A dream-like state obscured by nightmarish mechanical uncertainty
What is Sleep?
Science hinges on the simple truth that every straight answer only activates a myriad of deep, complex, nigh-incomprehensible questions.
Sleep is one of those paradigms – one of those baffling natural processes – that makes sense as far as we’ve discovered. To put it simply, sleep only makes sense because we’ve applied a framework to give the process logic. Otherwise, there is no comprehensible reason why animals – let alone humans – sleep. As such, there is no absolute answer to the question, “What is Sleep?” as of yet. There is, however, a simple answer.
Sleep is a natural state characterized by a loss of consciousness, inhibited sensory activity, and the inhibition of all voluntary muscles. However, one quickly finds that – when examining the simple definition of sleep – the entire process falls apart.
Sleep, like most biological processes, only really makes sense from a distance. Break down the components of sleep, and suddenly things fall apart.
How does Sleep work?
Humans have a firm grasp on the overall mechanisms behind falling asleep, except when they don’t. Typically, animals require relaxation, little excitatory stimulation, darkness, relative quiet, and a lack of temperature fluctuation to fall asleep.
Of course, some people sleep better with music and light. Others sleep better when the ambient temperature is cold – others sleep better when the ambient temperature is hot. Some people need lots of blankets, others need few blankets. People also seem to disagree on the firmness of their mattress, as well as whether to eat or drink before bed.
Then, of course, there are insomniacs who simply can’t fall asleep – or the narcoleptics who fall asleep all the time. Interestingly enough, the one thing most people seem to agree on is the fact that achieving orgasm helps get humans get to bed sooner.
How, then, does sleep work? It is a fact that animals need sleep. It is a fact that sleep increases serotonin levels and aids in the formation of long-term memory. It is also a fact that the human body begins to enter states of brief microsleep if an individual has gone for a significant time without sleep. These microsleeps last for up to 30 seconds, and are almost always a result of sleep deprivation.
What we do know is that the animal body enters various stages during the sleep cycle. Non-rapid eye movement (Non-REM) sleep, is followed by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is then followed by slow wave sleep, before the cycle begins all over again at least three to four times per night. Each stage in the sleep cycle is a “deeper” sleep, and, theoretically, it takes more energy to wake up an individual the deeper they sleep. Additionally, an individual’s neurons exhibit less extreme activation the deeper an individual sleeps.
Why is Sleep important?
When it comes to understanding intrinsic biological mechanisms – eating, sleeping, drinking, procreating, and excreting waste – there are two ways to answer the question of “Why?” The first is to treat the mechanism from the perspective of its causes – for example, what happens if we don’t sleep? Tackling a mechanism from this perspective reveals a simple, circular answer. We get tired if we don’t sleep; therefore, we sleep because we get tired.
The second way to treat the “Why” question is by studying the mechanism from the perspective of its effects. We know that we regain energy from sleeping, so why is there no better way to regain energy? When animals go to sleep, their bodies cradle the face of death without actually dying. For all intents and purposes, surely there’s a better way to stabilizing serotonin levels and neuronal activity than by mimicking death.
Sleep is important because it allows us to “reset” the body. Sleep increases serotonin levels, stabilizes brain activity, aids in memory formation, and refreshes an organism. There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is classified as an extreme form of torture – organisms that don’t sleep suffer from reduced mental capacity, an inability to focus, an inability to retain information, and – as if often the case with insomnia and other related ailments – actual physical pain.
However, we still don’t know precisely why animals enter a death-like state to regain stable energy levels.
What is the future of Sleep?
Like all confounding biological functions, science will one day propose an explanation to the underlying nature of sleep. Until then, future researchers interested in the subject can look forward to studying insomnia, sleep apnea, sleep paralysis, narcolepsy, and the host of illnesses, processes, and functions that contribute to – and are affected by – sleep.