Scientists have no answer despite trying to find the reason why we need sleep for yonks.
It was once thought that sleep was required to make up for energy lost while we were awake but this has proven to be false as the energy gained while we sleep is minimal compared to that lost.
A strange fact emerges, the smaller the animal the more sleep is required.
For example a fieldmouse needs up to 20 hours of sleep each day whereas a horse can get by on about 3 or 4.
Anyone out there have their own theories on why we, and for that matter, all living creatures need sleep
My psych book lists two theories of sleep. One is the restorative theory of sleep which suggests that sleep helps rejuvenate body and mind. This is done in stages, with body rejuvenation happening during NREM sleep, and mind rejuvenation happening during REM sleep.
They mention this (at least the horses) as part of the adaptive theory of sleep which suggests that animals sleep to keep them out of the way during dangerous times. According to this theory, horses sleep in short bursts because they’re relatively vulnerable grazing animals for whom it’s dangerous to sleep for too long. No mention of field mice, but they do mention that lions and gorillas sleep for as much as 15 hours a day (they have few or no natural predators). By this theory, we sleep at night because that’s when the nocturnal predators are out, and we can’t see them. So it’s safer to stay in the cave.
The thing that basically destroys this theory is that it isn’t uncommon for a person to get little or no REM sleep for months, years, or decades and still be functional. I had a sleep study last year and it was determined that I had not gone into REM sleep in quite some time. That was a side effect of sleep apnea but wasn’t considered a primary problem. The doctor and I went over about 20 pages of my sleep data a few weeks later and showed me the charts of my sleep patterns. There was no REM sleep at all and she said that was common and not ideal but there were bigger things to worry about in terms of fixing the sleep problems.
Seriously? I know before my apnea was diagnosed, I used to not only fall asleep all the time (including while driving, while reading, while eating and while standing up) but also to hallucinate. I used to see and hear people who weren’t there while I had my eyes open.
The reason for so few answers might be that a while back we had a great big thread about this topic, in which several people got more and more worked up about the fact that they hated sleeping and why wouldn’t anyone believe them when they said they hated sleeping.
It was a big mess. I’d search on it, but I want to get ready for bed.
I have too at certain points of my life but that supports rather than refutes what I said. Regular REM sleep works to prevent those problems in normal sleepers. It doesn’t take REM sleep to have hallucinations and probably just the opposite. The sleep doctors spent more than an hour with me going over all kinds of my sleep data. The lack of REM was so clear on the charts that anyone could see what they were talking about. They told me that some people with serious sleep disorders can go years without REM sleep. I know first-hand that it can cause some serious problems just as you do but it won’t kill you in short order like many people believe.
Being that I have an intense fear/hatred of sleep (missing out on life,not waking up, getting attacked in the night, bedsprings breaking and penetrating my vitals, the usual stuff), I’ve done some rationality-defyingly stupid things to stave off it’s inevitable onset. Not even the embarresment of finally succumbing to it’s dreaded lure in crowded places, however, has managed to put me off trying to find a cure for what must be the most life-shortening diesease we as a spieciese have ever had to contend with.
Why so few scientists have ever thought to observe how sleep occurs and why it’s nescecary to waste half our lives in such a state (rendering ourselves helpless in that time), treating it as though it were a fundamental fact of existence to be understood by no technology ever, I’ll not know, but if anyone can point me to a scientist actively looking for an alternative to sleep, or even drugs that do some of the undeniable good of this temporary death, i’ll be eternally greatfull.
Even true, scientificly recognised sleep disorders, life threatening ones at that, arn’t examined as they should be by doctors and scientists, who instead focus on more evident, physical ailments.
To ask about the function of sleep is similar to asking about the function of waking. Could you give just one answer to why we spend time awake? Likewise, it is most likely that there are many functions of sleep, including most of the possibilities mentioned above.
Recent work has implicated sleep in the consolidation of memories as well as in the repair of cellular damage caused by free radicals. My own research (and that of others) is demonstrating that during early development sleep is involved in the building and maintenance of cortical networks.
Whatever its purpose, we know that sleep is necessary for life. Prolonged sleep deprivation results in death. We also know that sleep is important for development, as infants of all species spend the vast majority of their time asleep. Finally, sleep (or at least analogous periods of rest and activity) has been identified in every species studied so far, from fruit flies to whales. Whatever its purpose, it evolved early.
There has been some work, funded by DARPA, looking for sleep-suppressing drugs. Specifically, Alavert (modafinil) has been developed to keep soldiers awake without any of the negative side effects of caffeine. I don’t know of any long-term studies examining side effects of the drug, but I imagine that nothing good can come of long term use.
Feel free to ask questions. I may even know the answer
This is because the amount of sleep an animal gets is inversely proportional to its size, which is directly proportional to its metabolic rate, or how quickly an animal burns energy. Generally speaking, the smaller the animal the higher the metabolic rate. Thus, tiny mice have very high metabolic rates while large horses have low rates.
It should be noted that metabolic rate is also proportional to cell damage, whether caused by free radicals or other measures. Thus, more cell repair is needed in animals with higher metabolic rates, which may lead to a greater amount of sleep.
Good to see some people are actually reserching sleep, I thought until your message that reserch in the field was as non-existent as snow-men in Etheopia. Now I know it’s just an uncommon speciality.
But would it ever be possible to find alternative methods of repairing cells or consolidating memories or whatever else sleep is found to be vital for, without inducing a long-term unconcious state? If sleep were ever to be overcome, just think of the benefits it would have on the leangth and quality of human existence!
Research on sleep is not as uncommon as you would think. I attend a yearly conference with 6000+ other researchers and doctors. And more people are entering the field every year. This is mainly due to the fact that people are finally recognizing how much sleep effects daily health and quality of life.
This change of perspective can be seen almost every time you watch tv. Look for commercials advertising ambien, lunesta, requip, mirapex, and so on. They represent pharma’s increased interest in sleep issues. In a lot of ways, this insurgence of sleep medicine represents a tipping point in medicine: now that many life-threatening diseases have been cured or otherwise managed, pharmaceutical companies can look to quality of life issues.
One of the major goals of academic sleep research is to figure out what sleep does for the body. Like I said before, it is very unlikely that sleep serves only one purpose, so the possibility of ever finding a miracle pill that replaces sleep is slim to nil. Of course, that doesn’t mean that people won’t try.
As for me, I can think of few greater pleasures in life than slowly waking up from a comfortable sleep on a rainy morning with nothing else planned for the day.
