British writer Aldous Huxley once said, “That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.”
Huxley died in 1963, and had no idea what would deprive us of sleep in the digital age. According to a report of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), about 1/3 of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep a night, and the CDC says that isn’t enough. Many folks either can’t get to sleep, or think of sleep as wasted time. What actually goes on while we’re lying there? Why are we designed to do nothing for a third of our lifetimes?
The answer: Our bodies are doing housekeeping and neurological work that’s needed to keep us operating properly when we’re awake.
In 1951, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Eugene Aserinsky, wired Armond, his 8-year-old son to a device that tracked eye movements and brain waves. After Armond fell asleep, his father noticed that the eye-tracking “pens” were swinging back and forth. Aserinsky checked on him and found the boy sound asleep. His paper on sleep, published in 1953, was the first time REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep had been described. Before that, scientists believed that the sleeping brain was more or less turned off.
When I read that, I was surprised because at 5 years old, I thought everyone knew the human brain never sleeps.
Humans and all land mammals experience spells of REM in sleep. In those events, the heart rate speeds up, breathing becomes irregular, and brain waves are more variable. However, major muscles that we normally control cannot move.
REM sleep normally first occurs about 60 to 90 minutes after falling asleep. As people age, we get less REM sleep, and REM’s function is still not entirely clear. Some specialists say it’s related to memory formation, but people who take antidepressants spend far less time in REM sleep, and that doesn’t seem to consistently affect their memory. Also, it’s a myth that we only dream during REM sleep. Our most vivid dreams may occur during REM sleep, but dreaming can occur in all sleep stages. In fact, sometimes I drop off to sleep and wake up within a minute with a fully-developed dream still in my mind.
We’ve all heard people boasting that they’re perfectly functional on five hours of sleep or less. Adults do vary in their sleep needs, but I’m told that the number of who are at their best with such little sleep is very small. Long-term sleep deprivation can be linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and traffic accidents.
So why do people say they’re fine with less than an average of 7 hours of sleep? A rush of cortisol, the hormone that revs us up to manage stress, can create the sensation of alertness. We’re told it’s an illusion; the sleep-deprived still do poorly on objective tests of their short-term memory and motor skills.
But since childhood, I’ve operated day-in-and-day-out the best at 5-6 hours of sleep a night. Once every other week, I might sleep 8-9 hours. But when I make myself consistently sleep 8 hours a night, I am usually groggy the next day. I found that my internal clock determines my best sleep time and wakeup time.
We all go through various sleep cycles, or stages. Although there is an “average” that sleep specialists talk about, everyone is different, and we are wrong to force the average on people. We need to find what works best for ourselves, and go with it.
I read that, on the average, seniors usually need 7 to 8 hours, and other adults need 7 to 9. Some teens need 8 to 10 hours and younger children need even more. People who are getting enough sleep usually take at least 15 minutes to fall asleep when they get into bed. However, Carol & I get enough sleep and are usually out in less than two minutes.
Before there were glowing smartphones and bedside lamps, people lived by sunlight, not by clocks. Families blew out a candle and retreated to bed. After about four hours of sleep, adults awoke for a brief period, then dozed off for another 4-5 hours. That’s apparently a natural rhythm. My wife has that type of sleep pattern, as did her mother and grandmother (an immigrant from Sweden).
When people get proper sleep – be it 8-10 hours or 5-6 hours – they are normally much healthier than those who are sleep deprived. They are happier, think more clearly, make fewer mistakes, and are more productive. Psalm 139:13-14 in the Bible (NCV) says, “You [God] made my whole being; you formed me in my mother’s body. I praise you because you made me in an amazing and wonderful way. What you have done is wonderful.”
Gene Linzey 