Just like every other thing needs a break to replenish and retreat, sleep serves the same purpose for human beings. A certain amount of sleep in required by the human body to replenish itself and maintain the worn parts of the body that are required by the body for many decades in the future. Experts have published countless studies which highlight the importance of sleep to maintain a healthy body, mind, and to carry on a successful social life every day. It is also important for the eyes as well and if proper sleep is not ensured then there is ample evidence that lack of sleep leads to loss of perfect sight and other optical problems in people.

Experts at sleep foundation have recommended that regardless of the age or sex, and adult human being needs to sleep for an average 8 hours every day in order to ensure that their body is getting proper rest to replenish itself as well as the mind is getting enough rest. Other published studies have narrowed that window down to a minimum of 5 hours for the eyes to replenish and resume proper functioning the next day.

Sleep experts have divided sleep of a normal human being into many stages. Two major stages of this are:

• REM sleep
• Non-REM sleep

Rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep is when the body is at rest and sleeping while the brain is processing many signals which are commonly termed as dreams by the scientists. During this time, as evident by the name of this stage of sleep, the eyes tend to move rapidly even when the eyelids are closed and no external stimulus is being perceived by the retinas. During REM cycle of the sleep due to the rapid movement, scientists have associated it with the stage where the eye muscles are toned as a result of signals being sent from the brain. Other experts associate with the activity called dreaming.

After REM sleep the next cycle is called Non-REM sleep which is a deep sleep state. During non-REM sleep, body goes into a more relaxed phase, overall blood pressure drops, breathing rate declines, and all non-essential functions of the body are slowed down in order to give it a chance to replenish and repair itself. Eyes also become still in this phase and therefore experts believe that this is the cycle where even the eyes repair themselves.

Restless and inability to get proper sleep can have mild to severe effects on the eyes. Most common among these effects is dry eyes. In dry eyes, due to lack of rest, the eyes fail to replenish their moisture and as a result they start to itch and irritate easily. This results in an urge to touch and rub them which severely compromise vision and cause blurriness of the vision. In severe cases, sleeplessness can cause neuropathy of the optical nerves which can lead to partial or complete loss of sight in the effected individual.

In a nut shell, you should never compromise on sleep if you want to retain good vision and make sure that you are getting at least 5 to 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

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