Homeostasis: Sleep and Health
Sleep and Health
How Sleep Homeostasis Helps to Maintain Human Health
This booklet is designed to answer questions about how the human body's cycle of sleep and wakefulness, and to explain a few ways that sleep contributes to overall health.
The Sleep System
Sleep is governed by internal changes in the body that work together to produce healthy patterns of sleep. Over the course of our waking hours, our homeostatic sleep drive strengthens. The level of brain activity is associated with our patterns of sleep and wakefulness. Sleep theory suggests that adenosine is produced when active and alert brain cells use energy. Sleep drive and adenosine increase in concert during wakefulness, and the level of adenosine in the brain dissipates as the sleep drive lessens and we enter a stage of wakefulness. How deeply we sleep or the length of time that we sleep varies according to the quality and quantity of sleep that we attained earlier in the day or night. While the sleep drive can be masked -- by consuming caffeine or striving to increase physical activity, for instance -- the only true way to reduce the sleep drive is by sleeping.
Our Internal Biological Clock
Our biological clock regulates many different daily cycles from a small set of neurons that are located deep within the brain. Our daily sleep / wake cycle is characterized by a relatively steady state of alertness for 16 hours of a typical day ("Division of Sleep Medicine," 2007)....
Homeostasis can be maintained as long as there are no long-term changes in the physiological factors that directly influence it. A settling point is established when there is a balance between opposing forces. These points are capable of change and are likely to do so when the opposing forces alter their balance (Berridge, 2004). The drive reduction theory also addresses the motivational drives to maintain homeostatic regulation. In this theory,
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