Contents:
- Medical Video: Meir Kryger: The Mystery of Sleep: Why a Good Night's Rest Is Vital [...] | Talks at Google
- What is microsleep?
- What happens when someone has microsleep or short sleep?
- Microsleep can cause an accident
- Factors that make you risk experiencingmicrosleep
- What needs to be done to avoid microsleeps
Medical Video: Meir Kryger: The Mystery of Sleep: Why a Good Night's Rest Is Vital [...] | Talks at Google
One of the effects of lack of sleep is feeling tired or sleepy outside of rest. When this happens, the brain still feels fatigue but persists so we stay awake. As a result we can experience microsleep or fall asleep suddenly but only in a very short time.
What is microsleep?
Microsleep not like normal sleep, because microsleep is an event of loss of consciousness or attention of someone because they feel tired or sleepy. Event microsleep in general it only lasts about one second to two minutes, but that duration can take longer if a person actually enters a state of sleep. Microsleep often occurs when someone does a monotonous job such as driving or staring at the screen for a long time.
Someone who experiences microsleep do not realize if he is asleep or will enter a state of sleep, this condition can also occur with eyes open with blank eyes. Microsleep also marked by head movements such as nodding and winking too often and unable to remember things that happened one in a few minutes before. After falling asleep, someone experiences it microsleep often wake up feeling more refreshed in a short time.
What happens when someone has microsleep or short sleep?
Simply,microsleep occurs because the brain enters a state of rest or sleep when the body is still active in a state of wakefulness. This is because the brain cannot survive between feeling tired and awake. However, not all parts of the brain fall asleep.
Something studies find that symptom microsleep due to reduced brain activity part of the thalamus which plays a role in continuing the response to the part of the limb. The thalamus also plays a role in regulating the mechanism of sleep so that a decrease in activity can easily make a person fall asleep. On the other hand, the part of the brain that processes stimuli from the nerves continues to work and experiences increased activity which causes the parietal lobe of the brain to become the main part to restore consciousness.
Microsleep can cause an accident
Under normal circumstances, the brain can capture and process various stimuli, whereas if experiencing fatigue there is a decrease in concentration so that this function becomes more limited to stronger stimuli. That is why a monotonous job will be more likely to cause drowsiness, especially when lack of sleep.
This of course will be very dangerous when we lose consciousness when driving a vehicle because we cannot control the direction and speed of the vehicle. In fact, falling asleep while driving is a common cause of traffic accidents. But this is also influenced by the condition of the brain during sleep deprivation which causes a person to become more impatient, difficult to make decisions and reduce the ability to move.
Not only financially harmful, accidents due to drowsiness often cause the death of many people. Phenomenon microsleep itself has been recorded as the main cause human error on the tragedy in the world in the 1980s, including the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl, the oil leak of the Exxon Valdez ship in Alaska, and the NASA tragedy.
Factors that make you risk experiencingmicrosleep
Not all drowsiness causes a person to experience microsleep, but there are a number of things that increase your risk of experiencing microsleep:
- Sleep disturbance - a decrease in brain performance during the day can be caused by sleep disorders that reduce the quantity and quality of sleep times such as insomnia and sleep apnea.
- Have sleep debt - In general, a night's sleep time that is less than 6 hours causes you to have a debt of sleep and this can accumulate before you fall asleep according to the lack of sleep. The amount of sleep debt will increase the risk of experiencing microsleep anytime.
- Night shift work - not only reduces sleep time, shift work patterns also trigger a shift in sleep time. Microsleep very likely to occur during the transition period of sleep.
- Treatment - drowsiness is a common side effect in some medications and can worsen drowsiness when you also lack sleep.
What needs to be done to avoid microsleeps
Some things to avoid microsleeps especially when you are or will drive:
- Microsleeps can be avoided by fulfilling the need for 7-9 hours of sleep, be careful if you only sleep less than 6 hours at night.
- When you feel tired or sleepy immediately stop and use the time to fall asleep for a moment, if you are driving long distances take a break every 1-2 hours.
- Consumption of coffee but give a time gap before driving, in general, coffee has an effect of 30 minutes after consumption.
- Do activities that keep you awake like chatting while driving or use a type of public transportation that allows you to walk and stand.
READ ALSO:
- 7 Ways to Overcome Sleepiness Without Coffee
- Various foods that need to be consumed if you lack sleep
- Short Sleeper Phenomenon: Sleeping for a moment but can be fresh fit
