Proper sleep is a means of restoring the body
Sleep is the source of our strength, a balm for the sick soul, the best of all medicines. Every person knows from his own experience that often the best and only way to get rid of severe anxiety or mental fatigue is to sleep them off. Happy is the one to whom sleep invariably comes at a certain time, for a certain period of time, and leaves as quietly and imperceptibly as it came.
The world of vivacity and the world of sleep are so different from each other that we can say about each person that he lives, as it were, in two worlds.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the God of sleep is Hypnosis. The duration and depth of sleep in healthy people are different. The average sleep rate for an adult - seven to eight hours - has only a conditional meaning. Some people need nine or even ten hours of sleep, while others need five to six hours. Both are considered quite normal. It is known that children and young people sleep longer than adults, and old people - the least. Working people sleep better than housewives and pensioners. Among young people, school and university students sleep worse than others. Men complain of insomnia less often than women, although in general women sleep more than men.
Active, energetic people usually sleep less than the average norm. People with reduced intelligence sleep longer than others. It is believed that sleeping a lot is harmful. It is not for nothing that the proverb says: "He who sleeps a lot, lives little." Sleepiness is associated with laziness: "Sleepy, so is lazy."
Vain and ambitious people consider sleep to be an empty waste of time. Cowards like to lie in bed for a long time in the morning, having the habit of pulling the blanket over their ears.
In many ways, sleep is a mood regulator. In some cases, it reduces excessive tension, and we wake up in a good mood. In other cases, on the contrary, we get out of bed with a headache and a bad mood.
Sleep disorders are more common in people of mental work, exposed to information overload, with prolonged emotional overstrain.
Alcohol, nicotine, drugs have a negative impact on the quality of sleep. A persistent sleep disorder caused by late bedtime is quite dangerous. Air temperature is of great importance for sleep. It is difficult to fall asleep in a hot and unventilated room, as well as after taking a hot bath shortly before bedtime. Even air pressure affects sleep: people in the mountains sleep longer than on flat terrain.
It is considered advisable to position your head to the north during sleep.
The nature of sleep has not yet been studied sufficiently. There are several points of view on this issue. According to one of them, sleep is interpreted as a physiological process aimed at preventing the body from self-poisoning from the action of harmful acids and other decay products that have accumulated during the period of vigor. According to another version, sleep is explained by the action of adrenaline, which has the property of strongly narrowing the arteries. In high doses, adrenaline acts as a poison, but in small doses it causes anemia of organs and affects the nerve centers. Since sleep is accompanied by anemia of the brain, it is quite logical to think that such a state is due to the influence of adrenaline.
Sleep is a cyclical physiological process. In an adult, the cycle repeats every 90 minutes. From 4 to 6 cycles are observed during the night, depending on the duration of a person's sleep. In each cycle, two phases are distinguished - the phase of slow deep sleep and the phase of paradoxical sleep.
Sleep begins with a nap: pupils narrow, consciousness becomes cloudy, hallucinations occur. Five minutes later, a slow, deep sleep sets in. When falling asleep, many body processes seem to stop: the body temperature decreases, the frequency of breathing and pulse slow down, blood pressure drops, the amount of the stress hormone - cortisol, which is secreted by the cortical layer of the adrenal glands, decreases. As for growth hormone, on the contrary, it reaches an exceptionally high level. These hormonal shifts activate metabolic processes. In this phase of sleep, slow rotating eye movements take place under the closed eyelids. A person who is awake cannot understand where he is, and does not remember the content of what he saw in a dream.
In the paradoxical phase of sleep, there is an increase in the activity of various organs and systems. In particular, rapid eye movements occur, breathing becomes irregular, pulse and blood pressure also fluctuate. The process of restoration of lost strength and "treatment" of all kinds of ailments is intensified, memorization and fixation of what has been learned or learned during the day takes place. In men, there is an erection of the penis, and not only in adults, but also in children, and even in children. By this sign, in the case of impotence, it is recognized whether the latter is organic or psychological in nature. Psychological impotence does not exclude the appearance of an erection in a dream.
