Dying for a Sleep…
We all need sleep but many of us internet addicts fuel our night times with Caffeine just to allow us to cope for that few extra hours online while we update our blogs, kill a few more enemies or just to chat with friends we have never actually met. What if there was a way to stay awake longer without feeling tired??. The military is always developing ways to make soldiers stay awake for days at a time without the need for sleep, but at what cost?
There have been many attempts to surpress the need for sleep. 70 years ago a chemical called dexedrine (dextroamphetamine) was introduced by the pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline, and French. It was used in the the 2nd World War and appeared to have few side effects. But by the 60’s it was discovered that higher and higher doses were needed and giving up the drug was another problem causing disturbed sleep to violent outbursts. Not to be detered by this, the latest solution is Modafinil, researchers found that troops could perform effectively 40 hours at a time and then get a normal nights sleep without needed sleeping pills. The US Airforce has approved its use and the French Foreign Legion gave it to soldiers in the first Gulf war. So is this the solution, developed further could we live in a sleep free society? being able to operate productively days at a time without getting fatigued or imparing our judgement?
Looking further into this shows more worrying facts. Firstly no one really knows the true purpose of sleep. Is it true we sleep to stop feeling tired? is it also true that we eat to stop feeling hungry? Scientists are now starting to discover links between life-threatening illnesses and sleep deprivation, including Breast cancer (especially women involved in shift work) and heart disease. Even reducing your sleep by one hour a day could have a significant impact. A major study showed that reducing your sleep by 2 hours from 7 hours a night to 5 hours a night increases our chance of premature death by up to 70%. So by gaining a few extra hours a night by not sleeping are we in fact risking losing this time later on.
Perhaps instead of finding ways to get more hours in the day and get more out of our lives, we should be looking at ways of having better nights sleep. If you don’t get some sleep now, the saying ‘We can sleep when we are dead’ might happen sooner than you realise.
Thats all from me, now get some sleep 
Yes, sleep is definitely very important. I can say this after 3 years of night shifts at work… In the beginning, I could stay awake for 60 hours and then sleep 2 hours and be awake for 20 more hours and feel ok. But now, after 3 years of doing this to myself, I feel I really need the night sleep, and the difference is huge. When I sleep at night for at least 8 hours, I feel refreshed and full of energy, and when I sleep during the day, I still feel sleepy when I wake up.
Not having enough sleep makes you give up things like exercising, makes you feel like you don’t have time for anything, destroys your schedule and in the end it shows that you actually lose time, instead of having some more time, stolen from your sleep.
So to get some sleep is a very good idea.
Excerize and a good nights sleep can make a huge difference to how you feel. Unfortunately my sons both need re-positioning in the night due to there medical condition, so a good nights sleep is something ive not had in over 6 years.