How Sleep Affects The Brain

Have you ever thought why humans sleep? Some might think what is sleep? When we think of sleep we think of it as something our bodies naturally do when we close our eyes, lay down and go unconscious, and we are correct. It has been proven that sleep is very essential to a human body because sleep affects our how our brain functions mentally and physically. When we sleep, our brain doesn't completely shut off, our brain is very much active when asleep. When asleep humans usually go through four stages of sleep cycles every 90-120 minutes. In Stage 1 "we are considered to spend about 5% of our time sleeping and is considered to be when someone is light sleeping or when we can be awaken very easily" ("Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep"). For an example when you twist and turn, wake up from the middle of our sleep and rub our eye, when you remembered when you rolled over to the other side of your bed in our sleep we are considered to be in stage 1 of sleep. After Stage 1 comes "Stage 2 where we spend almost 45% of our time sleeping in" ("Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep"). Stage 2 is considered to be when our eye movement stops and our brain activity or waves slow down. While that is happening our brain spits out bursts of waves. These "occasional …show more content…
Sleep is what helps the brain function physically and mentally. The amount of sleep someone should get depends on a lot and one of them is their age. For an example, “babies are often required to get 16-18 hours of sleep each day” (“Sleep and Mood”), “8-9 for teenagers, and for many adult 7-8 hours a night” (“Sleep and Mood”). If our bodies are not meeting the requirement hours of sleep, our bodies are going to eventually need that sleep. It is said that it is very important to make up sleep if you did not get enough of it the night before. It is proven that our bodies do not adapt to not getting enough sleep and that will cause our reaction and judgment to become