WHATEVER is going on when we sleep, we do know one thing: we're not doing it enough, and we're doing it badly.
We're dosing ourselves with caffeine and nicotine to stay awake, and knocking ourselves out with alcohol and sleeping tablets, and all the while stopping ourselves from getting the healthy, normal sleep that allows our brains to function.
There is no single activity that humans do more: if you live to be 90, you will probably spend 32 years asleep. It is as vital for us as eating or drinking water.
As rat studies have showed, sleeping is essential for survival.
"Cells and bodies have to do a whole raft of housekeeping functions," said Professor Russell Foster, a neuroscientist and sleep specialist at the University of Oxford.
It clears out toxins, brings in new fuel and brains, especially, have a lot to deal with.
"All this information is streaming in during the day: it needs, at some stage, to be processed and packaged," said Foster.
But we struggle to get sleep. On average, we need 8.1 hours' sleep a night, but a study in 2006 found the average American got barely six hours.
Foster said, in the relatively near future, it may be possible to reduce sleep need to a few hours a night with medication, extending our conscious lives by nearly 50%.
For the time being, though, that is not a realistic option, and instead people are self-medicating with stimulants and sedatives.
Sleep, a third of our lives, takes up little of our thinking. Medical schools dedicate almost no teaching to it; our education system worries about much else, but not about the obvious fact that sleep deprivation ruins children's ability to learn.
"We educate children about s*x, hygiene and drugs, but nobody gives guidance about the most important behaviour we experience. "It's bordering on the criminal," said Foster.
Posted By: Jen Fad
Friday, January 24th 2014 at 10:49PM
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