Why do we need to sleep? What are the benefits of sleeping?

Sleeping takes up one-third of a person's time. Working or studying for a long time in a day will make the body very tired. Only by sleeping can you relieve the fatigue of the day and be in a relaxed mental state the next day. The best sleep time for everyone is no more than 8 hours. Moreover, when people sleep, the cells and tissues of the body are also repaired during sleep.

Sleeping is a very common thing, but it is also extremely mysterious. To date, scientists still don’t know why people need to sleep. In order to adapt to the harsh natural environment, our physiological activities usually have clear purposes. For example, the purpose of eating and reproduction is to survive and spread genes. However, sleeping makes it very likely that we will be eaten by wild animals when we lose consciousness. If the purpose is to repair the body and brain and keep them alive, why can't these repairs be done while you are conscious? Dolphins, for example, can have half their brain resting and the other half awake. Scientists have also put forward many speculations about this. For example, some people believe that the brain produces toxins when we are awake during the day, and these toxins are metabolized during sleep, but this hypothesis cannot be confirmed in research. Another way of saying it is that when you're awake during the day, the brain consumes a lot of protein, RNA, and cholesterol, so it needs to replenish these substances during sleep. Although some studies have found that the production of these substances in animals increases during slow-wave sleep, it is not obvious. Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic therapy, also provided his own reason - sleeping is to fully realize one's wishes in dreams, but of course this is even more impossible to "prove".

Sleep is good for learning and memory

Countless evidence shows that the brain performs different functions when we sleep - consolidating our memories. Memories are not burned into our brains immediately when an event occurs. First, various reliable clues will enter our short-term memory, and after being processed by the brain, the events will truly enter the long-term memory. Many studies have shown that sleep can make memories more solid, because recalling what you learned before going to bed after a good night's sleep is 15% better than not sleeping. But without sleep, we can still learn new knowledge, so this is not the real purpose of sleep, but just an additional benefit of it.