Ken Bass, age 9, of High Point, North Carolina, for his question:
What happens when a person goes to sleep?
When you fall asleep, your body pulls down its window shades to the outside world. It stops taking in the ordinary messages you see and hear, smell and taste throughout the waking day. But the body's work does not stop altogether. Far from it.
Every year our clever scientists are learning more about the human body. Sleep is a very mysterious happening and we still need to know lots more about it. At one time, even the experts said that we go to sleep to rest the brain. Now they know that this is not exactly so. The brain does not stop all its busy work while we sleep, although it does not work quite so hard. The heart goes on beating but not quite so fast. The lungs go on breathing, but not quite so often. .The lungs and the beating heart provide oxygen to keep the body warm. During sleep they provide less warmth and the temperature falls a bit lower.
A person falls asleep in easy stages. The time comes to get into comfortable night clothes and stretch out in a comfortable bed with covers to keep the body warm when it gets cooler. The eyes close and shut out the sights. You may enjoy one last memory of the dessert you had for dinner, then all tastes are forgotten. Next all the scents and smells are forgotten and then the sounds. Lastly you forget that the pillow feels soft and the blanket is rough to the touch. Almost without knowing it, sleep sneaks up on you and you are in the Land of Nod.
While you sleep, your senses are out of touch with the world. But your brain is still busy and though your muscles seem to be at rest, they too are not completely asleep. Without knowing it, you move a hand and an arm, a foot and a leg. A person may change positions completely more than a dozen times while he sleeps without knowing it. The brain is in constant contact with the busy nerves. And they carry messages throughout the body day and night, sleeping or waking. They tell the brain to keep sending orders that keep the lungs and heart and other full time workers going. Part of the brain also stays alert just in case a loud bang or a brilliant flame should make it nec
essary to wake you in an urgent hurry.
The brain, it seems, also does some pondering of problems while you sleep. However, it rearranges its daytime way of thinking. It dresses characters in strange masks and costumes and often sets them down in an unexpected place. Sometimes these sleeping thoughts dawdle in the mind after we wake up. We remember them as dreams. And dreaming is the most mystifying part of going to sleep. Some dreams are so pleasant we wish they would never end. Some are downright nightmarish. As a rule they make no sense to us, but psychologists often can see through their disguises and explain what they really mean.
Though we cannot explain everything about sleep, we do know for sure that every one needs it. Babies need to sleep most of the time. As we grow older we need fewer sleeping hours. A grown person needs a half hour's sleep for every waking hour so a good night's sleep should last about eight hours. When sleep is finished, the brain starts giving orders to wake up. The eyes open, the muscles enjoy a good stretching and the person in the body gradually comes alert to welcome the morning of a new day.