Preconditions and Symptoms of a Sound Sleep

Sleep is more important for health than food and even water because some food in the form of fat and some water in the form of body-fluids remain stored in the body all the time, but there is no provision of sleep storage in the body for a future use. It has to be taken when needed, and it is essentially needed after every 12/16 hours of waking period, normally. Infants need it even more frequently.

Unfortunately, people know more of awakening than sleeping, and also less number of persons know secrets of sound sleep than those knowing about alert awakening. It is because every person is accustomed to be conscious about his/her activities during awakening period with very few being conscious of sound sleeping.

Sleep is essential but can’t be brought whenever desired. Everyone might have noticed many sleepless nights lying in bed wanting to sleep. This indicates that sleeping state has certain preconditions for coming to a person. Also, there are some symptoms of a sound sleep. Let us examine these here.

Preconditions of Sound Sleep

Everyone of might have experienced drowsiness just after taking a good meal, giving an impression that belly full with food is a precondition of a sound sleep. But the fact is just the opposite. After taking a meal, digestion process of the person is at its peak performance needing maximum amount of blood flow to the digestive system. Other systems of the body get only minimum amount of blood, and many non-essential system are instructed to close down during this peak requirement period of the digestion system. Brain activity is also considered non-essential at this time and blood supply to it is reduced to the minimum level. This makes the person to lose alertness and feel drowsiness.

Drowsiness is not sleeping. During such a state, the brain activities come to standstill while during a sound sleep, the brain performs repair and maintenance of the body’s worn-out tissues with generation of new cells in place of those died during the awakening activities. Thus, the brain needs full supply of blood even during sleeping period. Drowsiness is something like getting fainted for lack of blood supply to the brain.

When a person is hungry, then also sleep deludes him/her even if the person is tired physically. This is because the brain becomes busy in solving the problem of hunger through contingent provisions like using the fat stored in the body. When the brain is active and worried, the person can’t sleep.

When a person is badly tired from some hard physical activity, he/she feels like taking rest with no external disturbance. In this state, many body tissues get damaged and lack in getting properly compensated. The brain again makes contingent arrangements to bring the situation to normal. The person may feel sleepy, but again it is not the desired sound sleep.

When a person is severely worried about some problem and keeps on thinking about resolving the problem, he/she does not get a sleep even after getting tired of thinking and feeling drowsiness.

Taking rest without a need, or overstaying in bed beyond repair and maintenance functions of the body tissues are performed are also not congenial to sleep.

To summarize the above discussion, let me enumerate the preconditions of sound sleep.

1.       The digestion process should have tapered off to its routine activities. For this, at least one hour must have passed after the last meal was taken by the person.

2.       The person should not be hungry and the food taken by the person during the day should have sufficient nutrition to be dispatched to various parts of the body through blood for performing the repair and maintenance functions of the worn-out tissues. 

3.        The brain should not be over-activated in dealing with any abnormal situation in the body like physical and/or mental tiredness, injuries, or worries.

4.       Rest and sleep durations should be just enough, say, 8/10 hours a day. This issue has been discussed in detail by me in my another article ‘-----‘.     

Symptoms of a Sound Sleep

The first and foremost symptom of a sound sleep that the person must feel pleased and relieved of all physical tiredness on getting up from bed. Apart from this, there are two more symptoms of a sound sleep.

Alert sleep

In a sound sleep, the person’s body is at full rest but his/her mind remains alert and functioning. The makes the person to know of disturbances even though he/she may choose not to respond to them. This alert sleeping is a sound sleep, provided the disturbances are not annoying to the person to respond in any way or feel bad about them.

The Dreaming State

 The brain goes to rest for a shorter duration than the body. When the body is at rest and brain becomes active, the person sees dreams. In this state, all physical feeling remain absent, and the person is in a sound sleep.

Often a dream is ended but the person keeps on brooding on the dream, and interpolating or extrapolating the dream he/she just saw to get extra pleasures or sorrows of the dream. This state is not of sound sleep.