AIBU to think it's fascinating that humans NEED sleep, and

[bbcessex]

To wonder what life would be like if we didn't?

I love my bed but often wonder what an alternative life spent round the clock would feel like!!

also amazed by how little/poor quality sleep you can actually function on, even if just a stain of your former self!!

Well, that's taken the discussion down a different track!
To try to get back, sleep is amazing. I absolutely love waking up after a full night's sleep, knowing that it's been uninterrupted. Bliss!

Hotel, sleep will come back to you, I promise!

@GirlOnIt yes! My friend and I were talking about this the other day and she was saying the same as you mentioned, that the situation was so far removed from parenting these days it would have been very different. Ie. Like you say babies snuggled into breasts all night and also lots more support from extended family/clan so women could rest more in general. So interesting I wish I would be a fly on the wall (them safely return home!!)

Read this thread last night when I couldn't sleep, realised how much I love sleeping.

It made me think so fondly of sleep that I pretty much fell asleep straight away!

I was super broke once so started doing night shifts with an agency then go to my day job next day. Never known tiredness like it and hated life. Only did it sporadically for a few weeks. Could not function. Bones ached

Not all mammals dream (dolphins and slimy ant eaters) and dogs can sleep whenever they like (but I can't for the life of me remember the proper name for it).

Also suggesting Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

You can listen to the audiobook on borrow box free with your library membership (search audiobooks on your library website).

I read it around Easter. I'm in bed by 9pm every day now! (And I love it!)

Also, horses can sleep standing up but they can't dream standing up. So they need to lie down for roughly an hour out of 24.

*spiney not slime!

We don't hibernate though which seems like a serious flaw in our evolution.

Placemarking to come back later.

Also The Infinite Monkey Cage did a podcast The Science of Sleep, 11/7/16 in their back catalogue, fascinating to listen to. Not RTFT, sorry if already mentioned.

I think it's interesting how even a little sleep can rejuvenate you.

Just a micro sleep.

Sometimes I lie on my bed listening to BBC comedy. Then I find myself awake and it's finished and I don't remember hearing most of it.

Sleep is fascinating.

Why would you want to evolve to not need sleep! Sleep is the best. It is a huge reason why decided to not have children. Have bipolar (2) and lack of sleep is a key precursor to hypomania. Sleeping too much is a clear sign am depressed. Sleep is LIFE

I read a short story by JG Ballard about a group of men who had been surgically altered so they couldn’t sleep. They eventually went into some kind of fugue state.

Here's why ...

• An afternoon nap increases the brain's learning capacity by 15-20%

• Sleep improves your memory, halting forgetting by 30-50%, relative to staying awake

• Not getting enough sleep increases sweet and salty cravings by 30-40%

• Sleep offers a three-fold bost in creativity and problem solving

• A good night's sleep improves time to physical exhaustion when exercising by 10-30%

(Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker)

So interesting to see so many others are fascinated too 😎😎

I completely understand the science .. it's more the ritual, the leveller, the desire, the need that fascinated me.

Glad I'm not on my own!

My favourite kind of sleeping is done after going under while engrossed reading story or - more often - watching a movie. There is something essentially dreamlike about films to start with - disjointed images and sounds that our brains fit together into narratives. I love those times when I fall asleep in the middle of a film and almost seamlessly step into a dreamstate that starts in the film world but soon wanders off into its own landscape. If I wake up with the film still playing somehow my consciousness manages to find its way back into the pseudo-reality being played out on the screen leaving me utterly bewildered because the characters are now doing things that make no sense in the real world because they haven't had the experience of the alternate reality I have been watching them in.

This works better with some films than others. 1950s SF films are good because they quite often make very little sense to start with.

One of my favourite SF authors, A E van Vogt, had himself woken up every 90 minutes during his sleep so he could write down his dreams. His books are - as you would imagine - extremely bonkers.

Yes!

I love the fact that everyone sleeps no matter who they are. Sometimes I’ll be going about my day and at lunch time I’ll see all these people who are wide awake, dressed and all put together and kind of laugh to myself that all of them were a drowsy mess at 7am this morning getting out of bed.

Figured I was strange for thinking this way!

Also sometimes I’ll lie in bed and start to feel that drowsy state beginning and I’ll think to myself “here we go... very soon I’ll be unconscious” and it’s such a strange feeling

So much the leveller. I was thinking about this the other day in the sense that people will say to visual the person you feel intimidated by (interviewer, etc) on the loo!

I think the same about them.getting into pjs and curling up in bed.

We don't hibernate though which seems like a serious flaw in our evolution.

Not really a flaw in our evolution, more a case of environmental changes overtaking evolution. Humans did not do most of their evolving in temperate latitudes with four seasons and dark, cold winters, but in tropical and subtropical savannahs with two seasons or none, where average temperatures never tended to drop much below about 15 deg C.

Many animals 'get ready for sleep', though. They choose a place to sleep and some do things like tramping down the ground to make it more comfortable.

I''m still (just) capable of staying up for 24 hours, having a catnap and then being up and active for at least another 10 hours - usually done when I am hitting one of the markets in the midlands and doing something the night before. Stay up till about 4am, have a bath, put on something comfy, go and get the train, nap on the train, do the event, then nap a bit more on the train back... These days though it takes about 48 hours to recover from one of those.

I had terrible insomnia when pregnant - was eventually sleeping about 40 mins a day. It was awful, not because I was tired but I was so so so bored!

The world isn't that exciting at 4am, and I'd got through all my to do list in about 3 days ...