How sleep can save your life?

Q1: Why do human need sleep?

Lead in:
Sleep occupies nearly a third of our lives, but many of us give surprisingly
little attention and care to it. This neglect is often the result of a major
misunderstanding. Sleep isn't lost time, or just a way to rest when all our
important work is done. Instead, it's a critical function, during which your
body balances and regulates its vital systems, affecting respiration and
regulating everything from circulation to growth and immune response.
Scenarios : your life without enough sleep
Benefit 1: lenghthen your lifespan 
scenario 1: premature death
In 2014, a devoted soccer fan died after staying awake for 48 hours to watch the
World Cup. While his untimely death was due to a stroke, studies show that
chronically sleeping fewer than six hours a night increases stroke risk by four
and half times compared to those getting a consistent seven to eight hours of
shuteye.
How can sleep deprivation cause such immense suffering? 
During sleep, your immune system releases proteins called cytokines, some of
which help promote sleep. Certain cytokines need to increase when you have an
infection or inflammation, or when you're under stress. Sleep deprivation may
decrease production of these protective cytokines. In addition, infection-fighting
antibodies and cells are reduced during periods when you don't get enough
sleep.
So, your body needs sleep to fight infectious diseases. Long-term lack of sleep
also increases your risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart and blood vessel
(cardiovascular) disease.
Benefit 2: get a striking appearance
 scenario 2: cannot be a handsome man or a beautiful woman.
When you don’t get enough sleep, your body releases more of the stress
hormone cortisol. In excess amounts, cortisol can break down skin collagen, the
protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic.That is the reason why most people
have experienced sallow skin and puffy eyes after a few nights of missed sleep.
It turns out that chronic sleep loss can lead to lackluster skin, fine lines, and
dark circles under the eyes
When it comes to body weight, it may be that if you snooze, you lose. Lack of
sleep seems to be related to an increase in hunger and appetite, and possibly
to obesity. 
Recent research has focused on the link between sleep and the peptides that
regulate appetite. “Ghrelin ( the hunger hormone)
stimulates hunger and leptin signals satiety to the brain and suppresses
appetite,” and sleep time is associated with decreases in leptin and elevations in
ghrelin.” Not only does sleep loss appear to stimulate appetite. It also stimulates
cravings for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods. Therefore, it seems like if you
want to the next international queen, make sure to have an sufficient sleep every
night.
 
Benefit 3: our brain – superhuman memory - scenarios 3: Not become an A
level student
Imagine It is 1 a.m, and the big test is in eight hours. You've been studying for
days, but you still don't feel ready for either. So, what can you do? Well, you
can drink another cup of coffee and spend the next few hours cramming and
practicing, but believe it or not, you might be better off closing the books,
turning off the laptop, and going to sleep.
One of the major factors contributing to memory consolidation is, a good night's
sleep. Sleep is composed of four stages, the deepest of which are known as
“slow-wave sleep” and “rapid eye movement”. And the different stages of
sleep have been shown to help consolidate different types of memories. The
non-REM stages of sleep seem to prime the brain for good learning the next
day. If you haven’t slept, your ability to learn new things could drop by up to
40% which means “You can’t pull an all-nighter and still learn effectively,”.
Lack of sleep affects a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is key
for making new memories. So hopefully you can see now that skimping on
sleep not only harms your long-term health, but actually makes it less
likely that you'll retain all that knowledge and practice from the previous
night, all of which just goes to affirm the wisdom of the phrase, "Sleep on it." 
Benefit 4:natural pill for our mental health scenario 4: losing healing
ability
Sleep and mood affect each other. It causes irritability and anger and may
lessen your ability to cope with stress. It’s not uncommon for people who don’t get
enough sleep to be depressed or for people who are depressed to not sleep well
enough.

What often happens when you are asleep? As you can guess the answer is
dream- the magic only occurs during our sleep. Stress neurotransmitters in the
brain are much less active during the REM stage of sleep, even during dreams
of traumatic experiences, leading us to theorize that one purpose of dreaming is
to take the edge off painful experiences to allow for psychological
healing. Reviewing traumatic events in your dreams with less mental stress may
grant you a clearer perspective and enhanced ability to process them in
psychologically healthy ways.
 
