By: Alexandra Caballero

Have you ever wondered why exactly do we sleep? Well, I have, that is why I decided to make this topic so you can learn about it. I will be talking about why do we sleep, why do we have dreams, and why do we sleep at night and not at day.

Sleep is an action that helps you to be healthy and not tired. Sleep allows all our bodies and minds to recharge, leaving us refreshed when we wake up. Healthy sleep also helps the body to remain healthy and usually to don’t get diseases. If we don't get good sleep, sometimes the brain can't work well. This can make difficult our abilities to concentrate, to think clearly, and to process memories for example the day we didn't sleep well. That is why our parents always tell us to go to sleep early. Adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep. Children need more sleep, especially if they are five years old or younger.

There are 5 stages of sleep. There are: Entering sleep, NREM stage 1, NREM stage 2, NREM stage 3 and REM sleep. NREM means non-rapid eye movement and REM means rapid eye movement. Dreaming usually happens in REM sleep and you don't remember the dreams that happen on the other stages you only remember the dreams that occur in REM sleep. Dreaming is really rare when you think about it, but is a really healthy part of sleeping. Dreams are parts of emotions, images and feelings that you have and that occurs throughout the stages of sleep. Dreaming sometimes occurs by some issues or worries that you have about a test the next day or a family problem etc. Weird dreams are caused by stress or changes in your life that you are worried about.

Why do we sleep at night and not at day? That is actually a very interesting question. The answer is because when we wake up, the sunlight of the morning lets our brain know that is time to wake up. As day turns into night our bodies are tired and when it is all dark that makes you sleepy. The reason of that is because when day turns into night our brain makes a chemical that is called melatonin that somehow makes us sleepy. Because light can wake you up, your room should be dark when you sleep so you can sleep well and be all brand new when you wake up.

In conclusion, sleep is an action that humans need for their health. If we don't sleep we will not have enough energy to do everything we need to do throughout the day. We would be tired all the time. As you can see, sleep is a lot more helpful and interesting than as you might think at first.