Monday 17 March 2014

What Is Sleep?

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.  They all live in a homeless man’s beard.  Another trait they also share is the fact they occasionally go to sleep.

But what is sleep? The Oxford English Dictionary defines sleep as “The act of lying horizontally while tripping balls without narcotics”.  This act involves losing consciousness for prolonged periods of times, then waking up with no recollection of the previous few hours. This is rather reminiscent of the effects of alcohol.  However, most people experience this prone state of helplessness at least once per day, with or without an intact liquor cabinet.

So the real, more pertinent question is “why do we sleep?”  Frankly, you’re an idiot for not asking that in the first place.

Given our expanding calorie intakes, surely we don’t sleep in order to recharge or store energy.  We shovel enough into our gaping maws to ensure that we have an excess of reserves to burn off, especially with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles.  When your work involves ensuring that the office paperclips are categorised by colour and size, you’re not really burning off all that extra energy.  In a hunter gatherer society, you can forgive a little tiredness if your average day involves slaying a furry elephant and avoiding rampant ebola.  But in the era of mobility scooters, this is unforgivable.

We cannot attribute sleep to seasonal change either.  Since we can build central heating systems within the Arctic Circle, we keep ourselves warm enough and well fed enough to survive even the harshest winter.  Our ancestors may have needed to hibernate, but not us.  Even as recent as a few decades ago, our grandparents used to hoard food supplies, bracken and twine, then settle down in their nest boxes to sleep the winter away.  The added benefit of this was that we didn’t have to buy them Christmas presents.

So why on Earth do our bodies go into standby for seven hours a day?  That’s time I could be spending catching up on Game Of Thrones, or staring idly at my Smartphone waiting for a retweet.  The only benefit I can see to getting a healthy night’s sleep is to have some cool dreams.



Dreams come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Big, small, dry and wet, it seems that our brains make us tired in order to enter the dream state.  Leading psychologists believe that dreams are an instrumental part of our cognitive development, and that dreams allow us to make sense of the things we’ve learned throughout the day.  Dreams help us piece together the disparate pieces of information we receive and put them into a cohesive order.  That’s why I had a dream where I was a dragon.

In fact, I do have a recurring dream where I am driving a bus.  People I know such as friends and family keep getting on the bus and asking me to take them places.  As I drive around I get more and more confused by the different destinations that I start swerving around, knocking over street signs like a muddled version of Grand Theft Auto, until I eventually just crash the bus into a wall.

If dreams actually mean anything, then why are their messages so vague?  If there is something to be learned from our subconscious and our brains were so desperate to tell us something, why doesn’t the thought just pop into your head in plain English while you’re still awake?  Dreams are often forgotten shortly after waking, so it doesn’t seem like the most efficient message delivery system.  It’s like trying to tell someone their house is on fire by throwing the message through the blaze in the form of a paper airplane.  Why not phone them?

The worst, most unpleasant sensations in life come from that place between being sleep and awake.  Do you ever have that moment where, just as you’re about to drift off into a lovely slumberous snooze, you suddenly feel like you’re falling?  I sleep on my front, so when I try and move my arms to steady myself and my arms don’t move, it feels especially jarring. Perhaps its nature’s way of putting us down a peg or two for evolving higher brain functions.

So it seems that sleep is important but we don’t fully know why.  We should just accept that sleep is subject to a higher power beyond our understanding.  That way, we cannot possibly be held accountable if we sleep in.  Missing work completely due to sleeping all day is either an act of human nature, or an act of God.  How can you possibly fire me for this?!  You’ll be hearing from my union!

22 comments:

  1. Is this post due to sleep deprivation? I don't so much "sleep" as I do "pass out". So it's hard for me to add anything meaningful to the conversation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. I was very tired when I wrote this. Reading it again makes me feel just as tired.

      Delete
  2. I don't sleep anymore. I found that judicious use of methamfetamine keeps sleep at bay. Oh dammit, my heart just blew up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If that's true, then you're in for a very long sleep. Enjoy!

