Science of sleep

Why enough sleep is necessary?

You would know about many interesting facts of good sleep in this article so read it until end. What if, I would tell you that benefit of enough sleep is same as the benefit of not smoking or not eating junk food.

Scientific benefits of good sleep

Sleep scientist have made so many great discoveries over the past 10 years, and I'm surprised that most people don't know about it. So here are some couple of examples, so when you are sleeping, your pituitary gland which is right below your brain surges us production of growth hormone. Growth hormone is released much more when you are sleeping than when you are awake, and growth hormone essentially causes three effects:

1. Muscle growth
2. Bone growth
3. Fat metabolism

Here's another example: the cells and the biochemicals that make up your immune system and circulate through your blood stream, they actually change when you are sleeping compared to when you are awake. When you are sleeping, they are particularly good in seeking out viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms to stop infections and disease. This is why, when you don't get enough sleep, you are much more likely to getting sick, and that's why, when you are sick, the best thing you can do is to get a good night's sleep.

Some disadvantages for lack of sleep

People who don't get enough sleep are at higher risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity. Psychologically, people are at a much higher risk for anxiety and depression. We all know that when you are sleep-deprived, you lose focus, you lose the ability to pay attention.

Sleep of our daily life

 All of this is very important but I think it also ignores something that we all know that, it is so awful to be sleep deprived and to keep your eyelid open. They are all of a sudden so heavy. The people who don't get enough sleep because they'd like to accomplish more during the day actually find that they are more productive when they get more sleep, and not less productive because even though they are not awake as long, they are much more productive when they have gotten enough sleep.

There's a lot of measured studies on this, that you are actually able to get more done when you get a good night's sleep, not less. Why are we so bad at this? If this is all true, then why, as a society, are we not good at this? This is actually where I feel like the analogy between sleep deprivation, junk food and smoking goes down. It's because when people smoke or have junk food, they are doing it for the short term reward. It's immediately satisfying when people choose to do things those things. But there's nothing satisfying about sleep deprivation. So why people do it? Survey of may students had been done and they came mostly of three answers

1. We have busy lives and we'd like to get more done.
2. We are stressed, stress and anxiety keeps us awake
3. This is a new trend that- we are addicted to our gadgets at night.

How can we get a good sleep?

I have two ideas worth spreading, and

1. The first idea is that we need to just completely embrace sleep as a culture. We need to treat this as healthy, and no job applicant should brag about only getting three or four hours of sleep, no student should high-five another student in the dinning hall for pulling all nighter, and in general we should just be much more sleep-conscious as a society.
2. we have to relearn how to go to bed. You know who are the best sleepers of our society, they are kids which is funny because it takes a while to get them to sleep. But once they are asleep, they actually sleep very soundly and they have a nice quantity of sleep. So we need to out ourselves to bed essentially the same way. We need to just remember what we did when we were six year old.