Sleep —a trivial, everyday process— is the universal drift of all living things, from the state of consciousness into the state of the subconsciousness. When we sleep, we let go of all stresses and give our bodies, which are weakened by a day of constant thought and physical action. When we finally give in to our drowsiness, we are giving our bodies and minds a chance to heal and recuperate, so that we can wake up to another productive(?) day.
But have you ever wondered what causes you to gravitate unavoidably to your comfortable bed every night?
Your body’s routine, also known as the Circadian Rhythm, is regulated by a “clock”. The body clock typically has a 24-hour repeating rhythm. Your body releases chemicals in a daily rhythm, which your body clock controls. When it gets dark, your body releases a hormone called melatonin. Melatonin signals your body that it’s time to prepare for sleep, and it helps you feel drowsy. As the sun rises, your body releases cortisol, which naturally prepares your body to wake up. The rhythm and timing of this body clock changes with age. Teens fall asleep later at night than younger children and adults. One reason for this is because melatonin is released and peaks later in the 24-hour cycle for teens. As a result, it’s natural for many teens to prefer later bedtimes at night and sleep later in the morning than adults.
Now we know how sleep is induced in us. However, all of us live lives with different sleep patterns. We, in this modern day and age, don’t wake up with nature, as our prehistoric ancestors did, but instead we adhere to the timetables of commercial life.
So, just how much sleep should we fit into these busy, busy schedules of ours?
The amount of sleep you need each day will change over the course of your life. Although sleep needs vary from person to person, the chart below shows general recommendations for different age groups. This table reflects recent American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) recommendations that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has endorsed.
| Age | Recommended Amount of Sleep |
| Infants aged 4-12 months | 12-16 hours a day (including naps) |
| Children aged 1-2 years | 11-14 hours a day (including naps) |
| Children aged 3-5 years | 10-13 hours a day (including naps) |
| Children aged 6-12 years | 9-12 hours a day |
| Teens aged 13-18 years | 8-10 hours a day |
| Adults aged 18 years or older | 7-8 hours a day |
If you routinely lose sleep or choose to sleep less than needed, the sleep loss adds up. The total sleep lost is called your sleep debt. For example, if you lose 2 hours of sleep each night, you’ll have a sleep debt of 14 hours after a week. Some people sleep more on their days off than on work days. They also may go to bed later and get up later on days off.
Sleeping more on days off might be a sign that you aren’t getting enough sleep. Although extra sleep on days off might help you feel better, it can upset your body’s sleep–wake rhythm.
But what’s the point of knowing all of this?
Perhaps sleep is more important than we realize. Sleep provides us with a plethora of benefits as well.
Getting enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect your mental and physical health, quality of life, and safety. Sleep helps your brain function properly. It’s forming new pathways to help you learn and remember information.
Whether you’re learning the fundamentals of coding, practicing a sport, perfecting your arpeggios, or baking some cookies, sleep helps enhance your learning and problem-solving skills. Sleep also helps you pay attention, make decisions, and be creative.
Sleep helps maintain a healthy balance of the hormones that make you feel hungry (ghrelin) or full (leptin). When you don’t get enough sleep, your level of ghrelin goes up and your level of leptin goes down. This makes you feel hungrier than when you’re well-rested.
Healthy growth and development is induced by deep sleep, which triggers the body to release the corresponding hormone in children and teens. This hormone also boosts muscle mass and helps repair cells and tissues and, in adolescents, it plays a role in puberty and fertility.
What happens when you don’t get enough sleep?
Sleep deprivation is a condition that occurs if you don’t get enough sleep. This detrimental condition manifests itself in many a manner. Dozing off at an odd hour, that is out of sync with your clock, or missing out of the subtly different stages of quality sleep, or even losing the smallest fraction of your committed hours to letting your body rest are just a few of the ways that sleep deprivation can be described.
You may also experience this phenomenon in the following commonplace ways:
- Sitting and reading or watching TV
- Sitting still in a public place, such as a movie theatre, a meeting, or a classroom
- Riding in a car for an hour without stopping
- Sitting and talking to someone
- Sitting quietly after lunch
- Sitting in traffic for a few minutes
After several nights of losing sleep—even a loss of just 1–2 hours per night—your ability to function suffers as if you haven’t slept at all for a day or two.
Lack of sleep also may lead to microsleep. Microsleep refers to brief moments of sleep that occur when you’re normally awake. Remember that time you crashed during your history lesson right after lunch? Yes, that’s microsleep.
This can be especially dangerous to those in very active jobs, such as piloting commercial airliners carrying over 300 people.
