The beneficial effects of sleep

Published on July 24, 2008 12:40 AM

In people’s life sleep play a very prominent part. People must spend about eight hours asleep of every 24 hours. People said that sleep is the powerful evolutionary reasons for its continuing existence.

But some scientists believe that sleep is a time for the immune system to regenerate, while another theory suggests that sleep evolved as a way of coping with limited supplies of food.

The dominant theory is that sleep is a time for the brain to store memory, because during sleep the brain goes offline to file the events of the day. Another theory is that the brain is a complex organ that needs the downtime provided by sleep to recover from the stresses of waking hours.

Professor Jim Horne said: "While we are awake, the higher centers of the brain are working flat out. Even when you are lying down, the brain is in a state of quiet readiness, ready to respond. The only time it can rest is during sleep."

Neuroscientists reported that sleep is bound up with learning and memory.

Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist who is now at the University of California, Berkeley, added: "We think what’s happening during sleep is that you open the aperture of memory and are able to see this bigger picture. Many such insights occur only when you enter this wonder-world of sleep."

Researchers point to the fact that people’s behavior changes significantly with sleeplessness. A person who is lacking sleep takes more risks, has slower mental processes and reacts to events with more emotion and less logic.

If you don’t get enough sleep the working day goes away. Some researches suggest that while seven to eight hours a night is healthy, under five hours or more than eight is unhealthy, and linked to disorders such as heart disease, depression, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Interestingly, too much sleep - more than 9 hours - can actually be harmful for your health too. Recent studies show that those who sleep more than 9 hours per day don’t live as long as their 8-hour-sleep counterparts!