Introduction
Every human being in day to day life needs some rest from the normal activities by sleeping. Sleep is therefore defined as period that naturally occurs where the body rests from the daily activities and the mind being in a state of unconsciousness. There are said to have five sleep stages, which are divided in to two: the rapid eye movement and the non rapid eye movement during which the dreams occur.
One begins with the preparation to sleep -the waking sleep- where the eyes go on and off. In stage 1 last about five to ten minutes where there is slowing down of muscle activities. At this stage it is easy to awaken someone and he may end up feeling as if he hadn’t slept. During this stage the eyes are closed. In stage 2, one gets a light sleep whereby the body temperature goes down as well as the heart rate. In stages 3 and 4, someone experiences dead sleep, (Andrew, 2005).
However, in stage 4 the sleep is much intense. There is the repeat of stage 3 and 2 after stage 4. Stages 1-4 are referred as the non rapid eye movement (NREM) period. In these stages one dream on memories of the episodes which might have happened during the day or the past days.
The NREM period last up to around 90 minutes where one gets into stage five the rapid eye movement (REM) period. Here the dreams take another shape where the normal realities don’t make sense, for instance one can dream walking on water without sinking. At this stage the heart rate increases and the blood pressure rises. The five stages form a cycle and one may end up having 5 cycles at the end on the night, (Andrew, 2005).
There are theories associated to why we dream, some of them include: to help solving of problems which cannot be solved in normal consciousness, to organize our mind in relation to many information and to cope with different hard situations. We also dream as a result of impulses from the brain which are randomly developed.
There are several consequences related to the disrupted sleep. Disrupted sleep during the night result into the poor working of person during the day where one ends up dozing in the afternoon when supposed to be taking a certain activity, it also disrupts the concentration of the mind. Disrupted sleep has been a high threat to the human health by increasing the risk of diseases such as heart attacks, obesity, and colon cancer among others (Andrew, 2005).
Insufficient sleep may increase the hormones which do cause stress. This leads to the increase in the blood pressure in which many heart attacks are reported to be as a result of increased blood pressure (Pinel, 2009). In the blood vessels there is a lining which is influenced by sleep, and so many cases of strokes as well as the heart attacks have been known to happen in the morning as it’s when the body resumes working with high increased blood pressure.
Diabetes is said to be as a result of poor regulation of the blood in which at the same time people who are known to have insufficient sleep are at the same time reported to have problems in blood sugar regulation (Pinel, 2009).
The body metabolic rate is said to be high at night and thus less sleep leads to poor metabolic rate. This has in turn resulted into many reported cases of obesity especially to women who sleep five hours or less. Insufficient sleep therefore has many negative effects which lead to reduced life span to a person (Davis, 2003).
The bio-psychologist and the psycho-physiologist are said to play a great role in the sleep research. They have researched on the positive effects that the sleep has into a person as well as the negative effects involved when one lacks enough sleep. Out of their research results people are then in position to avoid these effects which are detrimental in to their health. They have a role on explaining the relationship between the sleep and the body biological functioning.
They also have a role in further research on, the sleep and the relationship with the neurological problem or disorders. They are a number of sleep disorders of which the specifics causes have not been known like walking while sleeping. The bio-psychologist have then the role on researching the specific causes of which some of them are believed to be genetic as when the specific cause is known then the specific treatment on the same will be developed (Davis, 2003).
The psycho-physiologists have a role in showing the relationship in psycho-physiological and the radical eye movement period. The science need to be applied for the hallucinations and dreams that people experience with the processes on full conscience. They have also a further role to research of the impact that the disorders such as insomnia to the body functioning which are unknown.
There has been reported cases on psycho-physiological insomnias that are not caused by sleep loss thus they have a further role on researching on the same. Their role however cannot be under looked by the fact that many lives have been saved as a result of their research (Davis, 2003).
References
Andrew, W. (2005). Foundations of Biopsychology. London: Pearson, Prentice Hall.
Davis, S. (2003). Blackwell Handbooks of Research Methods in Psychology. New York: Wiley Blackwell.
Pinel, John P.J. (2009). Biopsychology, 7 ed. Boston, MA: Pearson.