Studies also show that sleep deficiency alters activity in some parts of the brain. If you’re sleep deficient, you may have trouble making decisions, solving problems, controlling your emotions and behaviour, and coping with change. Sleep deficiency also has been linked to depression, suicide, and risk-taking behaviour.
Children and teens who are sleep deficient may have problems getting along with others. They may feel angry and impulsive, have mood swings, feel sad or depressed, or lack motivation. They also may have problems paying attention, and they may get lower grades and feel stressed. Remember how sleep and our “body clock” are deeply interconnected? Well, this clock also controls the hormones and biochemicals related to emotions. It is common knowledge that hormone levels spike anyway during these crucial years of growth. In addition to that, the teenage years come along with responsibility and heavy educational requirements, which mess up their sleep routines. Hence, people in this age group tend to have progressively worse mood swings and irrational behaviour, as the clock’s cycle is shifted and so there is an unnatural release of biochemicals.
Sleep deficiency also increases the risk of obesity. For example, one study of teenagers showed that with each hour of sleep lost, the odds of becoming obese went up. Sleep deficiency increases the risk of obesity in other age groups as well.
For older people, ongoing sleep deficiency is linked to an increased risk of heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke.
Sleep also affects how your body reacts to insulin, the hormone that controls your blood glucose (sugar) level , and so, our immune system relies on sleep to stay healthy. Ongoing sleep deficiency can change the way in which it responds. For example, if you’re sleep deficient, you may have trouble fighting common infections, let alone full-blown diseases.
So how can we fix any irregularities in our sleep patterns?
Well, here are easily implementable and effective methods to get back on track:
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. For children, have a set bedtime routine.
- Try to keep the same sleep schedule throughout the week. Limit the difference to no more than about an hour. Staying up and sleeping in late on weekends can disrupt your body clock’s sleep–wake rhythm.
- Use the hour before bed for quiet time. Avoid strenuous exercise and bright artificial light, such as from a TV or computer screen. The light may signal the brain that it’s time to be awake. This is the effect of blue light radiation as it blocks a hormone called melatonin that makes you sleepy. Think about it: the sky is blue at daylight hours.
- Avoid heavy meals within a couple hours of bedtime (Having a light snack is fine).
- Avoid alcoholic drinks and caffeine before bed (including caffeinated soda, coffee, tea, and chocolate). The effects of caffeine can last as long as 8 hours. So, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it hard for you to fall asleep at night.
- Avoid nicotine (for example cigarettes). Nicotine, like caffeine, is a stimulant, and both substances can interfere with sleep.
- Spend time outside every day (when possible) and be physically active.
- Keep your bedroom quiet, cool, and dark (a dim night light is fine, if needed).
- Take a hot bath or use relaxation techniques, such as meditating, before bed.
SPECIAL NOTE: The Coronavirus, the lockdown and its effect on sleep cycles.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought, along with its spread of death, a change in lifestyle. When the news and media talk about this pandemic the headings are usually something like the following: “Entire countries have been shut down and brought to their knees by this unprecedented wave of infectious onslaught” or “Our country’s economy is disrupted and going down the drain”. However, people seem to have forgotten about its impacts on our daily lifestyles, and, more specifically, sleep.
For many, this lockdown has given people a sense of more, if not complete , control over their home routines. Late nights, the thrill of staying up, bingeing on the latest Netflix, and most importantly, spending time with their families after months of a constant workload at both school and formal careers, this virus did give a lot of us an unexpected break to discover ourselves and our home environments a little more. However, with a period of rest, comes the inevitable urge to break away from the monotonous cycle of discipline and that has hit many of us deeply.
I think we can all agree that it takes a lot of effort to get out of our beds every morning. There isn’t any driving factor or real motivation, unless you set your own goals or your school/company is working through the lockdown. Hence, sleeping in late is common.
It is of paramount importance that we keep to some disciplined schedule in our lives, whether it’s our summer vacations, or the weekend or even a pandemic lockdown. As the lines between work and personal time blur, we need to establish a clear schedule so that we don’t lose our discipline.
With the increased time in our hands, employers have typically become more demanding. As a result, average screen times for employees have shot up . The same results apply to students who would not have otherwise been exposed to this added amount of screen time. This increased screen time interferes with the melatonin output which ultimately affects our quality of sleep. Hence, to avoid these adverse effects of screen time, maintain a disciplined schedule such that there is no screen time an hour before bedtime.
This lockdown is the perfect chance to revitalize ourselves and revisit our unforgiving, fast-paced schedules, and to edit them into one that fits our health, not our urges nor our workplaces.
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