PERFECT SLEEP ON A BED OF SAND
IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP
Sleep is an essential
function that allows your body and mind to
recharge, leaving you refreshed and alert when you wake up. In fact, sleep is as important to your health
as diet, nutrition, and exercise. The right amount and quality of sleep improves
attention, behavior, memory, and overall mental and physical health; it also
helps the body maintain and regulate many vital functions. Without sleep you
can't form or maintain the pathways in your brain that let you learn and create
new memories, and it's harder to concentrate and respond quickly. Sleep is
important to several brain functions, including how nerve cells (neurons)
communicate with each other.
SLEEP DEPRIVATION EQUALS GETTING HIGH WITH
SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Some of
the most serious potential problems associated with chronic sleep deprivation
are high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, heart failure or stroke.
Other potential problems include obesity, depression, reduced immune system
function and lower sex drive. Scientists measuring sleepiness have found that
sleep deprivation leads to lower alertness and concentration. It's more
difficult to focus and pay attention, so you're more easily confused. This
hampers your ability to perform tasks that require logical reasoning or complex
thought. Sleepiness also impairs judgment.
CIRCADIAN RHYTHM, SLEEP &
MOOD
Our bodies, finely tuned machines that they are, have different
control centers to regulate what we do and when we do it. These control centers
are mostly governed by the environment and our genes. Probably the most
well-known of these biological rhythms is the circadian rhythm. It controls
most of our biological and behavioral functions.
Now, consider that each organ in the body has its own clock
which needs to be synchronized through a master clock in the brain. Pretty cool
imagery, right? The theory is that the circadian rhythm helps manage this
process. So, when it is dysregulated, the body doesn’t get the opportunity to
get in sync. As a result, motor, emotional, and interpersonal functioning is
altered. What’s more: Sleep allows for this alignment to happen. It’s almost
like the body’s chance to wind all the organ’s clocks to keep them running
along the same time. It explains why you feel edgy or emotional when you’re
overtired.
When the circadian rhythm is disturbed, sleep disorders and
major physiological disturbances can happen. Sleep problems can mean cognitive
impairments, such as a decrease in learning and attention capabilities,
long-term memory, language development and emotions. These can take the form of
insomnia, various waking times, and longer sleep times—all of which tend to be
linked with psychiatric disorders.
It’s hard not recognize that there is an association between
mood and rest, considering that people living with psychiatric disorders tend
to complain of sleep disturbances. For instance, 50 to 80 percent of
people living with autism tend to suffer from insomnia. What’s more, science
has found genetic correlations with sleep disorders and schizophrenia, as well
as altered patterns of the clock genes in people living with major depressive
and bipolar disorders. It’s clock genes that impact cognition, mood, and reward-related
behaviors.
There is some evidence that treating sleep problems can help
lessen psychiatric episodes, but how?
HOW GOOD SLEEP HELPS THE BRAIN
The brain holds the master clock. But that isn’t the only thing
it does. All day long it processes stimuli—events, sensations, emotions, to
name a few. And it takes all that information and communicates with the rest of
the body so it can react. Your brain does transfer this information chemically
through a series of brain cell sites called synapses. These connections get
overloaded after a while. Think about if you’re ever felt mentally drained.
Most likely it’s because your brain cells and their synapses were firing fast
and furious.
So besides helping to synchronize all the clocks in the body,
sleep appears to be a state in which memories can be consolidated and stored,
and instinctual behaviors can be rehearsed. Part of what we encode is
emotion—anxiety, distress, reward.
MAKING A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP A
REALITY
For sleep to be productive—resetting clocks and synapses and
processing information, it needs to be set up to succeed. You tend to be tuned
into the dark-and-light cycle of our days. The circadian rhythm is also tuned
into this 24-hour cycle. But, for many who live with mental health issues, they
are not. They tend to be night owls, or they sleep for long periods of time, or
they have various types of insomnia. Basically, their rhythm is off.
Behaviors such as retiring and waking at the same time each
night or doing a relaxing activity, such as reading, before bed are all
possible ways to help get into a groove and reset the daily (as well as the
circadian) rhythm. All of which might help lessen those sleepless nights and
those grumpy, anxious days.
INSPIRATION
A fabric
sheet spread out on the sea beach makes the ultimate bed. On similar
lines, this invention uses ordinary beach sand encased in fabric bag, to sleep
on.
UNDERSTANDING
THE CONTOURS OF THE HUMAN BODY
The bed
that one sleeps on must provide firmness as well conform to the ever-shifting
contours of the human body. When the human being is sleeping sideways the
shoulder must go 4 to 5 inches deep into the medium/bed. At the same time the
gap in the neck region must get filled up automatically with the medium being
used.
LIMITATIONS
OF THE EXISTING CONTRAPTIONS
The
existing beds with various mattresses fail miserably to conform to the ever-shifting
contours of the human body during the 8 hours of sleep. If they are too soft,
then the firmness is sacrificed. When they are firm then they again fail to
conform to the contours of the body. The result is lack of complete
satisfaction, poor sleep, leading to low productivity all over the world.
OBJECTIVE
- EASY FLOWABILITY WITH LOCKING IN
The prime
objective of the proposed invention is to facilitate a good night’s or day’s
sleep by the very nature of shifting sand particles when the human being lying
on the sand bed moves. The sand bed specially provides the equal and opposite
reaction to the body when it stops moving, to sleep. A bean bag bed will not
provide the same effect because the beans do not “lock in” like sand does. On
the other hand, waterbed is too fluid and shifty. Accordingly, the
proposed invention will have a bag/casing manufactured out of special fabric,
like nylon which must be strong enough to hold the sand and yet have a cloth
like feeling and flexibility to provide the required function.
VALUE
ENGINEERED FRAMEWORK
The
steel/wooden bed frame will be value engineered to house the sandbag/casing so
that bare minimum sand is used to provide the necessary functions. The floor of
the bed frame will be inclined down towards the head side and raised towards
the foot side. This inclination will ensure that we have 6 inches of sand on
the head side and just 2 inches on the foot side. Additionally, the bed
frame will be designed to come apart, facilitate quick reassemble, for ease of
packing & transport right up to the customer’s home.
Collaborations are welcomed. rkhanna11@yahoo.ca
Rohit Khanna - Industrial Engineer / Think tank
