“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.... Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” -Carl Gustav Jung
One of this week's topics is sleep. This is a topic I just couldn't pass up. Ever since we learned about sleep in psychology, I've been so interested in dreaming and the subconscious mind and dream interpretations. The mind is such a mysterious thing. There's so much we don't even know about our own minds and the way our own brains work. I just thing it's fascinating. Here are some of the questions they suggested I address:
1) Why do you think humans and other animals sleep and/or dream?
Everyone dreams. Wether or not people remember their dreams is a different story. According to Freud, our dreams represent our innermost hidden desires; specifically sexual desires. Freud believes that our dreams bring out hidden feelings, suppressed thoughts, and things we might consider taboo that we forbid ourselves to think about. All these things are brought out in our dreams. I believe this is partially true, however I don't think this is true of ALL dreams. Personally, I've had dreams that were just a result of playing video games before going to bed, or recollecting something interesting I learned in Psychology and my Senior Literature class.
Dreaming is a crucial part of mental health. When we are asleep, it gives the brain time to organize the facts of the day. Throwing out unnecessary information, converting short term memory into long term memory, etc. Without a full 8 hours of sleep, most of this important work doesn't get done.
Sleeping is also important because of the brainwaves that take place during our sleep cycles. When we're in the REM (Restless eye movement) stage of sleep, the brainwaves most resemble our brain activity when we're awake. During this stage of sleep, the body becomes temporarily paralyzed, as we're in our deepest stage of sleep. REM sleep is the most restorative stage of sleep. Getting less than 8 hours of sleep causes the other sleep stages to shorten, sometimes even to the point where a person can drop very quickly into REM sleep soon after falling asleep.
I could delve so much deeper into the sleep stages and cycles, but it is a very extensive topic to talk about. Maybe some other time I'll edit and add on to this, but after writing three blogs in one day, I'm kind of blogged-out.
2) Americans as a whole are losing sleep. Do you think this is specific to American culture, or is it present in other cultures as well? What is it about American culture that causes us to lose sleep?
There are many possible aspects as to why Americans are losing so much sleep lately. The very first reason I would guess would be stress. When a person is stressed out, they spend more time focusing on whatever it is that's stressing them out.
Also, it could just be a matter of not wanting to sleep. Many people these days stay up late to do things such as watching tv, surfing the internet, etc. The only thing they don't realize is by staying up late and getting up early, the body may shut down at the worst possible times. For example, if a person who's lacking sleep is much more likely to fall asleep behind the wheel and cause an accident. No amount of caffeine can make up for the lost REM sleep that results from not sleeping enough.
3) What are some things that can be done to help people get more sleep? How effective are they?
I'm no doctor, but listening to music helps me, personally, to fall asleep. Also, I can't sleep if there's too much light in the room. It has to be completely dark, or else the light distracts me and my eyes don't want to close. If sleeping in complete darkness isn't an option, try one of those sleep masks. Those are some things that are effective for me. I think when it comes to sleep aids, it all depends on the person. I wouldn't reccommend sleep aids such as Ambien because I know someone who had a bad experience with Ambien... She tried to cook a meal for her dream guests in the middle of the night. Needless to say, she's stopped using that medication. As I said, the efectiveness depends solely on the individual.
Well, it's about time for ME to get some REM now, so that's all I'll be saying for the night.
Thanks for listening
Kaitlyn
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