The Dog Bowl Pet Supply and BARF Raw Food Blog
The Dog Bowl is an online storefront that offers quality pet products including: raw dog food, B.A.R.F., pet beds, dog dental care, pet first aid kits for travel, and every other luxury pet gift imaginable.Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Why do we sleep?
Q. Is sleep primarily to benefit the body or the mind?
By C. CLAIBORNE RAY
Published: August 15, 2006, New York Times
A. “Sleep has many functions, and most of us think the main functions are not for the body but for the brain,” said Dr. Arthur Spielman, a sleep expert at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital and City College of New York.
“But,” he added, “you are talking to a brain scientist, and it depends on whom you ask.’’
The reason sleep occurs in the first place is tied to both mental and physiological cycles that evolved on a planet with a 24-hour cycle of light and dark, Dr. Spielman said.
The internal biological clocks that developed in living things, from single cells to humans, allow them to anticipate the transitions from light to dark and from dark to light, so that they are ready for the functions appropriate to light, like metabolism and photosynthesis, and for those suited to darkness.
“A physiologist might say sleep was to avoid wasting metabolic energy in the dark,’’ he said. “But a brain scientist would say that glycogen, the only fuel for the brain, is depleted during waking and restored during sleep.”
Sleep is useful for restoring particular parts of the brain that are quiet during sleep and return to functioning during waking, like the areas involved in attention, alertness and memory.
Sleep is also important for regulating the timing of hormones under the control of the brain, Dr. Spielman said, like cortisol, the stress-response hormone, which is suppressed at the beginning of sleep and ramps up in anticipation of waking, and growth hormone, which is secreted at night during sleep characterized by slow brain waves.
By C. CLAIBORNE RAY
Published: August 15, 2006, New York Times
A. “Sleep has many functions, and most of us think the main functions are not for the body but for the brain,” said Dr. Arthur Spielman, a sleep expert at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital and City College of New York.
“But,” he added, “you are talking to a brain scientist, and it depends on whom you ask.’’
The reason sleep occurs in the first place is tied to both mental and physiological cycles that evolved on a planet with a 24-hour cycle of light and dark, Dr. Spielman said.
The internal biological clocks that developed in living things, from single cells to humans, allow them to anticipate the transitions from light to dark and from dark to light, so that they are ready for the functions appropriate to light, like metabolism and photosynthesis, and for those suited to darkness.
“A physiologist might say sleep was to avoid wasting metabolic energy in the dark,’’ he said. “But a brain scientist would say that glycogen, the only fuel for the brain, is depleted during waking and restored during sleep.”
Sleep is useful for restoring particular parts of the brain that are quiet during sleep and return to functioning during waking, like the areas involved in attention, alertness and memory.
Sleep is also important for regulating the timing of hormones under the control of the brain, Dr. Spielman said, like cortisol, the stress-response hormone, which is suppressed at the beginning of sleep and ramps up in anticipation of waking, and growth hormone, which is secreted at night during sleep characterized by slow brain waves.
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