Chandler Ross

The neurons (nerve cells) that communicate with one another need to have sleep to function. Surprisingly, the brain and body remain incredibly active during your sleep. Sleep is like a housekeeper that eliminates the toxins in the brain that tend to build up during your waking hours. So, when you do get a good night’s sleep and feel refreshed, you know that your sleep did its housecleaning job.

People have thought that sleep is just our lives’ passive part until the 50s. Over the last almost seventy years, it’s been discovered that the brain is extremely active while we sleep. Additionally, our daily functions and mental health are affected by sleep, or the lack of it and understanding the effects are just being understood. (American Sleep Association, 2018)

The computer of our body, the brain, has a structure called the hypothalamus that is the size of a peanut embedded well into the brain. It contains nerve cells that operate as control centers that affect sleep and awakening. Groups of thousands of cells known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) are found