In the paradoxical phase of sleep, a person sees the most vivid, emotionally colored dreams. This is evidenced by the fact that, being awakened at this time, a person can tell what he saw in a dream.
A child in a paradoxical dream is more restless than an adult. His arms, legs, and facial muscles are constantly twitching. Premature babies are so active that it is difficult to determine whether they are in a state of paradoxical sleep or alertness.
The cyclicity of deep, slow and paradoxical sleep is manifested already at an early age, but then the duration of the cycle is shorter: in one-year-old children - 45-50 minutes, and by the age of five it increases to 60-70 minutes. In older children, a 90-minute cycle, typical for adults, is gradually formed.
In elderly people, the reduction of time spent in sleep occurs mainly due to slow deep sleep. The percentage of paradoxical sleep remains quite stable.
With each new 90-minute sleep cycle, the process of restoring lost strength is shortened, and the process of memorization, on the contrary, increases. Thus, about two hours before waking up, the "memory" function works especially intensively.
There are no people who do not see dreams, there are only people who do not remember them. In most cases, dreams are banal and uninteresting. Only a small percentage of them contain strange and fantastical elements. It is noteworthy that daily routine activities are rarely fixed in a dream. Rational and realistic elements, similar to thinking during alertness, prevail during the deep slow phase of sleep. The paradoxical phase is dominated by more complex, bright, fantastic dreams. It often happens that in a dream a person finds the necessary way out of a previously unsolvable problem, as if continuing the creative process. Conflict situations of a psychological nature can be overcome in a dream.
The content of dreams is more often negative than positive: defeats and failures, encounters with cruelty and aggression. More than a third of dream reports contain emotions of fear and anxiety. But even with very exciting events in a dream, their accompanying emotions are very muted. Often the sleeper screams and wakes up in horror, covered in sticky sweat. Children also often wake up from nightmares and have difficulty falling asleep after that, and unpleasant themes and conflicts arise more often in boys.
An important feature of dreams is the ability to hold attention. The latter is carried away by certain events or objects from which it is impossible to free ourselves: we cannot force our attention to switch to something else. This is due to the fact that in dreams there are no elements of imagination: consciousness does not wander, as in wakefulness, but is focused on one thing.
Snoring is a fairly common phenomenon that accompanies sleep. It occurs because the muscles of the throat relax and the tongue and lower jaw slowly slide back, which clogs the already blocked airway through the nose and forces us to breathe through the mouth.
Statistics show that about 30 percent of men and 20 percent of women snore in their sleep every night. The tendency to snoring increases with age. Intense snoring occurs in the phase of deep slow-wave sleep and weakens or disappears in the phase of paradoxical sleep. Since snoring occurs when a person lies on his back, people whose physique forces them to sleep on their backs more, and excess fatty tissue in the larynx enhances vibrations, should have a tendency to it.
The cause of snoring can be such diseases of the upper respiratory tract as allergies, sinusitis and even a runny nose. In children, the same effect can cause severe tonsillitis. Sometimes snoring causes periodic pauses in breathing during sleep. The corresponding disease is called "sleep apnea". There are up to several hundred pauses in breathing during the night. Each of them lasts a few seconds, in exceptional cases - up to two minutes. At these moments, a person begins to toss and turn restlessly, as in convulsions, but usually does not wake up. When breathing resumes, it is accompanied by loud, explosive snoring. Apnea is more common in men over the age of forty.
The disease has two consequences:
1. During the day, patients experience severe drowsiness due to lack of sleep due to frequent pauses in breathing.
2. During periods of respiratory pauses, the level of oxygen in the blood drops, causing oxygen deficiency in the body. This causes an increase in pressure in the pulmonary (pulmonary) circulation and heart rhythm disturbances. Both sleeping pills and alcohol, which depress breathing, increase sleep apnea, a condition that can cause sudden death in older, obese people.