      Delete
  3. Sleep is a pretty unknown process even after all this time. I absolutely fail at sleeping. I really think I just don't know how to sleep at this point.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, who'd have thought that laying in bed and shutting your eyes would be such a difficult process? Stupid active brain.

      Delete
  4. You ever have one of those dreams that seems better than real life? You're so happy, and carefree, and nothing is wrong with the world, and when you wake up you're filled with such an inconsolable sadness that all you want to do is sleep until you can relive even the slightest moment of that amazing dream?

    ...I may have spiraled into the deep, dark abyss of depression.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's really dark. I'd like to help you, but don't feel sufficiently qualified to do so.

      Delete
  5. No one knows why we need sleep, but if we don't sleep, we die. So maybe sleep is kind of like cryogenically freezing ourselves every night to prolong our lives?

    Also, I have that falling dream on the train mostly, which is really great because I like being seen as a lunatic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a good theory. That's why, if you get trapped in a chest freezer as I do once a month, you start to feel sleepy.

      Delete
  6. All I know is, that I'm just not myself unless I get a good solid 16 hours of sleep at night.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm pleased that my blog appeals to the lion demographic. You're very welcome here.

      Delete
  7. I think Mr Addman you may find that sleeping in was not the reason for being fired, as the driver of the number 10 bus I think you may have got confused between when you were asleep and when you were awake.

    In my own case I tend to fill my brain full of stuff during the day and then during sleep it is filed away in the right place, OK a place which may not be right as the cat found out when I put him in the toaster . . .Cat, Bread, Bread, Cat . . . . I cant remember stuff like that it confusing, particularly after some mad bus driver takes me all of the place on some erratic journey to a Walls Ice Cream factory?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I never driven a bus in my life. All of those passengers lives in your hands? Sounds like too much pressure to me.

      Delete
  8. The only thing I really know about sleep is that I can do it anytime, anywhere, with minimal effort. It doesn't matter if I have coffee or not. Just let me know the coast is clear & I can be like a light. Except I usually don't always want to sleep. Not while there's an internet to entertain me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think the Internet is the antithesis of sleep. It was invented as a cure.

      Delete
  9. One of my most vivid memories is getting a bollocking at primary school about an essay I did about sleep. I theorised that when you sleep your body turns your food into energy and that's what makes you grow!
    My teacher (Mrs Burne) wrote all over it in red pen with a note that said "Interesting idea" <--- note the sarcasm! interesting idea my arse.
    Years later I read, on the BBC website, that my idea had actually be proved by proper bespectacled scientists and not a two bit primary school teacher who defiantly/probably did a kiss with the other teacher who "lived alone with her cats" and was always sniffing the felt tips.

    I hated school.

    Dreams though? I agree with your idea that if dreams are supposed to tell us something important they should be A LOT clearer about what ever it is they want to say. Showing my half a teddy bear up a tree made of wasps whilst I'm stood in a half empty bowl of milk, is not the best way to tell me to start worrying about a pension or that my best friend is a cross dresser.....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bumferry, you are obviously a man of science. I will be turning to you for all my life's problems.

      Firstly, what should you do if you eat silica gel? Asking for a friend.

      Delete
    2. Firstly, I doubt very much that Silica Gel is her REAL NAME, so I would be careful there. DON'T give her your real phone number, or let her know where you live. Second get yourself down the clap clinic asap - give them my name (they know me there) and the girls will look after you.
      Out of interest... did you get HER number? asking for um... a friend....

      Delete
    3. I'm not telling you for your own safety. After our encounter I suddenly feel really ill and am suffering with abdominal cramps. I wouldn't want a great scientist such as yourself to succumb to this affliction. It's too late for me, save yourself!

      Delete
  10. This has made me think, which isn't something I planned to do this Wednesday afternoon. Why hasn't someone created a machine that records your dreams yet, I think that would be a frightening thing to watch back. x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A machine which records dreams would be cool, but what if you wanted to watch something on the other side?

      Delete

Leave me a nice comment or die trying.