Like, currently it’s a big sun burn I got this weekend, but I seems to noticed this with other injuries, it seems sometimes the injury stay the same all day long(~18 h), but then, after a night of sleep (~8 h) it’s suddenly way better then before
In: Biology
It is not just feeling, your body *does* heal better and faster while you sleep. That’s why it is recommended to get lots of sleep when you are sick or injured. As for why, in broad terms, it has to do with your hormonal state and autonomic nervous systems – you have two: “fight or flight” (sympathetic), which keeps your body ready for physical activity etc. and is more active during the day, and “rest and digest” (parasympathetic) which is more active at night.
1) When you’re sleeping, you’re not doing anything else that requires a lot of energy (like moving), so your body can devote all its resources to healing.
2) Your burn may be healing some during the day, but if you’re feeling it every few minutes then it will be harder to notice any progress. Meanwhile when you sleep, you go 8 hours without checking how it feels, so you can notice the change.
One thing that helped me a lot was the shift from “why would I sleep” to “why would I wake up?” Your body needs to be awake to seek food, water, etc. But to *do stuff* with that food and water and such, it really doesn’t have to be moving. In fact it’s probably best if you just chill out and stay still. This also applies to exercise; you don’t really get stronger by lifting weights – you get stronger by resting *when you have previously strained your muscles*, which means damaging them; during this rest time, your body has the opportunity to repair and improve those muscles. Similarly, when you’re resting, your body doesn’t have to ‘waste’ energy on dumb things like moving around. It can just focus all the energy on healing you.
If you want more detail you can try reading a book called “Why We Sleep” by matthew walker. In short, sleep is when our bodies can get maintenance. The body can focus on fixing and use all tools available while sleeping without causing any discomfort.
There are two things at play. The first is that your body isn’t using much energy so it can focus everything on healing. The other is that 8 hours more or less go by without you noticing. So you are healing at a fair rate during the day, but you don’t notice as much because it’s happening slowly while you’re awake. When you sleep, you suddenly wake up and the equivalent of half a day’s worth of healing has suddenly happened.
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