Sleep restores energy to the body, particularly to the brain and the nervous system. People who are deprived of sleep lose energy and become quick tempered. After two days without sleep they lose concentration. Many mistakes are made even in their ordinary, routine tasks. Anyone who goes without sleep for three days may have great difficulty thinking, seeing and hearing clearly. He may pass through periods of hallucinations.
Non-sleepers lose contact with reality and begin day dreaming. One may believe that the doctor who has come to treat the patient it in fact the undertaker who has come to bury him. When a person falls asleep, all activity decreases and muscles relax. The heartbeat and breathing rate slow down. As a person sleeps, the brain sends our slower but larger and larger waves (through the electroencephalograph which is used to measure it).
Most adults sleep for 7to 8 1/2 hours every night. Those who work at nights sleep during daytime. Some adults can to only with six hours of sleep. Other require nine. At 60, people may need less than seven hours of sleep. We require both slow-wave sleep and dreaming sleep. Extra sleep of either kind does not make up for a lack of the other.
Slow-wave sleep helps to restore the control of the brain and nervous system over the muscles, glands, and other body systems. Dreaming sleep may be important to keep up with mental activities like learning, reasoning, and emotional adjustment. Scientists are trying to find out why human beings need to sleep and how it restores vigour to the body. For instance, insects do not sleep, they simply rest. Sleep is period of rest during which the sleeper loses awareness of his surrounding. Sleep, unlike coma is easily ended.
Sleep
Good quality sleep is essential for good health. It will bring down the blood pressure, alleviate allergy, calm down gastric problems. It will soothen nerves. You will get up with a clean mind, full of energy and with a bouncing heart. You will be able to take on physical labour and tension of the day without getting tired.
Many can sleep “like a dog”. As soon as they put their head to the pillow, in no time they are in a deep sleep. Sleep does have different depths at different hours of the night. For instance thieves are active always around the early hours of the morning around 2.00am. At this hour most of the people are in deep slumber and noise often does not seem to wake them up.
There are also people who dread nights. Because each night to them is a struggle to get some sleep. The more they struggle and crave for sleep, the more it seems to distance itself and run away. Their sleep is disturbed, they may have snatches for an hours or two and those too are light. They get up tired, morose and literally have to push themselves to do their daily work. In the process, they get tired quickly during the day.
It may happen to a top executive, to a businessman fighting too many problems all the time, to an affluent housewife, to a man overtired with physical labour or even to a girl in her thirties losing her charm fast and finding herself less attractive to boys, and in a hurry to be hooked in marriage. Less sleep produces black circles round the eyes and takes away the shine from the skin thus making it less attractive. Boys who have finished their education and are looking forward to start their career are not able to do so, may not sleep adequately. Sleep is disturbed when you have a maladjusted family. That is, when the wife does not co-operate with the husband. Or the child does not listen to you. If you have taken a loan and are not able to pay it back. Any worry can put you off from sleep.
All of us dream, mostly in the early hours of the morning, when sleep is light. They could be pleasant dreams. Many have difficulty getting sleep and when they do get to sleep they have horrible dreams which turn into nightmares. These dreams are unpleasant. Some see tigers, cats, snakes, or else they find their body falling down from a hill. They feel they are appearing for the exams but are not able to write. They seem to face a great danger not being able to dress up properly or put on their shoes or even walk.
Your legs have gone heavy you are not able to walk, you are trying to run but are not able to put your foot forward. You see the same dream night after night. You wake up tired, morose, without any zeal in the heart, you feel weak as if somebody has drained you of all the energy, the mind is fogged, the head is heavy. You are exhausted and have no enthusiasm to work.