It’s still dark out when my alarm flashes the time and starts making a screeching sound that I have grown to believe is pure evil. It’s 5:30 in the morning and I need to be to work in an hour. This is the third night in a row I have gotten less than seven hours of sleep; I feel luck to have even gotten that. I splash cold water on my face and give myself a good suck-it-up stare in the mirror. I get ready and pour the first of three cups of coffee I know I will drink that day. While I believe I am just being tough and “getting the job done” a recent study shows I may be doing more harm to myself than I realized.
Researchers from the University of California Berkeley found that when people are sleep deprived their ability to learn new information decreases by an astonishing forty percent. While many of us have been trained to believe that afternoon naps are for toddlers and elderly, it turns out we were wrong again. Matthew Walker, assistant professor of psychology at Berkeley, found that naps are important to our health. He says, “Sleep not only rights the wrongs of prolonged wakefulness but, at a neurcognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap. It’s as thought the email inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact emails, you’re not going to receive any more mail. It’s just going to bounce around until you sleep and move it into another folder.”
The research team plans to examine the shorter sleep duration that occurs with aging as a possible cause for decreased ability to learn. They also believe that there may be a link between sleep and memory impairment disorders like Alzheimer’s.
Professor Walker believes the problem is simple, “Sleep is sophisticated. It acts logically to give us what we need. I can’t imagine Mother Nature would have us spend 50 percent of the night going from one sleep stage to another for no reason.” The sleep cycle acts as the ultimate refresh button and can actually help make you smarter. Maybe it’s time for me to wise-up and revisit those sheep I have been so good at avoiding. Sweet dreams!
