Being Smart About Sleep

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Sleep is crucial for good health, can help keep your immune system strong, and your heart and blood vessels in top shape

In the stone age, human beings went to sleep after sunset like all other animals. In today’s digitised world, 95 per cent of the adult world sleeps at least four hours after sunset, 25 per cent of youth sleep close to midnight, and two to three per cent of the world is awake across the night. Clearly, we have totally altered our sleep patterns. Similarly, 60 per cent of the world wakes up only after sunrise, another 20 per cent about two hours after sunrise, and only a per cent or so are awake before sunrise.

Our lives, bodies and their physiology carry a certain rhythm called the circadian rhythm. This rhythm probably applies to the universal laws of nature as well. The rhythm in humans includes the fact that we all go through childhood, teenage years, adult hood, middle age, old age and death within a 90–110 year span. No one lives for 200 years. A pregnancy lasts for nine months and not one or two years and so on.

Similarly, our body goes through hormonal secretion patterns. Certain hormones like insulin, cortico steroids and thyroxin are secreted cyclically and are often related to the timing of sleep and sunrise.

Read the full article in 'Viva Goa' magazine copy.
Viva Goa magazine is now on stands. Available at all major book stalls and supermarkets in Goa.

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