Garbage in Garbage out
Why is sleep so important for GenZ teenagers?
After a night of grinding League of Legends, face-timing friends, watching Netflix and finishing that long-overdue English essay, it is an unlovely prospect to be dragged out of bed to face the cruel light of day. The sound of the alarm going off is not a symphony for the ears but a cacophony of jackhammers clattering and drumming, threatening to spill the brains on the pavement.
I have often wondered, “I don’t get to go to bed until 2 pm because my cell phone keeps pinging with notifications of deadlines and friends wanting to chat. But I still wake up on time for school.” But is that really true? Based on my research, it is a big NO.
Externally, we may feel fine because the adolescent adrenaline convinces us of our invincibility. Pandemic-induced remote learning has also made set schedules to merely be polite suggestions and melatonin secretions that trigger sleepiness, shift forward to play havoc with the body’s natural sleep patterns or circadian rhythms. Like an orchestra without a conductor, the circadian rhythms now start misbehaving and no longer respond naturally to night and day. Yet, each day and every day we must rise and shine for school due to early start times and end up being chronically sleep-deficient.
Neurologist Jeffrey Iliff explains that for most organs of the body, the lymphatic system acts as a trash collection mechanism. Yet, the brain constantly pumps new molecules and builds-up toxic debris, constricting blood vessels throughout the day as it has no such mechanism for waste clearance. Only as we sleep, cerebrospinal liquid floods through our brain to clean the excess build-up. As early as 162 AD, Galen identified sleep as a “detoxifying process” and only in the 1800s, was sleep falsely perceived as “a mark of slothfulness”.
Why does our brain wait until night time to clean the waste? Just as people working 9 to 5 jobs during the week postpone house-cleaning to the weekend when they have significantly less work to do, our brain chooses to clean the gunk at night when we do less.
What happens if we postpone sleep? Just as ignoring housecleaning for too long makes a house unlivable, similarly, the teenage brain that gets insufficient sleep may nap uncontrollably at odd times in class or behind the wheel. While some brain areas, such as the thalamus may stay in sync with the circadian clock, other areas may push the body to sleep.
If you wonder why hardworking, insomniac students fail to perform while their peers crack their exams with flying colors after a good night’s sleep, the correlation between deep learning and sleep cannot be ignored. Immune cells called microglia help to develop neural connections and repair the grey cells to consolidate learning and memory.
The “physiological necessity of sleep” is real. Next time when you are debating whether to stay up for one more episode of Avatar or Riverdale, choose SLEEP because nonsense input data produces garbage output data.
Works cited:
Ehrenberg, Rachel. “Sleep Deprivation Hits Some Brain Areas Hard.” Science News, 8 Aug. 2019, www.sciencenews.org/article/sleep-deprivation-hits-some-brain-areas-hard.
Iliff, Jeff. “Transcript of ‘One More Reason to Get a Good Night’s Sleep.’” TED, www.ted.com/talks/jeff_iliff_one_more_reason_to_get_a_good_night_s_sleep/transcript?language=en.
Rehm, Jeremy. “Surprise! Exam Scores Benefit from Months of Regular Sleep.” Science News for Students, 26 Feb. 2020, www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/exam-scores-benefit-from-months-of-regular-sleep.
“The Night Gardeners: Immune Cells Rewire, Repair Brain While We Sleep.” ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 21 Oct. 2019, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191021111835.htm.
Thomas, Dr. Liji. “History of Sleep.” News, 23 Aug. 2018, www.news-medical.net/health/History-of-Sleep.aspx.
