I remember a sleep study where they allowed something like 10 minutes of sleep at a time across the study period of a week, while subject’s brain waves were recorded.
Instead of the normal progression through the 3 types of brain activity, the subjects would slam right into REM, or another level, indicating the body would take what it needed.
During ‘hell week’ of SEAL training there is a similar regimen. They work those guys to exhaustion in the surf, and ‘sugar cookie’ them, soaking wet and coated with sand allow them to crawl under an inflatable raft and sleep (pass out) for a stretch of minutes. You see these guys laying there huddled together, twitching like there are electrical impulses hitting them.
Given little choice, I think anyone would be an ‘opportunistic sleeper’!
It was kinda cool to see… The person administering the test showed me a graph of the brain data they collected. And some of the lines just looked like I was walking along, then all of a sudden fell off a cliff out of nowhere.
It is very interesting. The glial cells of the brain were thought to just be a support structure for the neural cells. Turns out that the neurons expand during consciousness, and the glial cells shrink. The opposite happens during sleep.
That describes the fundamental function of a pump!
It is speculated that helps flush the brain of the plaques that tend to accumulate and are associated with dementia.
At my age, an average, I have spent 20 years asleep! The fact that we evolved to not be here for a third of our lives tells me of the physical need for sleep, and it is possible the cumulative effect of sleep deprivation has a steep price.
I can attest to the cumulative effects of sleep deprivation. I’m an artist and because I had to manage a household with 2 kids, a husband and 3 dogs, AND I was creating non-stop for about a 5 year span, I was getting approx. 4-6 hours of sleep a night and a couple of times a week I would also stay up all night because no one would interrupt me when I was in the flow. I accomplished a lot and I was pretty happy with the way things were going BUT, I was also getting older and my immune system took a big hit and I had to re-establish a normal sleep cycle or I probably would have had some sort of physical accident. Oh yeah, I also lost my sense of humor as the prolonged habit messed with my brain. I’ve been sleeping much better for the last 3 years and my husband says I look like I dropped 10 years. I am much healthier now.
