first term english exam TCL
According to the recent medical research, sleeping more than nine hours or less than six hours a night can shorten your life expectancy. Those who are likely to live longest are people who regularly get between seven and eight hours a night. A new survey of 1000 adults conducted by the Better Sleep Council (BSC) found that few people understand the important role sleep plays in normal daily brain functions and many people actually reduce their brain power by getting too little sleep. Although a large number of people say that they need to be mentally alert in their work, over half of the people interviewed say that they sleep just under seven hours a night during the week. On the other hand, most of people interviewed say that they sleep more than seven hours a night at the weekend. This suggests that a significant number of people try to catch up on their sleep at the weekend instead of getting
enough sleep during the week. According to this survey, nearly half of the population believe that the brain rests when the body sleeps. In fact, the opposite is true. Sleep allows the brain to go to work, filling and storing the day’s events. “Actually, some parts of the brain are active when you’re asleep”, confirms Dr Mark Moawald. “Your brain is like a cluttered desktop at the end of the day. At night, when you’re asleep and no more information can be put on the desk, or in your brain, your brain can then file away the information”.