LESSON 1 – WHAT IS SLEEP?
Getting adequate sleep is critical for staying healthy and feeling your best. Sleep is equally as important as regular exercise and a healthy diet for overall well-being.
As it turns out, getting enough sleep and rest is critical to our well-being, as being up for long periods without a break reduces our capacity for paying attention to the details of the things going on around us. An eight-hour night’s sleep is recommended for human health and performance the following day.
Humans are designed to sleep, and it is essential for our well-being. We do it all in one day. Take a shower and eat breakfast before heading to work or school. Play a sport after that. Watch TV, Study. Finish the day by reading a book. Then it’s time to retire to bed. That necessitates a significant amount of effort. That’s why you need to get some shut-eye. The body and mind need time to recuperate during sleep.
Everything that leaves an impression in a day is processed during sleep. Therefore, it is not surprising that people sometimes experience things they have experienced during the day, in their sleep while dreaming. In addition, muscles relax with a good night’s sleep. This allows the muscles to recover from all the effort.
During sleep, the body also makes more cells and antibodies. Getting enough sleep can prevent them from getting sick quickly.
Sleep is a strange thing. We close our eyes and go to another world that we experience without control and do not consciously experience. Therefore, sleep is often associated with death, for example, in myths and fairy tales. We see it as passive and often even a waste of precious time.
When time pressure is on, sleep is, therefore, the first thing to be skimped on. There is even a macho culture around little sleep among young people, business people, and politicians. Above all, sleep is something we know relatively little about. Well-established grandmother’s tips such as ‘A person needs at least eight hours of sleep’, ‘It is best to sleep in blocks of three hours and ‘Everything before 12 hours counts twice’, do not make much sense. Scientists know relatively little about this mundane but mysterious phenomenon compared to other human functions and traits. Yet it is no coincidence that we spend about a third of our lives sleeping: sleep is an active process essential to our lives.
