S leep is highly underrated in today’s machine world. You are staying awake the whole night to submit your project just before the deadline and it is still okay compared to working an hour each day to avoid sleepless nights….CONTINUE READING
Binge-watching your favorite web series (sorry), any web series from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am, and being dizzy on your office table is prior to you than having a healthy life and productive work.
Doing all the things which are counter-effective on your productivity and watching a sesh on “How to be productive” or reading plenty of articles can never change you until you truly prioritize your sleep schedule. Now we see how sleep affects your brain and how it is responsible for your cognitive ability and productivity.
If we slept 8 hours, we think our actual sleep time is 8 hours. But it is not the case. There are different stages in the sleep cycle. By not digging deeper we try to understand the mechanism of sleep.
The First stage is NREM 1 (Non-Rapid Eye Movement 1), In this stage, your body muscles will get relaxed and your brain slows down to let you sleep. This stage is followed by NREM 2 (Non-Rapid Eye Movement 2), where your body cools down a bit making you more comfortable falling asleep. The third stage is NREM 3 (Non-Rapid Eye Movement 3) which is the crucial phase and it is the deepest sleep. It lasts from 20 min to 40 min in the first sleep cycle and gradually reduces its time period for the repetitive cycles.
The final one is REM (Rapid Eye Movement) where dreams occur and the body is in a paralyzed state to protect you from acting on your dreams. The cycle repeats every 100 minutes on average.
The clear answer is Yes! It does. “How?” would be your next thought right? So let us understand now. The important stage where the magic happens in your brain is NREM 3. Though it is the “deepest sleep” stage, your neural activity is higher to restore your memory. There have been many experiments done with different groups of people who slept fully(Infants 12- 14 hrs, adults 8–9hrs) and who didn’t. The conclusions of many types of research have been drawn like this.
In NREM sleep hippocampus(part of the brain responsible for memory)restores all the memory that happened in the day and improves your cognitive ability to memorize things by strengthening neuron(nerve cells connecting your brain and the entire body)connections. Whatever new information is acquired in a day, should be encoded by the hippocampus and transferred to the neocortex which adds some cognitive perspective to your memory. It is a biological phenomenon where you transform to be intellectual and skillful.
Have you ever wondered why our learning ability reduces with age? It is because infants sleep deeply for a longer period compared to adults. As we grow old our deep sleep is highly underrated with all our stress. Sleeping well increases your lifetime by boosting immunity. It saves your health and increases cognitive ability. Growth happens and memory consolidation takes place. Try to keep scheduled sleep time to perform well in your career
Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time. This keeps your internal body clock scheduled. Missing a day in a week could be fine but not more.
Take a warm bath before going to bed. It helps to keep your body temperature cool and relaxes your muscles.
Keep your room dark and avoid watching TV or playing games for at least one hour before going to bed, Instead read or learn something which makes you smart the next day. Because whatever you learn before sleeping is memorized properly….CONTINUE READING