Is sleep really necessary?
By Paul Antiperovitch
Lets face it, for most university students sleep seems to be a huge time sink. Whenever you need time, you pull it out of sleep; whenever you have extra time, you put it back into sleep. It is quite common for university students to get as low as 4 hours of sleep, which is usually a result of poor time management. Naturally, we arrive home and waste several hours, and then realize we should probably get some work done by the time the clock reaches 10pm. This also seems to be the central dogma of procrastination. Hence, I decided to write an article addressing the big question: Is sleep really necessary?
What is the purpose of sleep? This area has been subject to heavy debate among the scientific community. One theory suggests that dream sleep provides a mental process that generates heat. This warms the endocrine glands (hormone releasing) around your lower brain, which balances hormone levels. It is like running an endless loop on your computer to warm up your room. However, recent findings conclude that dreams provide more than just warmth, but actual enhancement of cognition. One large study had participants learn to draw while looking at their canvas through a mirror. This is very hard to do without rigorous practice. The investigators had the subjects enter a lucid dream state, in which study participants become aware the world they are currently in is a dream. This dream world resembled the physics of the real world so well, that the biggest difficulty was convincing the participants that they are in a dream. Next, the subjects were to practice drawing through a mirror while in the dream state, and the experience that they acquired seemed to be directly transferable to the real world even if they did not remember their dream. This function of dream sleep seems entirely plausible as considering that a child learning to walk can minimize the number of falls in the real world by learning this art safely in the dream world. In the life of a student, studying before bed, and getting adequate sleep before an exam will allow your mind to reiterate through the information in your sleep, allowing enhanced memory of the material.
This is just the beginning of the story. Dream sleep allows you the connection between your conscious and subconscious mind. It is something that allows us to purge all our emotions without having to experience feedback from the real world. For instance, a nightmare is the purging of fear – an emotion that instills and constantly irritates our conscious thought in our waking lives without our awareness. Hence without sleep, you get anxiety. If someone hurt you or emotionally demeaned you in any way, the purging of a negative emotion must take place in dream sleep. Without sleep, emotions like this get amplified and cause depression and anxiety. In other words sleep allows us to control our thoughts, which is the very meaning of “poor concentration”. Ever have your mind wander off when you are trying to study or do homework late at night? I'm sure you all had that happen. It is the lack of sleep, and therefore the lack of catharsis in our emotional life that causes us to lose concentration in our studies, an lead us to ponder over certain thoughts eventually causing depression, anxiety, stress, etc. Almost all cases of depression and stress can be treated by adequate sleep (7-8 hours).
There are thousands of health benefits that come with adequate >7 hours sleep. Sleep can tone and enhance pretty much any somatic system you can think of.
- allows the body to remove carcinogens and neutralize metabolic reactive oxygen species, thereby reducing the risk of cancer.
- regulates salt balances (tones blood pressure, and nervous system),
- strengthens immune system (substantially less susceptible to viral/bacterial infections),
- treatment of a large majority of non-chronic temporary psychological illnesses (ones that are typically treated with anti-depressant drugs – not ones you are born with).
- tones body metabolism (helps lose weight)
- releases endorphins (natural drugs that make you feel happier and optimistic about life)
- replenishes glycogen stores (allows you to have more energy during the day)
- enhances muscle tone (reduces shaking and risk of muscle cramps)
- streams metabolic energy towards repair mechanisms (DNA repair, repairs tissue damage, increases red blood cell count, clears blood stream, etc……
- enhances neural metabolism; promotes extensions of neural networks through the formation of new connections (
increases cognitive function, concentration, memory, muscle tone etc…)
- stimulates osteoblast activity (bone growth – reduces risk of fractures).
- clears intercellular fluid buildup (reduces risk of joint problems and infections)
- clears respiratory tract, reducing the risk of respiratory problems
- significantly increases life span (inversely proportional to stress)
Ideally, to maximize these effects, we should be going to bed and waking up at the same times each day. In the life of a student, this goal is unrealistic, so the least we can do is get enough sleep.
The worst thing you can do for a test/exam, is spend all night studying.
Paul A
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