Nap, doze, forty winks, snooze are all expressions we use to describe that mysterious State which we all experiences every single day, sleep. We all sleep and nobody can do without it. On an overage, people sleep 8 hours a day which is one –third of their lives. This means that by the time a person reaches the age of 75, he would have spent 25 years of his life sleeping. Why do you sleep? It seems like a big waste of time. Think of all you would have time to do it you id not seemed to sleep. Yet sleep is necessary for our health and well –being. Why is sleep so important? What happens to our body when we sleep? After the day’s work, our bodies and brains are tired. It is sleep which makes it possible for our brains to get some rest and helps our bodies to get back the energy we lose during the day. Sleep also helps in the repair of parts of our body which have become damaged. This is because damage can be put right more quickly if our energy isn’t being used for doing other things. During sleep, our body continues to function. While we sleep, our heart goes on beating and blood continues to circulate in our blood vessels. We go on breathing and we even continue to digest what we have eaten before sleeping. However, all these activities take place at a much slower pace. Because our breathing is slow, we do not need so much oxygen. Because our digestion slaws down don’t need to eat and we don’t even feel hungry while we are sleeping. This slowing down of activities also makes it possible for our international organs like our lungs, heart and digestive system to get some rest. When we fall asleep, we sleep very soundly for about 90 minutes. After wards, our eyes start to twitch and we go into what is called REM sleep. REM stands for Rapid eye movement. This is a sign that we have started to dream. We dream during our sleep every night even if we don’t remember our dreams. Breams are an important part of our sleep because dreams give our brains a chance to go over whatever has happened during the day and to understand things better. For this reason, sleep and dreams are important for learning and remembering things. So if you want to pass an exam, make sure you get sleep before hand. As we grow older, we need less sleep. While newborn babies sleep about 16 hours a day, most adults need about 8 hours of sleeping and old people often sleep less than 6 hours a day. As children grow older, they spend less time sleeping during the day but it has been found that short naps during the day do benefit everybody, especially growing children, in many ways. So if you can spare the time, do try to have a short nap in the after noon after get back from school. Always (more) sleeping and sleeping at midday is not good for health.