Question:
sleep stress overtraining ?
Answer:
1hr loss of sleep consistently causes haywire autonomic nervous system
measured as cardiac variability or heart rarte ie "stress". Loss of
performance even.
Anyway given above, how come sleep researchers find it so difficult to
explain the function of sleep.. Usually they've been trying to pin it
down to learning (neural plasticity). Kind-of like in exercise
"overtraining" causes inability to recooperate and you get a loss of
performance or strength - similar with synaptic plasticity - the
paradox is that the brain is *overactive* during sleep, not a sign of
recooperation..
Anyway comments on purpose of sleep especially on why the paradox of
"recovery by overactivity".. Maybe the brain is communicating with
itself, and re-routeing all of the signals in a more efficient way
than was processed during the day so next day there is less load -
eg., neuron synaptic weights alter themselves..
It would be cool to design a survey of Uni students where % variance
in heart rate+variability from "staying up late" vs. "mental
stress/type of stress-eg., mental arithmetic vs., Philosophy exam"..
I couldn't guess which is more important so assume that staying up
late is just as bad as mental stress (math vs., philosophy).
I think there's more known about sleep function than your sources have given
you.
The consolidation of experience, i.e. the incorporation of the day's events
with long-term memory, occurs during paradoxical, or REM sleep. This was
ably demonstrated by experiments conducted by Professor C. Smith, at Trent
U. (my alma mater). Briefly, the blocking of REM sleep (as by alcohol) on
the night immediately following an experience, can totally block recall of
both physical training and intellectual training (as learning a logic-based
game). Blocking REM sleep on the second night has no effect, but strangely,
blocking REM sleep on the third night has a partial effect.
Shortening the sleep period tends to deprive one of REM sleep, which has
greater prominence as the night progresses.
Restorative sleep is mostly stages 3 and 4 sleep, deprivation of which will
also lead to daytime fatigue. Sleep is very complex, and more than simply
duration, but the transition between different types of sleep, and the
duration of each, have impacts on the "quality" of the experience.
