A friend once told me he sleeps less because it is a waste of time. I don't think so! but I also wish to be able to sleep less, so my quest began

At first I search about Da vinci method of polyphasic sleep and I was trying to implement the best way possible, and then I find out it is bad. Reeeeaaally bad for health.

I read a very extensive article about the importance of sleep and here I'm going to show you the key points you should all know about sleep.

If you wish the read the complete and original content by Dr Piotr Wozniak, here is the link. So let us begin

Sleep plays a critical physiological function, and is indispensable for your intellectual development! Those who do not respect their sleep are not likely to live to their full mental potential!

Here are some bad rules that hurt sleep:

• it is ok to use an alarm clock to cut sleep short
• it is ok to work in shifts
• it is ok to travel people around the world without much attention to the jet lag problem
• it is ok to save time by sleeping less and working more
• it is ok to pull kids out of bed in time for school
• it is ok to skip nights before important exams, etc.

By cutting down on sleep, we learn less, we develop less, we are less bright, we make worse decisions, we accomplish less, we are less productive, we are more prone to errors, and we undermine our true intellectual potential!

Sleeping well appears to be one of the most important factors underlying success in learning!

Why do we sleep?

In evolutionary terms, sleep is a very old phenomenon and it clearly must play a role that is critical to survival. Only quite recently, it has been proven beyond doubt that the function of sleep is related to learning .
We sleep so that the brain can integrate new knowledge and form new associations. As we must sleep for our brain to continue its function, our body attached dozens of important processes to run in sleep as well. In simplest terms, in waking we use and burn, while in sleep we restore and synthetize. Sleep affects the function and health of the entire body.

If you do not sleep, you die!

Sleep deprivation is a well-known form of torture. We have a rough idea as to the degree of human durability in sleep deprived state due to fact that we can study the effects of sleep disorders. One of them is fatal familial insomnia, in which a mutation causes the affected people to suffer from a progressively worsening insomnia that ends in death within a few months. Another example is the Morvan's syndrome in which an autoimmune disease destroys neuronal potassium channels that lead to severe insomnia and death (unless the disease progresses into remission).

Brain's garbage collection

Why is sleep deprivation fatal? Death of sleep deprivation is like death of an old age in general. One of the most important functions of sleep is the re-organization of neural networks in the brain. During the day, we learn new things, memorize, acquire skills, figure things out, set new memories through creative associations, etc. After a long day of waking, the brain is full of disorganized pieces of information that need to be integrated with things we have learned earlier in life. Without this re-organization, the brain would harbor chaos, and would quickly run out of space to store new memories. This neural role of sleep is so fundamental that sleep deprivation affects nearly all functions of the body that are governed by the nervous system. Without a regular garbage collection, individual networks begin to malfunction. These initially minor malfunctions can add up to a serious problem for the entire organism.

Anabolic sleep

sleep has evolved to become a chief anabolic state of the organism. Without it, the body keeps using itself up, without much time to rebuild. Turning on anabolic state does not require turning off the consciousness, however, the time of night rest seems to be the best time for the body to do all the rebuilding. As we must sleep anyway, that anabolic functions became consolidated with other functions of sleep, and now may be indispensable. The anabolic state, and the nighttime increase in GH or testosterone, also affects the neural networks and the status of our "mind software". Hormonal changes stimulate and/or inhibit neural growth.

Two components of sleep

There are two components of sleepiness that drive you to bed:

• circadian component - sleepiness comes back to us in cycles which are usually about one day long
• homeostatic component - sleepiness increases with the length of time we stay awake

Circadian component

There are around hundred known body functions that oscillate between maximum and minimum values in a day-long cycle. Because these functions take about a day's time to complete, the term circadian rhythm was coined by Dr Franz Halberg of Germany in 1959 (in Latin circadian means about a day). The overall tendency to maintain sleep is also subject to such a circadian rhythm. In an average case, the maximum sleepiness comes in the middle of the night, reaches the minimum at awakening, and again increases slightly at siesta time in the afternoon. However, the circadian sleepiness is often shifted in phase as compared with your desired sleep time. Consequently, if your maximum sleepiness comes in the morning, you may find it difficult to fall asleep late in the evening, even if you missed a lot of sleep on the preceding day. In other words, the optimum timing of your sleep should take into consideration your circadian rhythm.

Homeostatic component

Homeostasis is the term that refers to maintaining equilibrium or balance in physiological and metabolic functions. If you drink liquids containing lots of calcium, homeostatic mechanisms will make sure that you excrete calcium with urine or deposit it in the bones. This is used to make sure your blood levels of calcium remain the same. Similar mechanisms are used to regulate overall sleepiness and its multiple subcomponents. The longer you stay awake, the more you learn, the more you think, the higher your tendency to fall asleep. On the other hand, caffeine, stress, exercise and other factors may temporarily reduce your homeostatic sleepiness. The homeostatic mechanism prepares you for sleep after a long day of intellectual work. At the same time it prevents you from falling asleep in emergencies.

Clock and Hourglass metaphor

Deep in the brain, your body clock is running a 24 hours cycle of activity. Every 24 hours, metaphorically, the clock releases a sleepy potion that puts you to sleep. If you try to sleep at wrong hours, without the sleepy potion, you may find it very hard to fall asleep. You need to listen to your body clock to know the right moment to go to sleep.
To get a good night sleep, you need to combine two factors:

• your body clock must be saying "time to sleep" (circadian component of sleep)
• your hourglass of power must be saying "no more mental work" (homeostatic component of sleep)

This is why sleep is important for our brain and is not a waste of time at all, as some people think.
If you wish for the more detailed version, see the link of the main article I mentioned at the top. I just sumarized what I thought would be more important to know and impact the way you think about sleep and our brain.