Sleep. That is right... Sleep

[Quad]

when we studied kreb's cycle and other aspects of ATP production in my grade 11 biology class...i asked this same question. everyone laughed at me. i'm serious...i was like WTF. so i looked around and said to everyone that was laughing "Can you even answer my question?" and nobody could....not even the teacher. my reasoning was that if your cells are constantly producing energy for your body....why would you need to sleep if you always had energy to go about your daily business? of course i didn't know about these chemicals that build up in your brain...and neither did the teacher.

 

[Shalmanese]

<< and neither did the teacher. >>



ahh, the wonders of the North American education system 🙂

Another tidbit of information but apparently you consume more energy while sitting still doing nothing than watching TV... nice huh?

And dont forget the Singaporean Net cafe owner who started putting cocaine in the drinking water so CS players would not feel as tired and play for longer 🙁.

 

[dman311]

some things i read in psych class:

theories about sleep:
1. restoration theory, basically body can repair itself: study showed marathon runners slept longer after running the marathon
2. preservation theory - sleep was a way to escape the dangers of the night, a product of evolution

also, to expand upon REM sleep that Train was talking about, there is another theory that REM sleep helps you with new material, it consolidates what you learn. studies show that people deprived of REM sleep performed worse on a newly learned task than people who had REM sleep on the same task.
so for us students, sleep is good.
Another dream theory suggests that dreaming is just the brain trying to make sense of random neuron firings (firings occur to preserve them, use-it-or-lose-it type thing)

 

[Becks2k]

Sometimes I wonder about sleep too, I actually found this thread helpful hehe... sleep always seems to useless.

One question I always had was is there more efficient ways to sleep? The 8 hours at night seems to be "standard" even tho most people probably sleep less than that at night.

Why not 2 4 hour things? 4 hours of sleep 8 hours of work 4 hours of sleep 8 hours awake - repeat ?

Is the 8 hour block the most efficient?

Almost all last semester I'd lseep 5-6 hours at night noramly 4-5am till 10am go to classes and get out normaly 1-3pm depending on what day it was, take an hour nap or so get up and go eat lunch and then i'd be up till 4/5 am.

I got bad grades last semester too, so you can cross that shceduel off as being a possibily more efficient than 8 hours straight 😉 hehe

 

[dman311]

i think that the 8 hour sleep period is most effective because of the sleep cycles.

we go thru 4 stages of sleep (stage 1, 2 , 3, 4) and REM sleep.
when you first sleep you go into stage 1 then 2, 3, 4, REM, 4 , 3, 2, 1
and it cycles likes this while you sleep. however, through the night you spend less time in each stage, like you might spend say 40 minutes in REM sleep first but the second time you go into REM sleep you spend say 25 minutes, and so on with each stage.

so in 8 hours of sleeping, you wake up after spending a short time in stage 1 of sleep or something like that, but with 4 hours of sleep you interrupt the cycle.

i dunno if this is accurate 😀

 

[AppleTalking]

dman311, I think you're a little confused about the pattern in the sleep cycle.

First of all, the entire sleep cycle is roughly 90 minutes long (it varies from person to person). The different stages are:

Stage 1 - just falling asleep, very easy to be woken up
Stage 2 - transition stage to deep sleep, more difficult to be woken up
Stage 3 - beginning deep sleep, much more difficult to be woken up
Stage 4 - very deep sleep, repairing your body, most difficult to be woken up out of
REM sleep - dreams, repairing your mind, can be woken up without great difficulty

The cycle goes like this:

Stage 1 -> Stage 2 -> Stage 3 -> Stage 4 -> REM sleep -> Stage 2 -> Stage 3 -> Stage 4 -> REM sleep, etc.

Each cycle (from Stage 1 (or Stage 2) to the end of REM sleep) takes roughly 90 minutes.

As the night goes on, you spend more and more time in REM sleep and less time in the other stages (particularly 2 and 3). For example, you may spend only 5-10 minutes in REM sleep during the first cycle, but by morning you may be spending 35-40 minutes in REM sleep.

Scientists have also found that age is a major factor in how much time you spend in REM sleep. Babies spend nearly 50% of all their sleep time in REM sleep, and it tends to decrease as you get older.

Hope this helps!
Nick

 

[dman311]

my bad apple 😱




🙂