College students anywhere and everywhere could agree that sleep is very, very important. Why? There are so many reasons as to why people like sleep, ranging anywhere from making a person feel healthy and energized, to being a route of escape from a certain reality. But from a health perspective, why do we need sleep?
Even after years and years of research scientists are still unsure of why humans need sleep to function properly on a day-to-day basis. Experiments examining what happens when people are sleep deprived, to comparing the sleep patterns of various organisms have been conducted to try and help scientists figure out why people need sleep; but still there is no confident answer.
There are several theories scientists have as to why we sleep, these include: the inactivity theory, the energy conservation theory, the restorative theory, and the brain plasticity theory. The inactivity theory goes off of an adaptive or evolutionary standpoint that animals are their quietest and engage in the most minimal amount of movement while sleeping, therefore being able to go unnoticed by predators during the night. Basically saying that sleeping is a feature humans adopted through the process of natural selection. The energy conservation theory supports that sleep helps to lower a person’s need and use of energy at times when it is most difficult to find food. Research supporting this theory would be that a person’s metabolism is lowered up to ten percent during sleep. The energy conservation theory is closely related to the inactivity theory in that both apply to more primal features and characteristics that may have been acquired through natural selection. The restorative theory says that the human body heals and refreshes itself through the body’s release of hormones and other restorative properties during the hours a person sleeps. Research has found that certain types of muscle growth, tissue repair, protein synthesis, and growth hormones are only released while a person is asleep. The brain plasticity theory explains that a person’s ability to learn and adapt properly is dependent upon sleep as brain development occurs the most while a person is sleeping. Scientists have found that sleep plays a substantial role in learning and memory.
None of these theories have been proven, and as we have learned in SC200 anything is up to chance. Which of these theories do you think is the most reasonable as to why people need sleep?
Sources:
http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/why-do-we-sleep
I agree with the comment above. I think everyone just needs sleep because the body will just not work right or be to its best potential. The body will be slower and weak and nothing will work right. The theories that were listed make sense to me because the body needs to function right in order for a person to get through the day. I also do not think that just one of these theories could be the right answer. Here is a website that talks about what happens if we don’t sleep Great post!
Personally, I believe that some of theories (like the evolutionary theory) may have been true during the cavemen era, but today I believe that all of the theories you listed could potentially be the reason humans sleep. It doesn’t have to be just one theory, but all of them could work together. The National Sleep Foundation says that human’s need a certain amount of sleep in order for our bodies to be able to properly function. But it also goes on to suggest that the amount of sleep one needs varies on the individual, not humans as a whole, and not even age groups as a whole. Basically in my opinion sleep is a way for the body to rest and restore, as well as a lot of contributing factors from multiple theories you listed.
http://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need