Short conclusion: There is simply no aspect of your wellness that can retreat at
the sign of sleep deprivation and get away unscathed. It's rather like a broken
water pipe in your home. Sleep loss will leak down into every nook and
cranny of your physiology, even tampering with the very DNA nucleic
alphabet that spells out your daily health narrative.
How to get a better sleep to save your life?
Somebody will think of using sleeping pills,cause it seems like the fastest way
to help you get straight into your sleep. Unfortunately, they are blunt
instruments that do not produce naturalistic sleep.
The first is prepare the perfect conditions for a deep and sound sleep
1.The morning set up:
Get right with the light
Figure out the way to expose yourself to some sunlight because when sunlight
reach our eyes and our skin, our body start producing cortisol which is the
hormone makes you feel awake and energized.The reason we sleep better at
night is because sunlight causes our bodies to produce serotonin which is a
precursor from melatonin which mean that if you get more sunlight in the
morning, not only will it tell your body to release cortisol the right time but it
will also allow your body to produce more melatonin at night allowing you to
sleep faster and sleep better
Get daily exercise
The second thing you have to do in the morning is some sort of exercise. Like I
mentioned before, you want to figure out way to produce more cortisol in the
morning and exercise is perfect for this because if you put your body under
intense stress of any kind, a ton of cortisol is released.
The evening set up:
• Avoid large meals, caffeine, and alcohol before bedtime. Only consume a
limited amount of caffein before noon and this is because caffein works by
blocking adenosine receptors which is a special chemical that our body
naturally produces throughout the day that makes us feel sleepy. That’s why a
couple of coffe in the morning helps us feel awake because it literally tricks our
body into thinking that we are well rested.
• Remove electronic devices such as TVs, computers, and phones from the
bedroom.
• Make sure your bedroom is quiet, dark, and at a comfortable temperature.
The second is regularity. Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same
time, no matter whether it's the weekday or the weekend. Regularity is king, and
it will anchor your sleep and improve the quantity and the quality of that sleep. 

Implementation: Well easier said than done. The question is how can you
actually implement all these good habits to fix your sleep and what if your
body’s not used to waking up so early no matter how many sleep you get, we
need to figure out a way to make our brain automatically associate all these
good habits with a positive attitude. But how ? So let’s take an example, this
week I will challenge myself to sleep at 10 p.m and wake up at 5 a.m
I may not be a great student in school but there’s still something that I
remembered from my biology classes. It’s Pavlov’s theory of classical
conditioning. He wanted to figure out why dogs salivate so have dog- give
meat- saliva and then he introduced a neautral stimulus (a bell), everytime he
would bring the meat, he would ring the bell, he did this a dozens of times until
eventually he would take a way the meat entirely, just bring the bell and the dog
would salivate. This is because the dog eventually associated the sound of the
bell with meat which sth that he wanted. So the point here is I want to treat
myself like pavlovian dog to solve this problem. The problem is I currently
extrace zero joy from waking up early and as a result I just lay bed in bed for
hour scrolling on tick tock, facebook. Therefore I want to trigger a chain of
habits in the morning that I do automatically without thinking which are as
follow : wake up – chug water- short workout. Now as you can imagine this
currently does not make me salivate. What does make me salivate? A green
drink. It provides me with a lot of joy and serotonin which are more fun and
important than the salivation, by the way that was just a metaphor. So everytime
I complete this chain of habits I will reward myself with an green drink and in
time I want to make my brain associate this with joy and then I take it away
eventually, the goal is to still enjoy waking up early and do that chain of events.
Hypothesis, I will speding a lof of money on green drink.
 
Conclusion: So to cut the bottom line, Sleep is a nonnegotiable biological
necessity. It is your life-support system, and it is Mother Nature's best effort
yet at immortality. Think about the tremendous power of sleep, think about
what a gift it would be for all of us to sleep at the right time and wake up
naturally in harmony with our own biology. Napoleon once said that: “let her
sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.” and that what we call
human superpower. It’s your choice to keep it or lose it. I do hope you eat well,
sleep well and live longer. Thank you and pleasant dreams .