Sleep to get Organized
When you were still a kid, you spend so much time playing, studying, exploring the world around you. You run with friends, practice your batting skills for that baseball game, homework – among other things. By the end of the day, it is but natural that your body will require the much needed rest in preparation for the next day’s adventures.
Though no one is exactly sure what work the brain does when you’re asleep, some scientists think that the brain sorts through and stores information, replaces chemicals, and solves problems while you snooze.Both in children and adults, when the body doesn’t have enough hours to rest, they may feel tired or cranky, or they may be unable to think clearly. Notice how you had a hard time following directions or having that argument with a friend over something to realize later that it was really stupid?
A growing child needs an average 8 hours sleep – this is because he is developing. Inversely, elder persons and adults get little sleep – an average of 4-5 hours only. No scientific explanation seems to support this notion – most probably, adults have reached their maximum physical growth and sleep functions only as the brain’s preparation for learning new information.
Observe yourself when you did not get a fair amount of sleep. Do you notice being disorganized and feeling like being in the clouds? Your brain is muddled because of lack of sleep. If you continue to get no sleep for three consecutive days, buzzing in the ear will start and on the fourth day, hallucinations will start. Your lack of sleep may be triggered by anxiety and this is the usual reason for mental illness. It seems that all mental illness that are pathologic in nature starts their symptoms in lack of sleep.
When you try to force yourself to work and function without sleep, you end up with a lot of mistakes. And when you don’t do any work and can’t seem to sleep, you tend to stare into space. Quite weird if you ask me. This is the reason that doctors recommend that you time your coffee and other food and drinks that you take that act as stimulants. When you take coffee late in the afternoon, predictably, you will have a hard time catching sleep later.
Some people who skips their routine physical work outs in the afternoon have a hard time sleeping at night. This is because the body’s biorythm is disrupted. When it is disrupted, it will take some time before it goes back to normal. Notice how sleepy you still feel even if you catch a nap in the afternoon in compensation for the sleep you did not get at night? Because the body is attuned and the brain is timed to rest at night, it will expect to be rested at night. Such is the common problems of people who travel around the world because of the time difference.
Sleep is a vital need of the brain and the body that when a person who made his appointment with a psychologist will normally be prescribed with medications that will induce sleep and rest most of the time. This is to rest the overactive brain to avoid those hallucinations from getting severe aside from the anti-psychotic medications.
Photo by Scott Mcleod
