Sleeping is as necessary as breathing or eating. When we do not get enough rest or sleep badly, our body suffers, and the day can be very uphill if the night’s rest has not been adequate.
It is proven that a bad rest can seriously affect the health of our body for a long time. It is known that in terms of memory, when we are tired, it is much easier to forget things. Additionally, a chronic lack of sleep can develop significant problems in our cognitive system.
Benefits of sleep
The benefits of sleeping are many. Regardless of the feeling of relaxation and the pleasure that sleeping causes us, for our health it is very important to take a continuous and appropriate rest so as not to have problems in the future.
Sleeping well increases people’s creativity. When we rest, the production of hormones is balanced, memory works correctly and that makes us imagine impossible things and be more creative in our day to day.
Another of the great benefits of a good rest is health. Our system needs to sleep and uses these hours of sleep to regenerate and thus fight against toxins. When we have a weak system, our body can react differently to infections and we will be more exposed to diseases.
In this sense, the benefits of sleeping well are so extensive that even weight is lost during rest or depression is reduced. The relaxation that a good rest gives us makes the production of melanin and serotonin develop much more. These hormones often counteract other potentially dangerous ones such as stress.
Last but not least, adequate rest takes care of our body, especially the heart. During the deep sleep phase, or REM phase, our body calms down and produces less pumping in the heart when we are relaxed. However, according to many studies, people who do not get adequate rest are much more likely to suffer from heart failure throughout their lives.
How long can we go without sleep?
It is a data that is not known exactly. In many experiments that were developed throughout the century, they came to the conclusion that after 4 weeks without sleep we could die from lack of sleep.
The truth is that going a long time without sleep is really difficult, but we can suffer from insomnia. Insomnia can keep us awake for 48 or 72 hours, beyond this we should speak with a specialist to help us sleep, since with a good rest, this insomnia will surely disappear.
If we stay awake for many hours our body will begin to suffer. Not only will we notice a noticeable lack of energy as the hours go by, we will also notice daze, less capacity to dialogue with meaning and our concentration will weaken at times.
When we stay awake for a long period of time, it is possible that our own mind creates hallucinations and may even drive us unhinged until we get a good rest.
The Randy Gardner Story
Randy Gardner was the man, dated, who managed to go the most sleepless hours in the world. In 1946, the American Randy spent 264 hours awake, eleven days, breaking the previous world record of 260 hours awake without conceiving sleep.
A team of neuroscientists studied Randy’s case and wanted to take samples during these eleven days that he was blind. In the study they developed, the mood and behavior changes that Randy Gardner suffered as the hours passed without sleep were noted.
According to the study, at 20 hours of sleep deprivation, the subject was already showing a bad mood and clumsy movements . Shortly afterwards came some more acute and serious misbehavior. He began to have delusions and visual hallucinations. It was reported that Gardner believed he was a well-known football player and stayed away from reality at times.
However, the study also revealed that, after 15 hours of sleep, Randy had not suffered any type of non-physical psychic sequelae.
Sleeping technology
People who suffer from insomnia can have health problems in their day to day, so it is essential to try to conceive sleep as it is for at least 7 hours in a row.
But if we are going through a time of insomnia, which can be caused by stressful situations for example, technology has also come to help us sleep.
There are many applications to conceive the dream that are really interesting to close our eyes and let ourselves go. Among them, Sleepy Time is one of the most recommended.
It works like a calculator where we will get suggestions to align our sleep time cycles.
Along with this we must also highlight apps such as Rainy Mood, with soft music to relax ; Brain.fm, with sound effects to help you fall asleep; or Caffeine Calculator that recommends us the adequate intake of drinks so that they do not influence our rest.
