Why do humans actually need to sleep

[cannabis campbell]

I heard once (not sure if its true) that there was one man who 'never' slept because he believed that humans did not actually need to and we only do because we are used to it from when we are a baby..

What is the actual reason we need sleep is it because our brains need rest.. well say if you didnt sleep for 2 days or 4 days your brain would still work just as good right?

[Gatekeeper777]

NO, after about 3 weeks of sleep deprevation you would die. Sleep is needed for the brain to organize the events of the day and for the body to reapir itself and to re-energize. You are no differant then a robot. Altho you dont run on battery power you do run on electro-chemical energy. After 3 days of sleep deprevation you will hallucinate and your heart starts to skip beats. After 5 days you have micro sleep sessions where your brain shuts down for a second or two. like it or not.
We are wired to sleep and if we dont then we break down.

[LuckyG]

I had a friend who stayed up for 92 hours. Around day three he said it felt like shrooming, and everything was all sped up. How'd he do it? Plenty of caffiene and Diablo II. :D

[Fissle]

The most I have done is two days, and it sucked so bad. eventually you just want to crash and pass out

[tiwest]

After a couple of days - It's one of the most uncomfortable things... every little bit of concentration is focussed on staying awake.

[rocktheganj]

I heard once (not sure if its true) that there was one man who 'never' slept because he believed that humans did not actually need to and we only do because we are used to it from when we are a baby..

What is the actual reason we need sleep is it because our brains need rest.. well say if you didnt sleep for 2 days or 4 days your brain would still work just as good right?

the reason we sleep is like why we smoke. try it; go to sleep. wake up in an hour and read this again, so i can say i told you so. we sleep because it feels good.

[sgt.GREEN NUGS]

haha diablo 2 ive stayed up a few days with that game back in the day

[vej33]

i dunno if they still do this, but some P.O.W (whichever war) were sometimes tortured with sleep deprivation. i read a book recently called "The Accidental Mind", it's all about the brain and one chapter was on sleep (and dreams).

So basically, yea you'll go mad if you are without sleep for too long. your body and your mind both need to regenerate. plus, regarding all the brain activity during sleep, it is possible, no, probable that your brain uses that time to collect your new memories and "move" them to other parts of your brain, for longterm storage.

cool, huh? :buzz_saw:

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

To use a computer analogy, sleeping and particularily REM is your brain's way of running a defrag program. All the information your mind has collected or created is organized.
Also, sleep is your brain's time to balance out it's serotonin levels and replenish its serotonin. Serotonin is very important for mood regulation, several forms of cognition and memory, and digestion.

So essentially, without sleep you'd go nucking futs.

[zino11]

ive heard after aweek you start seein things and you go crazy:eek:

[affasd]

ya but the guy who doesn't sleep is true well idk if its the same guy your thinking of but i read about a farmer in some asian country i think who never sleeps

edit-Vietnam latest news - Thanh Nien Daily (http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=12673)

well he used to sleep but not for 33 years i guess

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

I don't know if it's that particular Vietnamese guy, but I did hear about a guy who had a medical condition that didn't allow him to sleep. He kept sane and functional by practicing meditation several hours a day, which has already been proven to work as a substitute for sleep. Buddha himself only slept 2 hours a night, plus 2 hours sitting meditation, and 2 hours walking meditation.

[WakingDream]

I read in a book about a marathon biker who deprived himself of sleep. He started waving at mailboxes thinking they were people. Then his follow crew forced him to stop when he was unable to stay out of traffic. He was hallucinating so badly he thought his crew were aleins. Read about it in Sleep Thieves.

A trucker in the desert fell asleep while driving and lost the road and went onto a salt flat where he drove 60 miles. He decided to go to sleep when he got out of his truck and realized he was lost. An airplane discovered him in the morning and had a highway trooper check it out.

[pass_the_dubbie]

Not sure why we need sleep but sleep is great. You can have the weirdest and coolest thoughts in your sleep, worst thing is hearing an alarm clock go off and realising you have to get up.
*shivers*

[BBoyShotty]

To use a computer analogy, sleeping and particularily REM is your brain's way of running a defrag program. All the information your mind has collected or created is organized.
Also, sleep is your brain's time to balance out it's serotonin levels and replenish its serotonin. Serotonin is very important for mood regulation, several forms of cognition and memory, and digestion.

So essentially, without sleep you'd go nucking futs.

heh funny..we prolbaby read teh same psyc txtbook hahaha

but yeahh, i remember hearing from ym gr9 science teacher that he doesnt know why we havent evolved passed sleeping. Its been quite a few years, but i remember him saying something about how we sleep casue in nature, we sleep so that we can keep the natural order of things, eg: food chain, so like animals sleep so they can be hunted...it sounds fucked up, but if you think about it, he makes a good point..If you think about it, when you're K.O'd n someone wakes you up, you snap outta your sleep startled, n probably a bit of an adrenaline rush...sooo yeah, i guess waht he was saying is since we've clearly segregated outselves from nature, then why do we still need sleep? why havent our bodies found a new way of repairing?

sorry if it was a rant, im kinda baked lol

[GraziLovesMary]

Ive gone for 7 days without sleep on two different occassions. I fell asleep standing up in church at the end of those weeks both times lol.

