By Pritam Kumar Agrawal, Founder, Hello Kids Chain of Preschools & Riverstone Schools, National Core Committee Member & Vice President, Early Childhood Association – India
“Sleep affects almost every tissue in our bodies. It affects growth and stress hormones, our immune system, appetite, breathing, blood pressure and cardiovascular health”
– Dr. Michael Twery, a sleep expert at NIH.
Sleep is the relaxing period for both the body and mind. Nature has day and night respectively for work and sleep. Look around and you see even the animals, birds and all beings going regularly for a slumber because it’s a natural phenomenon and like a machine alarms the systems of living organisms too demand breaks. After a day’s activities, it is essential for the physical body and also the mind to get enough rest for the proper functioning. Even a day of total inactivity as it seems for a person who doesn’t do anything much but the body and its organs including the mind were constantly in function mode that rest is essential no matter whether the day was productive from the exterior angle. There are much more reasons for why a few hours of shut down is essential which is perhaps skipped or belittled by many of all age groups.
Let’s deliberate on the different important facts about the necessity of proper sleep.
PROPER SLEEP = PROPER MOOD
Yes! Let’s first talk about mood or state of mind and sleep. You might have recognised a morning or a whole rough day after a night completely deprived of sleep or rather disturbed much. Irritability, fatigue, lack of concentration, lack of interest and drowsiness are the common things noticed in people who had sleeping disorders. Because lack of sleep means your system was denied the mandatory break it required which disturbs the mood of a person that even a silly matter might irritate him/her and might end up the same person involving in heated arguments. Prolonged deprival of sleep or disordered sleep routine might have drastic consequences that it might disturb your system and mind and proves detrimental.
PROPER SLEEP BOOSTS YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM
A proper sleep cycle is an important immunity booster. Proper sleep keeps you fresh, energetic and immunized. It keeps you immune enough that people who have good sleep are found to be resistant to a lot of diseases and health disorders. Many physical health disorders and difficulties are also attached to the sleep. Rather try to switch the television, cell phones, loud music and lights off at least an hour before bedtime and you rather not require any immunity supplements much but good sound sleep in addition to a healthy diet and sufficient workout.
RIGHT AMOUNT OF SLEEP CAN IMPROVE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY
It is a wrong notion that reduces sleep and does things productive excessively. It is not called hard work and nor the label ‘over work’ suits it well but it can be well called ‘foolish work’. Because when the brain is not given enough rest it only tries but most of the try and the end result will be in vain and pathetic. Just as your body demands breaks or rests in between the physical activities, your mind and brain needs break. It is during the sleep time brain is studied to be storing new information and eliminates the toxic data. Also, it is during your slumber the nerve cells in the body communicate and reorganize which shoulders for healthy brain function.
So the key is the right amount of sleep not much not less enhances the productivity and will reflect itself in your academics, sports and arts.
SLEEP HELPS YOU BE MORE FOCUSED
A proper sleep as mentioned before keeps your mind free and good enough that you don’t feel drowsy or tired rather energetic and rejuvenated. This helps you be more focused in the job you do or in the activity you are engaged in. This helps students in their academics and games. Even in sports, arts, play and in a normal day to day life which involves a lot of activities that you might not even count as an activity as such like walking to your school through roads where you need to be alert about your safety like the vehicles etc and a sound sleep at night matters here more. A good sleep makes you more concentrated in your work.
SLEEP INCREASES KNOWLEDGE RETENTION!
As mentioned in the previous paragraphs, through proper sleep productivity is enhanced, focus is balanced and comes along the knowledge retention capacity too. A proper sleep helps your brain hold the knowledge you gained from different sources. Better sleep keeps you focussed and your learning efficient and that in turn helps you retain the knowledge you accomplished with you to use at the right situation and time. Hence your process of acquiring knowledge doesn’t go in vain as that is imprinted in your brain by the warrior sleep! So keep replenishing and refreshing your warrior or in other words try to maintain sufficient sleep and have it as a routine.
DO YOU KNOW THAT SUFFICIENT SLEEP PREVENTS WEIGHT GAIN
Weight gain found in different people can be due to different reasons. It can be hormonal variations, obesity, hereditary and off course improper sleep cycle or insomnia. An effortless thing that you need to do – that is just lie down in your bed with lights off and just sleep can help you from unwanted weight gain. Instead, if people just spend the sleeping hours awake doing other things, they might have this reaction from their system of excessive weight disproportionate to the height and that can again have other difficulties too. Having weight reducing tablets or fasting or cutting down calories is not the right solution in this case if it’s because you are not sleeping enough. You must sleep enough and that’s the best solution. Please don’t use it as a remedy but try to use it as a precaution itself.
SLEEP IS ESSENTIAL FOR YOUR HEART TO BE HEALTHY AND TO MAINTAIN THE CELLULOSE OR SUGAR LEVELS BALANCED
Even kids are found in the cardiac wards of hospitals these days and that is heartbreaking. Many diseases that were reported in adults are now seen in kids too. Hence, adults must ensure that their kids don’t spend time with cell phones and laptops or in front of the television but get enough sleep. Adults also be careful about their sleep. A healthy heart or good blood circulatory system is essential for the proper biological functioning and if it be taken on toll through deprival of sleep, don’t make chance for it. Also, maintaining sugar levels at the normal rates is also essential to maintain smooth functioning of our body without hindrances.
DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY FIGHTER
A lot of people of all age groups including kids suffer from depression, anxiety and other imbalanced or disturbed mental or emotional state. A sufficient amount of sleep daily is proven to aid recovery from mental as well as emotional exertion.
AMOUNT OF SLEEP REQUIRED
That’s the important question here- How many hours make the sufficient amount of sleep. NATIONAL SLEEP FOUNDATION guidelines stipulates that a healthy adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep per night; infants, babies, young kids and teenagers need little more sleep to smooth run their development and for enabling their proper growth. Age group 5-12 is said to sleep 10-11 hours per night as per several studies. People aged 65 plus should also get 7-8 hours of sleep per night.
SLEEP IMPROVES BRAIN FUNCTIONING AND ATHLETIC ABILITIES
Yes! Quality sleep in ambient quantity enhances the brain functioning as well as physical or athletic performance. Yeah, sleep or rest matters a lot.
KIDS NEED IT VERY MUCH
Preschools set afternoon nap time, not for break for preschool teachers and caretakers but kids need more hours of sleep. They need breaks as their brain demands it. They are new to the practice of learning in a classroom, concentrating on one thing for long, activities and orders from a completely free environment at home and their brain require the right amount of breaks and enough rest which necessitates the afternoon nap hours. Hello Kids founder Pritam Kumar Agrawal says that he makes it particular to the teaching staff and caretakers at Hello Kids to make kids comfortable and get them to sleep with stories or nap music that kids need it badly even if they might hesitate to sleep and run around.
Slumber gives some quiet time and space for the body to repair its cells, restore energy and release hormones and proteins. These peaceful few hours is utilised by the brain to filter and store information and discard the wastes. And this is the peak time for the nervous cells to get their work done through communication and reorganization and let’s just sleep so that their routes are clear and the biological schedules of this time are not interrupted. Sleep enough and perform better.
