Whether you go to sleep and are an early bird or a complete and total night owl there’s a main common factor for all of us that won’t be humanely possible to function without which is SLEEP. Now I know many young teens like myself are sleep deprived due to the stresses of school and revision which sadly often leaves me wistful for perhaps an hour or two more of my sacred shut eye as the beep beep of the alarm drills into my yet asleep numb brain; but alas life isn’t a bed of roses so I reluctantly climb out of my warm cocoon of blankets and force myself to face yet another long and tiring day until I can go back to hibernating. With this all taken into mind, I wonder, wouldn’t life be so much more convenient without sleep? And perhaps the more important question, why do we need sleep? According to research and facts online, sleep actually plays a very important role in storing and keeping our memories. This is because as we go about our daily lives our brain retains an incredible amount of information which unfortunately can’t be saved and logged like a computer. Instead overnight as we sleep information is transferred to our long or short term memory which is a procedure called consolidation. Another fact is that if you fancy keeping your muscles, tissue and hormones all in check then some good advice is to catch a bit of beauty sleep. The recommended amount of sleep for teens by the NHS is a minimum of 8-9 hours which seems a bit like a dream if you ask me due to the average 7 hours of sleep a teenager usually gets. Nonetheless sleep is critically important throughout the development of children and teens as well as the fact that we need it as humans to thrive, learn and be successful in life. So the next time you’re stuck in class and your eyes feel like heavy curtains draping over a window just think to yourself ‘was it really worth sacrificing my sleep?’