I

[GraziLovesMary]

(got cut off)

I sleep, on average, about 2-4 hours a day. I have for pretty much my entire life.

[snowblind]

you need sleep to preocess information, recharge and rebuild. most people shrink around 1=4 cm a day because the spines compresses due to gravity. sleeping helps straighten this out.

it is important for the brain and helps development. also during formative years it is the time we do the most growing.

i used to have fucked up sleeping patterns where i would stay awake for 2-3 days normanly tweaked and high adn then crash for 20 - 48 hrs. the most i have ever done is 5 days and its a nightmare.

you hallucinate, things are really hard to do. your whole body feels heavy. your mind plays so many tricks on you and things dont make sense.

i can easily go a couple of days, but it is ultimately bad for your health.

the body is like anything it needs its rest.

people who claim to not sleep are attention seeking bullshiters. like this bloke i saw on telly who claimed to live off nothing but air, sun and fruit juices. BOLLOXs

snowbind

[BrilloHeadBen]

The actual reason for sleeping is mainly for our brain. It works by firing synapses which, is how our brain does most of its work. Our brain can only be firing large amounts of synapses for so long before it needs a break. While we sleep, our brain dosnt shut down, it just slows down. Less synapses are fired, and allow it to fire more in a few hours. Thats why we fall asleep, our brain says "hey, give it a rest will ya!"

[BBoyShotty]

hmm interesting, but the only thing i dont really get is how "slowed" down the brain really is..its been awhile since ive had psyc, but i remember something like dreams are created by random synapses firing inside your head, so how "rested" could the brain really be?

[Mr.Weed]

Some people I know, they were tweakers, and they used to play this game of who could stay up the longest. This guy lasted about 4 days, and I guess he went insain from the sleep deprivation, he kept talking about aliens, he had a shotgun in his hands and he said they were after him, and they were going to take him home.

[GraziLovesMary]

hmm interesting, but the only thing i dont really get is how "slowed" down the brain really is..its been awhile since ive had psyc, but i remember something like dreams are created by random synapses firing inside your head, so how "rested" could the brain really be?

Dreaming takes place in REM sleep which comes before and after the deep sleep where restoration takes place. 5 minutes in REM stage can translate to an hour in dream timeline at times. People who dream all night long dont get to enter that deep, restorative sleep.

I actually kind of hypnotize myself with breathing and relaxation techniques to avoid the REM stage entirely. I really only dream when Im drunk or distracted. Or when I want to.

[420_24/7]

i would get so bored if i didnt sleep, theres nothing to do between 2 and 6 in the morning

[GraziLovesMary]

i would get so bored if i didnt sleep, theres nothing to do between 2 and 6 in the morning

Lol I accomplish alot in this time.

[BrilloHeadBen]

The best explanation I have seen for dreams, to put it very simply, is its just our imagination running wild. Our brains arent focusing on any real thought, so they just go to imagining things.

[Matt the Funk]

I've done a few days....you need sleep. You start to go delirious if you dont.

[snowblind]

anyone here been able to lucid dream properly. ive been able to mildly do it where im aware im in a dream but can't control anything but my hands, but not tangible objescts or effect the enviroment

anyone else got good at it

dreams are wikid, dope surpresses dreams because the thc in the brain stops the random firing of the synapses triggering the dreams

when i stopped fucking hell i had some vivid ones

at the moment there all about my x's best mate who is goin out with a lad who looks just like me. me one of my good mates and her shared a nice joint of pressed keif and nice bud, it was about 4 gs worth and all the time whilst toking she kept moaning like she was about to come, but my mrs was there. anyway that nite she screwed one of my mates, there was six of us in a room, whilst i was with my gf. but all nite (well the 5 he lasted) while she was riding him she kept playing with my foot.
damn

anyway lucid dreams

[MadSativa]

I don't know if it's that particular Vietnamese guy, but I did hear about a guy who had a medical condition that didn't allow him to sleep. He kept sane and functional by practicing meditation several hours a day, which has already been proven to work as a substitute for sleep. Buddha himself only slept 2 hours a night, plus 2 hours sitting meditation, and 2 hours walking meditation.

Alot of us only sleep 2-4 hours a night I dont even sleep at night I sleep in the mornig day. meditaion is all that is needed to stay sane, although healing is not done very well unles you are in rem sleep. 1 hour of rem sleep is like 4-5 hours of awake time as far as healing goes. Their are deprivation chambers wich even speed heeling and sleep up to five times faster. Instead of 8 hours a night sleep 3-5 hours is all that is needed. These chambers are very expensive and owend buy athletes, theripest, and the rich. You will not go insane if your mind is strong enough and disipled to addaped. Their are stories of sober men who go out and are up for a week or more and are constanly in danger or moving never resting and they never had a episode or halucinations, but remained sharp and agile. This can be acheive same as night vision without optics can be acheived. Here is a link to those Iso. Chambers I think their kool cause pepole who are experianced Iso Chamber users claim they have outa body experiances and very interesting stories. Almost like they were on halusonagens.

Samadhi Tank - Origins (http://www.samadhitank.com/history.html)

[erb]

my mate has insonmia and cos he has the most fucked up sleeping pattern he fall asleep at the weirdest times for like 10mins.. i feel quite bad for him.