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Sleep: An Introduction



We sleep for about 8 hours a day. Nothing special.
But 8 hours a day implies that we sleep for one third of the day. On a larger span of time what it means is that we sleep for one third of our life. Assuming our lifespans to be 75 years it would mean that we spent 25 years of our life doing nothing but sleeping. In one way or another sleep does have a significant role to play, yet it gets ignored. The prevalent outlook is that sleep is for the weak. We idolize the ones who sleep less, which, to an extent, implies that sleep is an inconvenience. The recent outburst of productivity techniques, mobile applications, gadgets and gizmos have a very narrow vision. We have all our attention to the 16 hours when we are awake and care little about the rest 8. 
Sleep is necessary, but is it? What if we don’t sleep? Ok, it is important but what about the 8hr a day rule, does it have to be continuous or can it be broken into parts? We can break it into two parts , 6 at night and 2 during the day or maybe something crazy like the Uberman sleep cycle which consisted of 20-minute naps every 4 hrs totalling 4hr of sleep a day. But why do we sleep in the first place? Something which takes up a large portion of our day, something that we can’t do without, must be playing a crucial role. For that question to be answered we need to know what is sleep. What seems to be sleep for us could be different for other animals. Take the case of dolphins and whales who being mammals in water can’t afford to be immobilized during sleep like we do. In the state of sleep, they are still conscious and resurface periodically to breathe. Same with hibernation in bears and what about insects? …
Ok, let’s agree for now that sleep is important, but how to optimize it? What is the best temperature? The posture? What about the sleeping pills Eminem keeps talking about? Talking about addiction – How does caffeine in coffee work? What if we deprive ourselves of sleep for a week and then compensate it the next week by dozing off for hours- does sleep debt work? What happens when we are sleep deprived? How is microsleep one of the leading cause of vehicular accidents? What’s the fuzz regarding the Nobel prize for the work on circadian rhythm? How did Thomas Edison’s invention change the way we work and sleep?

As we progress into the series, we are trying  to find  answers to all these intriguing questions and  get a deeper insight into the phenomena of  sleep. We go through a wide range of books, lectures and research papers to bring out the state of the art. There are also some experiments lined up that we shall carry out on us, the "Guinea Pigs". There are many more interesting things that you will be surely amazed to learn with us. This series is an endeavour to share with you our  learnings and we hope that you will join us in our quest of understanding "Sleep".

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