One more reason to sleep longer

Why is it that most of us feel like we just simply can't ever get enough sleep? As your typical college student this question haunts me every morning as I contemplate how crucial it is to attend lecture that day. Regardless, I always seem to drag myself out of bed and soon my body adjusts to the daily routine. As Dr. Cavanaugh explained when it comes to sleep our body is regulated by the Two- Process Model. As the name suggests our body is regulated by two mechanisms the homeostatic, which is the one we seem to control when we force ourselves to pull an all-nighter and the circadian, which give us that much needed "second wind" the following day. Although getting little to no sleep may seem to have no consequences especially, when our body's circadian rhythm wakes us up the following day the truth is it is crucial for our overall health and well being. 

The Time magazine article The Sleep Cure: The Fountain of Youth May Be Closer Than You Ever Thought mentions a study conducted on more than 21,000 twins in Finland and found that those who were sleeping less than seven hours per day had a 21% to 26% greater chance of dying of any cause when compared to those who slept more than 8 hours. 

But why exactly does our body need sleep so badly to function properly? This question was answered by Dr. Maiken Nedergaard. She discovered that although on the outside sleep may seem trivial our bodies and most importantly our brains are actually repairing and cleaning themselves. More specifically "The brain runs checks on itself to ensure that the balance of hormones, enzymes, and proteins isn't too far off- kilter. All the while, brain cells contract, opening the spaces between them so that fluid can wash out the toxic detritus that can cause all kinds of problems if it builds up"(Park, Alice).

The good news according to Dr. Cavanaugh is that we can actually make up for lost sleep through a mechanism called sleep rebound. Every day our homeostatic mechanism builds up sleep pressure from the moment we wake up and continues to do so until we fall asleep. When we pull an all- nighter additional sleep pressure aggregates and what was once a single days' worth of sleep pressure becomes two. In response to this deprivation, sleep rebound increases our drive to sleep and tells our body it needs to sleep for longer in order to make up for lost sleep time and lower sleep pressure back to normal.

The answer to my initial question then is simple, we just can't seem to get out of bed in the morning because our body is telling us we need more sleep. If and when we allow ourselves to pay back all the sleep debt we owe not only will the drive to keep sleeping lower but our overall health will benefit as well. 

Works Cited

Cavanaugh, Danile. "The Drosophila Circadian Clock Gates Sleep Timing Through Interactions with Sleep-Promoting Neurons." Loyola University Chicago, 14 Jan. 2017, Chicago. Lecture.

Heid, Markham. "What's the Best Time to Sleep? You Asked." Time health, time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/?iid=sr-link5. Accessed 1 Mar. 2017.

Park, Alice. "The Sleep Cure: The Fountain of Youth May Be Closer Than You Ever Thought." Time health, time.com/4672988/the-sleep-cure-fountain-of-youth/?iid=sr-link1. Accessed 1 Mar. 2017.