Sleep is not just a biological need, but also a physiological one. It is necessary for both physical and physiological health, and essential to survival. When we sleep, we exhibit reduced voluntary body movement, and a lack of conscious response to external stimulation. As a state of healing and body growth, sleep has a great impact on the
anabolic/catabolic cycle. Also, scientists believe that sleep is required for successful memory processing. Sleep has many more function beyond these, though some of them are still only speculated upon.
Factors That Affect Sleep
There are numerous factors that can affect our sleep cycle. Sleepiness is defined as a tendency for a person to fall asleep; it is directly linked with the amount of time since we’ve had our last sleep, and the amount of sleep in that occasion. If we haven’t had enough sleep the last couple of nights, we’ve incurred a sleep debt that we can get rid of only by sleeping. We also feel sleepiness in a certain period of the day (for example, in the early afternoon) because of the human biological clock. That is why we often find it easier to sleep in the early afternoon than in the early evening.
Many people find that staying in night clubs and other crowded and noisy places can mask our sleepiness. But that can be very dangerous because after that we can experience microsleep (our brain shuts off for a couple of seconds) and that can occur while driving or in other situations which requires full attention.
Factors That Can Cause A Lack Of Sleep
- not having enough time to sleep
- all factors that leads to insomnia
- all kinds of sleep disorders
- depression, worry
- noise
- night work
- traveling across time zones
Effects Of Sleep Deprivation
Insufficient sleep and daytime sleepiness can seriously affect on our everyday life. Mostly it affects our behavior, health, learning, and mood. Sleep deprivation, generally speaking, is the absence of the necessary amount of sleep, or a state of insufficient sleep. This can be caused by certain sleep disorders, or it can occur during a stressful time of your life. Tens of millions of people suffer from sleep deprivation each year.