Why We Sleep

• Peter Tripp


  1950s radio host who stayed awake for 201 hours for a publicity stunt in a glass box in time square to raise money. He became crazy and paranoid a few days in and stripped naked
• Recuperation theory


  The idea that wakefulness is inherently taxing and our body needs to reset to be able to work on a "clean slate" for the next day
• Glymphatic system


  Cellular rinse that floods the extracellular space with CSF to clear out waste. ECM expands by 60% when we're asleep
• Beta-amyloid


  Protein that exists in the healthy brain but buildup of it is correlated with Alzheimer's. Gets washed away when we sleep
• Sleep increases your immune system's time to fight off pathogens, and each hour over 6 hours you sleep improves vaccine effectiveness by 50%
• Growth hormone


  Encourages cell replacement and growth. Produced by the hypothalamus and released mostly during NREM3 sleep
• Evolution adaptation theory


  Idea that all species evolved their sleep patterns to stay alive and minimize risks (like humans getting deactivated at night so they dont fall off a cliff)
• Brain plasticity theory


  Idea that when you sleep your brain takes new information and moves it from "temporary" areas of the brain into more long-term memoey
• NREM3 help us process declarative memory (facts) while REM sleep helps us with procedural memory (motor skills)