Why we yawn

                         Why we yawn

Both when they awake from a night's sleep and when they are tired, people yawn. We yawn when we are bored, anxious, hungry, or about to begin a new activity. We frequently begin to yawn as soon as someone near us begins to do so because yawning is contagious.

There are a plethora of triggers. According to skydivers, they typically yawn before jumping. Adrian Guggisberg, a professor of clinical neuroscience at the University of Geneva, stated, "Police officers say they yawn before they enter a difficult situation."

People snore when they read about yawning. Probably you are yawning right now.

   Physiological function of yawning

However, the physiological function of a yawn is still a mystery. Dr. Guggisberg stated, "The real answer so far is that we don't really know why we yawn." We speculate because no physiological effects of yawning have been observed thus far. It's possible that yawning has no real effect on the body."

until about 30 years ago, scientists thought that yawning was a way for the body to take in a lot of air to make up for low oxygen levels in the blood. However, a set of experiments that were published in 1987 proved the oxygenation hypothesis wrong and led to its demise.

According to Andrew Gallup, an assistant professor of psychology at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute in Utica who has published studies on the topics, one current theory is that yawning is a brain cooling mechanism "that functions to promote arousal and alertness."

A deep inhalation of air is followed by a rapid closing of the jaw and a powerful stretching of the jaw, then a shorter exhalation of air.

According to Dr. Gallup, "collectively, these patterns of behavior increase blood flow to the skull, which can have a number of effects, including cerebral cooling." It is possible that evening yawns are triggered to try to antagonize sleep onset, so we yawn at night in an attempt to maintain some state of arousal or alertness. When our body temperature is warmer, we feel more tired and sleepy.

He said that sleep causes a sharp drop in body temperature and brain activity, so it's possible that "we yawn to just further facilitate the change from waking to sleeping."

 Catching is yawning. A group of people can yawn when one person yawns. It is thought that people who are more empathic are more likely to be influenced to yawn by the yawns of others; Brain imaging studies have shown that people's social-functioning brain regions are activated when they watch others yawn.

               Contagious yawning

Contagious yawning has also been observed in other animals, and even dogs yawn when they see their owners or even strangers yawn.

According to Dr. Gallup, the spread of yawning may be able to "promote coordinated arousal among members of the group, synchronizing their mental state, potentially protecting it by alerting it to external threats more rapidly than it would be otherwise.

THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY ARHSUB KHAN