Feeling disconsolate for the most part of the day? Lacking the energy and brain capacity to give the present more than a glance before closing your eyes and washing away the memory? Is your body aching and pleading with you to not get out of bed that morning? Perhaps you are in dire need of sleep, because sleep may just be more vital than you have originally thought. Nearly the totality of every creature on earth sleeps, but what even is sleep and why do so many organisms need it?

Sleep according to a quick digital search on Google is “A condition of body and mind that typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the eyes are closed, the postural muscles relaxed, the activity of the brain altered, and consciousness of the surroundings practically suspended.” Simplified, sleep is when your body goes unconscious. Pulling from the Johns Hopkins medical website an article interviewing Mark Wu, M.D., Ph.D. titled, “The Science of Sleep: Understanding What Happens When You Sleep” states that sleep has four different phases: The non-REM sleep, light sleep, and both third and fourth phase fall under deep sleep. Non-REM sleep is the period when consciousness begins and ends respectively and brain waves begin to slow down, in essence when you are officially asleep. Light sleep occurs when your heart rate stabilizes and your body temperature begins to lower along with your brain waves producing sleep spindles. Finally, deep sleep, which is the stage in which growth hormones are excreted from the brain and your Platelets begin to rebuild your flesh. During REM sleep your eyes beneath your eyelids begin twitching which feels like a rather odd thought.

One might assume the deeper of sleep you are in there would be less movement involuntary or not. It does not end there however, your breath rate increases and your mind begins but your body is also in a state of paralysis. The reason we call it a REM cycle is because throughout the night your body repeats these stages around four to five times. Sleep is quite important for reasons we will discuss in just a moment, before that please permit me to give you some tips about improving your sleep as I’m sure most of you are in great need of it. There are two foremost contributors in compelling your body to engage in sleep circadian rhythms and sleep drive.

The following infographics demonstrate how to control your sleep drive and the alteration of your circadian rhythm is predicted to follow should you be consistent with governing your sleep drive. Comfortable temperatures will allow for a more enjoyable experience, similar to if your pillow was always cold and fluffy on both sides. Avoiding blue light protects your circadian rhythm meaning your sleep patterns will stay consistent. Enough hours for REM cycles to mentally and physically recover. Be generally responsible with obligations, to be quite frank this is just something you should do rather than something you should do for sleep.

At this point, there could be a few questions you may have. Things like what does any of this have to do with happiness and why on earth should I bother with sleep in the first place. I am willing to bet many of you don’t actually get eight to ten hours of sleep a day despite being recommended for teenagers to develop correctly. Perhaps you are an adult and think surely I don’t need sleep if I’m functioning fine and fully developed. That is a fair point, I don’t get a lot of sleep around two hours each night recently.

This isn’t just me either, for a lot of my peers when I asked them about their sleep they responded with similar hours, even my younger brother who isn’t even in high school is running on a measly two hours. Well, don’t be fooled by what you may think because lack of sleep is affecting you whether you believe it or not. Firstly, lack of sleep impairs cognitive thinking, even mortar functions. With damaged memory and the destruction of brain cells, losing sleep doesn’t feel like it’s big of a deal but your body would disagree. High blood pressure, immune system difficulty, many quite atrocious symptoms indeed. Appreciating your body the culmination of a millennium of evolution is something I want to be more common. It’s so absurd how complex the human body is and how devastating it is to miss a few hours.

One symptom I believe is the most lamentable out of all of them, that being sleep is shown to be a large contributor to happiness. Seventy-five percent of people who are suffering from depression are also reported to be affected by sleep complications, and happiness is ever so important to the human psyche. Motivation to proceed with the trials and tribulations of life stems from the feeling of fulfillment which is often associated with happiness. The joy of existing is hard enough to come by as it is, there is an online video that isn’t made by a professional in the field because there is no such thing as an expert on happiness, but their perspective is something I enjoy thinking about. They go by Exurb1a which is sort of a pen name and the specific video I was referring to is one titled, “Meaning is a Jumper That You Have to Knit Yourself.” This video goes into detail about how one might make their life meaningful, along with people’s individual ways of fulfilling themselves. The reason I called this one of the most dubious of symptoms is because I truly believe that happiness is one of the main ideologies and goals we should base our lives around. As I said before the reason for living at all is for that fulfillment, that happiness that comes with being content with your life. Everyone wants to be happy and a sleepless night might be the one that prevents you from feeling complete. Even if you think you are fine, at least try to get sleep.