• Question: Why do we need sleep?

    Asked by anon-188905 to Rachel, Yousef, Petrina, Michael, Jason, Emma on 6 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-189199, anon-188901, anon-189178, anon-189163, anon-189362.
    • Photo: Mike Ambler

      Mike Ambler answered on 6 Nov 2018:

      Great question, and if anybody could give you a complete answer, they would be a very successful scientist!

      We know some of the important things that seem to happen during sleep: our bodies seem to repair themselves, we grow, and we replay events from the day and store the important parts as memories. And we know that without sleep our brains don’t function so well, our guts don’t work so well and we are even at higher risk of cancer or heart attacks. So it is clearly important.

      What is interesting though, is that nobody really knows for sure why we have to do these things while being asleep – why they can’t just happen in the background while we are still awake. One possible reason is that it allows us to save energy. If all those things that happen during sleep cost a lot of energy to do, then maybe our body needs to be still and resting so that we can divert all our energy to them.

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