Basically whenever I’m really stressed or upset about something I can sleep for more than 12 hours a day. It may just be my depression superpower, but it seems like many people experience the same.
In: Biology
Not a science person but if I understand correctly depression can cause brain damage if severe enough. People who are recovering from brain damage tend to sleep alot because the brain needs sleep to recover.
Stress is very hard on our bodies and we aren’t really designed to operate under sustained stress. Originally stress was for stuff like oh shit, is that a tiger? It either is or it isn’t and either way, it gets resolved pretty quickly.
Stress exhausts your brain, sleep is *primarily* a rest for the brain and a chance for it to do “housekeeping.”
When we sleep our bodies do two several things. 1, they lie quite still. If you physically work hard all day long, this is a chance for the body to rest. But if you are a desk jockey this is unneeded your muscular system was at rest all day anyways. Its a fallacy that the body only heals during sleep, it heals 24/7, any time you are not exerting yourself.
During sleep the Brain partly shuts down in the deep-delta phases and cleans up excess and used neurotransmitters. If these chemicals are too low, its bad yes, such is how depression works after all, but if they are too high they also have bad effects and cause temporary insanity until your brain chemistry can even out. This is why people who don’t get the sleep they need get irritable, irrational, and eventually start hallucinating if the sleep deprivation is bad enough.
Additionally your brain uses REM sleep to reorganize your memories, and to form new neural connections based on your experiences in the day. This is one of the reason “sleeping on it” really helps build skill, because your brain cements the learning of the day with its sleep at night. Its thought this is why your dreams often incorporate elements of your previous day’s experiences. AKA some parts of dreams is like your brain doing a “defrag.”
Also its a bit of a fallacy that people *need* 8 hours of sleep a day. Sleep-need can vary wildly, and changes quite a bit depending on age. Some people manage perfectly fine on 4-5 hours a night, with others need 9 or 10. Teens need the most sleep, middle aged adults the least. Additionally a single person will need more sleep if they are stressed, or exhausted from something like an infection.
So your best best is to not worry about it and aim for whatever amount of sleep works for you.
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