and why do we need it?
I can’t stand sleeping (not literally either). I’m an insomniac. I can usually only fall asleep after at least a 24 hour period. Most people stay awake 16 hours and sleep 8. I’ve never been on this schedule. I normally am awake 30 hours at a time and only get 5-7 hours of rest.
It seems to me that since technology is on the rise, sleep will be more understood and we will possibly be able to speed up the process, or maybe even eliminate it. It’s got to be possible. This would be an awesome breakthrough. There are medicines to make you sleep, why not anything to keep you awake.
From the way I look at it, and I’m no scientist, is that sleep is a healing process. Kind of like an open wound; if you don’t take care of it, it will get infected, cause pain, etc. Sleeping works very similar. When you stay awake, body functions become limited. Eyes become dry, decision making is blurry, attitude is unstable, your body becomes weak, and so on.
Wouldn’t it be cool to just eat a pill, or drink a shake, or apply some ointment, and not ever have to sleep, or sleep for maybe 1 hour a night? Think of how much more time you’ll have to live your life.
Do you think it’s possible create artificial sleep? Or is one of those things well all do for the rest of eternity? I’m leaning towards it being possible, maybe in the next 15-20 years. I don’t know, just a thought.
As I understand it, sleep is basically like defragging your hard drive, and there’s no real way to ‘speed up’ the process. Now, some people just find it easier to fall asleep than others, and some people don’t seem to need as much sleep as others to maintain a decent level of functioning, but I cannot conceive of any way to eliminate the need for sleep that doesn’t result in a breakdown at some point. My personal record for being awake was 52 hours (I know, lightweight). I imagine I was only competent and functional for about 36 of those hours. It would be cool to do without sleep and still be functional, but then again, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
Like many things with the brain sciences, no one really knows why we sleep or why it is necessary at all. Every reasonable idea that people throw out can be shot down rather easily so that leads us back to square one. I have sleep apnea and, during my sleep studies, they found that I was getting almost no REM sleep for some unknown period of time, possibly years. REM sleep is one of the most cited purposes of sleep yet some people don’t get it and, while it isn’t ideal, we didn’t keel over from it.
You just have to chock this one up to a great scientific mystery.
I’m just trying to get an understanding of “what is happening” while we sleep…
Cell regeneration seems to me like the main factor here. Which explains why we have renewed energy (when we aren’t moving). What are we burning up that needs to be regenerated?
Maybe if we fed ourselves these “needed resources” while we slept, we’d be able to sleep for a much shorter period of time. It’s kind of like charging a battery. The battery doesn’t just build it’s own energy, it’s pumped into it. Charging ourselves, in a sense, should be possible. We just need to figure out what these resources are. I’m sure you or someone else knows this answer.
They have done studies long ago on what happens to muscles when they are worked, stuff that is used up and the time it takes to replace it. (long ago, no cite, just remembering what I read)
Transferring short term memory to long term, some of it happens in sleep, the defragging is a good description IMO.
Almost all creatures need some sleep so it is not just going to be a magic pill, IMO.
If less sleep had a survival value and I can think of lots of critters that get ate while sleeping, then nature would have been selecting for it for a long time already… Maybe we are at the peak of how short a time for how little humans can get away without more sleep. The tech advances we are making are not good for the brain which might need more sleep do process the information over load and stress and stuff and such so we are going nuts faster than ever before … Look at the news. I think some of those folks would be better off if they were sleeping more and being stupid less…
YMMV
I think there’s a physical component too. I have arthritis and some muscular atrophy, and without enough sleep it seems I can hardly move around without injuring something. So on those days I stay still and atrophy more, and… well, I need my sleep.
I’ve heard that one important substance restored during sleep is muscular glycogen, which I gather is the muscles’ source of “sprint” (anaerobic) energy. Not what I’d call a renowned authority, but there’s something about the physical purpose of sleep on Yahoo! answers .
There have been recent studies showing that insufficient or disturbed sleep contributes to ailments such as obesity, diabetes, and even cancer. A couple of recent Science News articles in this vein are:
Night lights may foster cancer (1/19/2008)
Regularly working through the night appears to come at a steep cost—a heightened risk of cancer.
Sleep disruption and glucose processing (1/19/2008)
Shallow sleep can depress the body’s ability to process glucose efficiently.
Sorry, the online versions are both subscriber-only articles. There’s more about the cancer link in the Wikipedia article on melatonin, a powerful anti-oxidant released by the body only in darkness.