Eli5: Why do we need to sleep so much, what happens in the body when asleep that cannot happen while normal resting or relaxing? Or is it just for the brain?
In: Biology
Nobody knows yet. A lot about the brain is still unknown, which I found very fascinating and why I entered this field for a career.
There are many hypothesis but I tend to lean toward this one.
The brain functions at frequencies. We learned these frequencies with the discovery of EEG (where we monitor brain electric activity from the surface of the skull)
These frequencies change based on what a person is doing. There’s a deeper source inside the brain that generates those electrical impulses to force the entire brain to work at a certain frequency. (It’s amazing to watch by the way when we scan EEGs)
Sleep tend to provide a certain frequency that you really cannot generate in a normal day while doing normal day to day activity.
Believe it or not, turns out you actually can generate the same frequency when you meditate.
For whatever reason we still don’t know, that certain meditation/sleep frequency, has an effect to the general mental health of the individual. They allow the brain to bring balance to its dynamic function.
Now the 5 year old version explanation of that would be:
Your brain is has waves .. like a sound wave .. but they’re electric.
These waves get rough when you are awake, think, work, do math .. etc
Like when the wind hits the ocean.
If those waves don’t slow down, it can make you stress and get tired .. so you meditate and sleep, to slow down those waves and make them calm again. Like when the ocean is quiet.
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