necessary.
- But why?What happens to our brains in our sleep?Science has tried to answer all these questions by trying to replicate the natural conditions of sleep in different laboratories.
- Although much remains to be discovered.
- The following data is some discoveries made in the region.
Before conducting studies to clarify what happens while we slept, we thought that during these hours of rest our brain was “disconnected”, giving way to a kind of rest where neural activity practically stopping. However, it has been shown that this is not the case, that some parts of our brain are still very active overnight.
Brain activity changes during the different stages of sleep, the REM phase is the one that detects the most activity, this activity is recorded by observing brain waves, observing a model parallel to the oscillations that we detect when we analyze the brain activity of an awake. In contrast, simultaneous activation of neural groups is detected every four seconds in the slow sleep phase, so the brain also remains active.
Recently it has been discovered that one of the most important functions of sleep is to improve learning, the information we learn during the day is processed while we sleep, all unnecessary and irrelevant information is deleted and all important information is improved, reinforced and classified.
Few people have ever had insomnia, either occasionally or more often. When we can’t sleep at night, the next day, we have a lot of symptoms, both in mood and physical aspects, which turn the day into a constant exercise in survival The main problems are:
These and some others may be the side effects of a night when we can’t sleep, but how long can we run out of sleep?When can lack of sleep be dangerous?The record belongs to Randy Gardner, who voluntarily underwent an experiment in which all he had to do was stay awake. The experiment lasted 264 hours, or 11 days.
In the early morning he began to feel bad and have problems of concentration, around the 4th day of the experiment appeared the first visual hallucinations, even thought he was a famous footballer, although he had no adverse effects after the end of the day. According to data collected from research in mice and humans suffering from fatal family insomnia, the limit would be between 3 and 4 weeks without sleep.
It is an autosomal dominant and potentially dangerous genetic disease; in this inherited disease, due to a mutation of chromosome 20, the brain production and accumulation of a given prion is excessive, this abnormal accumulation produces a brain degeneration that mainly affects the thalamus.
Brain degeneration caused by pathology results in persistent insomnia, memory loss, difficulty moving, myoclonies, weight loss and other symptoms; this inability to sleep can last for days or weeks, these patients go through long periods of waking up before falling into a coma.
The disease worsens until the person falls into a coma, the degeneration of the thalamus always makes the patient alert and alert, making any typical insomnia treatment totally useless for him, it is a rare disease and still has no cure.
Experts recommend sleeping between seven and eight hours a day, although the number of hours of sleep can vary by age or health, for example, young children need to sleep many more hours because it is a crucial time for their cognitive development and to retain new learning. Pregnant women should also increase their sleep hours.
Sleep is not only important, sleep can be restful, for this it is important that REM sleep and phase 4 are adequate, it was found that during phase 4 metabolism and blood flow of the brain are reduced by 75% compared to wakefulness We know that the goal is to eliminate free radicals that can damage the brain.
Slow sleep is attributed to functions such as energy conservation, repair and body and neurological protection, on the other hand, REM sleep is responsible for memory consolidation, as you can see there are several functions and all are of vital importance, so sleeping well can not only make us feel better, but it is also a necessity that sharpens our biological clock.