ELi5: Why can’t we repair our bodies while awake like we can when we’re asleep

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So much time is wasted due to sleep so, with more detail, I know we detox and repair while awake, but not like we do when asleep. Is it physically impossible? Is there any other animal that can do with without the sleeping debuff?

When I search, I get animals that don’t sleep like us, but they sleep one side of the brain at a time, so defeating the point of… Why can’t we repair our bodies without sleeping – at all?

I always find answers on websites like: ” THE MAJORITY OF MUSCLE REPAIR AND GROWTH OCCURS DURING SLEEP WHEN HORMONES ARE RELEASED ”

To me, this is like defining a word with the word itself

In: Biology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I like to think of the human body like an automobile. You couldn’t fix the engine with all the pistons firing feel me?

Anonymous 0 Comments

We do. Wounds plug. Scabs form. Lactic acid gets filtered out.

It just does a better job of it while you sleep.

Some things up in the brain need to be off while it scrubs them, hence the loss of consciousness. But there’s actually quite a few unknowns there.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your body has to deal with you while your awake, it can’t focus on repairing itself. You can’t change a car’s tires while it’s driving down the road.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The human brain is at the absolute physical limit of what we can fit in our heads. Even with women’s hips being wider than men’s without sacrificing too much mobility and babies being born underdeveloped with squishy skulls, and taking two decades to grow up, we still need as much brain as we can fit in our head. That means there’s less flexibility with things like the brain getting rid of bad things without sleeping. And once the brain has a sleep cycle, that’s a great time for the rest of the body to recover, so that it has fewer draws on its resources while you’re awake and doing things with your body.