Is sleeping aways a complicated problem?

Text and photos by P.J. Leo

JAKARTA (JP): How long must a person sleep? There is no single and definite answer about this mystery of life. Some people need only a few hours of it while others need a much longer time.

According to medical experts, one needs an average of seven to eight hours of sleep per day. However, they remind us that we need not worry about how long we should sleep because what matters is whether or not we can rest enough during our sleep.

A sleeping pattern is highly individual. If we are in a stressful situation, our sleep is usually shorter than usual and is not a sound sleep. So, having enough sleep during a stressful situation may not necessarily guarantee that your body and mind will be fresh again.

An individual needs sleep in accordance with his job and also with the needs of his body. According to D. Thom in his book, Everyday problems of the everyday child, a baby in its first month sleeps about 20 hours but then the period of sleep gets shorter and shorter to about 12 hours when a child is under five years old. An adolescent sleeps nine hours a day and in adulthood one needs only seven to eight hours a day.

There is of course a personal difference between one child and another with regard to sleeping. Likewise in the case of adults. It is not possible, therefore, to establish a standard about sleeping hours and sleeping conditions in an exact manner.

You may want to know why children need more sleep than adults? A child's physical growth requires a lot of energy, which is used for growth as well as the replacement of the body's tissues. All this takes place during a child's sleeping hours.

Someone who has just recovered from a disease or an accident also needs a lot of sleep, for the same reasons, as do people of advanced age, who need extra hours of sleep.

A quality sleep is not determined by the length of sleep proper. A few hours of sleep cannot hamper the productivity of a person as revealed by psychologist Dr. Yul Iskandar, in the column Science and Technology in Kompas daily. "Bung Karno (Sukarno), Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Margaret Thatcher generally slept only two or three hours, yet they were productive," Iskandar said.

The criterion which you may use to find out whether you have had enough sleep or not is the quality of your physical and mental ability the next morning. If the next morning you can move around agilely, think clearly and have bright eyes, this means that your sleep is adequate.

One knows from experience what lack of sleep is. Staying awake overnight can be overcome but if we continue to stay awake for the second or third night, the entire body will feel the effects.

Lack of sleep will reveal itself in drooping eyes, pale skin and an unstable walk. It will lead to a physically weak condition: feelings akin to a hangover, cold hands and feet and pins and needles in your hands or feet. Lack of sleep also makes you vulnerable to illnesses.

Some of us can sleep easily just about anywhere and anytime, particularly during the day. If we look around us, in public places for example, people will close their eyes when the urge to sleep becomes unbearable. One will then become oblivious to all the noises around. Many people benefit from a nap, though. Close your eyes and have a nap and you will regain the freshness you need to proceed with your activities.

As you can see from the accompanying photographs, vendors, workers carrying goods, land diggers and scavengers are fast asleep (during the day) just anywhere and in any position.

So, sleeping is a complicated problem. According to the results of research conducted by Claparade, disclosed in his book Abnormal Psychology, sleep is not the consequence of the settlement of fatigue, but a vital function that a living creature performs to avoid continuous fatigue. Therefore sleep is a mechanism of defense.