Читать книгу Sleep: The secret to sleeping well and waking refreshed - Prof. Idzikowski Chris - Страница 8

Sleep is not an optional extra. Like the food we eat and the air we breathe, it is a fundamental need. Sleep is essential for all living beings. Studies on animals have shown that sleep provides a period of enforced quietness in which they can hide from predators, and that sleep exists in all varieties of mammal, irrespective of their size, temperament and habitat.

The generally held view is that sleep energizes and revives, providing us with an enforced time of rest that allows us to recharge our batteries to cope with the everyday business of living. But many scientists argue that to think of sleep entirely in terms of rest is misleading, because it is also an active period when the restoration and repair of body tissue takes place. It is during sleep, for example, that growth hormones are released in developing babies and children.

There is also evidence to suggest that sleep plays a significant role in brain development, and that learning may improve after sleep. In experiments carried out in the UK and USA, subjects who were allowed to sleep after learning new information were found to have a better recall of the data they had learned than those who had not slept.

To most of us, the benefits of sleep are evident from the way we feel after a good night’s rest. But perhaps a better way to understand the role of sleep is to look at what happens when we don’t sleep.