FERNWOOD FITNESS - PULSE eMagazine - Issue#10 - Flipbook - Page 56
SLEEP
WHAT MAKES YOU TICK?
BY SLEEP HEALTH FOUNDATION
It might surprise you to know that
your brain has a kind of clock in it. This
keeps things 琀椀cking over every day. As
humans, we prefer to sleep at night and
be up during the day. This isn’t due to
habit or work schedules or convenience.
It is driven by the body clock.
Even if we don’t know what 琀椀me it
is, we s琀椀ll do things in cycles that
go for about 24 hours. We sleep for
part of every 24 hours and our body
temperature rises and falls with a cycle
length of about 24 hours. We have
hormones and other systems in our
body that go through this daily cycle
as well. Exactly the same pa琀琀ern is
seen in almost every living thing on the
planet. They all have some kind of clock
that controls when they do things. The
daily rhythms are known as circadian
rhythms. Our health and wellbeing
depend on this 琀椀cking all the 琀椀me. This
is called being ‘synchronised’.
