Why does sleep important?

 

Precisely arrived Sleep

Science has not yet precisely arrived at the main reason that drives us to sleep, but it remains very important, as it is not a “negative rest” that the body spends in laziness, but a continuous “regeneration and maintenance” process throughout the night hours in the brain, in addition to other benefits that make it the best medicine

We spend about a third of our lives immersed in sleep, which remains as important as eating, drinking, and breathing. It's not just "passive rest" as the scientific term says, it's much more than that, and it's also a kind of biological energy-saving mode

When we sleep, we consume less body energy than when we are awake. Scientists have not yet come to the full truth behind the need for sleep, although many studies indicate that the brain is responsible for our need for sleep. So what exactly happens in our heads while we sleep?

About this, Albrecht Forster, a researcher in neurobiology at the German University of Tübingen, says, "A lot of processes start inside the brain at night, and it is during sleep more than at any other time in our lives." When we are awake, new connections are built between neurons, and when we sleep, the processes of rebuilding and arranging begin.

Forster adds to the German "Spectrum" website, "Sleep is something like washing, cutting and arranging in the brain." "The connections between the neurons in our brains are tested and readjusted so that they don't use up too much energy and process information without hindrance... Everything that has been built up and connected too much during wakefulness and daily work is being shrunk again. And at the same time, the space of our minds is being swept: Whatever remains of the proteins and neural processes there will be discarded.

Arranging Memories

Arranging memories

Sleep also plays an important role in redistributing our memory and fixing information in it. Sleep reorganizes the content of our memory from information and turns it into high-quality knowledge. “It is assumed that most memories are at hand during sleep. How is that? During sleep there is an active exchange between different brain regions: the hippocampus, which is to some extent the memoir in our brain, notices which experiences are important and during sleep gives the cerebral cortex impulses To display them again and again and again and install them and link them together."

During this storage process, our memory is very weak, and therefore it is not allowed to be interrupted by new experiences that may interfere with it. "That's why we lose consciousness in our sleep," Forster says, adding that "hard drive formatting only works if you stop giving new commands."

Balance is important

It is clear that sleep plays a fundamental role in the functioning of the brain, as it ensures that the system functions optimally and that the brain does not get out of balance. “The awakening seems to put the body increasingly into a physical imbalance,” says Forster. Without sleep, the relationship between our nerve cells is imbalanced, as is the amount of neurotransmitters, which are neurotransmitters that are released to transmit signals between nerve cells.

The imbalance affects not only our thinking but also our mood, as we get emotionally imbalanced because we lack the fine-tuning that can only be done through sleep. The importance of processes that occur during sleep becomes apparent when they are not working properly. If the protein deposits are not cleared from the brain, they will build up, interfere with and kill neurons. Scientists have found such protein accumulations in the brains of people with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

Sleep is the best medicine, just as the body needs sleep in order to renew everything in it. For example, the repair and growth of cells increases at night.

A night of restful sleep also keeps our blood sugar and lipid metabolism in balance and curbs our appetite. And those people who work night shifts regularly are at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

strength of our immune

How sleep also affects the strength of our immune system. When we sleep, immune cells prepare for the next day and exchange information about foreign viruses, thus forming the mainstay of immune memory. When the body infects the same intruder twice, the second time the immune cells respond faster and more efficiently than the first time.