The ‘sleep need’ diversity
The more I learn about human diversity, not to mention that of all creation, the more I am watching with awe at the wondrous beauty and unpredictability of the movements of God’s providence for mankind. God is both highly dependable and unpredictable at the same time.
However, if you say that kind of statement to a psychiatrist, you might receive a prescription for an understandable medical diagnostic term. How can “Someone” be predictable and unpredictable simultaneously? Catholicism calls that mystery. Science calls that psychopathology.
And yet, science is a constant witness of such an explicable mystery of human diversity that it can only describe it with a mathematical range to make sense of such a perplexing reality.
Sleep, for instance, is a highly diverse phenomenon among humans (forget about animals, birds, and fish at this time to be gentle with your mind). If you think that the normal sleeping hours required is eight hours, think again.
Sidarta Ribeiro and Robert Stickgold of Instituto de Cerebro (Brazil) and Center for Sleep and Cognition at Harvard Medical School (Boston), respectively, observed that the need for sleep varies with age from 10 to 12 hours nightly (for younger children) to nine hours (around puberty).
If you are observing your older parents, you might want to add around three hours to that. That will bring the sleep range from three hours to 12 hours every night. Take note that this range can vary within a specific age. Thus, my parents may sleep three hours daily while yours may sleep only two hours or four hours nightly.
Evidently, God designs us to sleep as our body needs it. The problem is, we often refuse to listen to our body, from sleeping more than it needs to sleep, to not sleeping at all, or at least sleeping less than it needs to.
If you still doubt the sheer diversity of God’s action on sleep, think about the various stages of sleep. Scientific studies noted two cyclic events during sleep called the rapid-eye-movement (REM) and non-REM sleep periods.
And sleep does not stop there like leaving and arriving to sleep or wakefulness.
The REM and non-REM cycle repeats at least four times each night, which scientists estimated to last around 90 minutes per cycle. Take note that, if we say “around 90 minutes” it does not mean “90 minutes.” In actuality, it can be less or more or exactly so. Take note that a non-REM sleep can have brain wave variations as well.
Nevertheless, Ribeiro and Stickgold observed that in the deepest stage of the slow non-REM sleep is the consolidation of daily human memories. This consolidation strengthens the memory of those events, which scientists believe instrumental in learning. Thus, adequate learning has been found directly associated with the extent of learning.
And, yet, how much sleep is needed can vary widely between persons.