Does anyone else find the concept of sleep mental?

[vivi45]

Probably a very weird thought process but I’m just laying here, ready to go to sleep thinking how strange it is that we spend so much of our life unconscious. If I sleep from 11pm-7am which is normal for me, I will have slept the equivalent of my work day. All of the things I’ve done during the day, meals I’ve eaten, people I’ve spoken to, places I’ve been - and I’ll spend that same amount of time just laid in bed asleep. Also find it weird how the world just carries on while we are oblivious to it.

Sorry I know this is incredibly random 😂

I’m not sure it’s true that older people need less sleep. At what age is this?

What I find weird is time. How it’s one time in the UK but a different time in other parts of the world, and also how it’s different seasons. So if you go west, you go back in time, but you go east and you go forward. What happens on the other side of the globe where east and west meet?

This will sound direct but it's just the way my brain works.

We are even longer dead! That we are alive at all is miraculous.

I don't find sleep strange at all as I think of all the things the body has to maintain and correct in order to keep us alive and functional during the day.

Just me I suppose lol.

And it's every night too!

What an inconvenience

I definitely think about this frequently!

And also how terrible we feel without sleep or if we don't get enough. Or the quality of our sleep isn't good enough.

I'm not scientifically knowledgeable and I don't properly know what being asleep is. And I'm interested in the actual difference between the state of sleep and the state of being medically unconscious or being under general anaesthetic. I don't mean the causes I mean the difference in our physical state.

I love sleeping and sometimes my dreams is are amazing and mad and surreal and sometimes totally mundane. And sometimes hours after I wake a realise something that happened earlier was just part of my dream.

I feel like the Paul Whitehouse Fast Show character and going "Aren't dreams brilliant!!"

Oh yeah and also that centuries ago people used to have two sleeps in a night; wake up halfway through and do things. On a regular basis and not by mistake as it were.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep

What I find even more interesting is that there is evidence that sleep as we know it - going to bed and sleeping like the dead for 8 hours straight - is a relatively recent concept. In medieval times, sleep was biphasic - there are accounts of first and second sleep, where people would wake in the middle of the night and go about their business before returning to sleep.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep

Whoah! Cross post with the same link! Spooky like my dreams 😁

lol when I was able to take stimulant ADHD meds (can’t now cos of heart issues) they used to chill me out, quiet my brain and make me sleepy at a certain point during the day. Quite surprising when you find out that they are basically amphetamines.

caffeine also makes me sleepy.

mind you I am wide awake, I’m tired but my mind is wired. If I had my way I’d be up hoovering, housework, taking a nice long walk. But I’d wake up all the other human in my house and next door .Sleep is such a waste of time. But I know I need it 😭

There is an excellent book about life before electric light that discusses biphasic sleep at one point - At Day's Close: A History of Nighttime by A. Roger Ekirch. I find it fascinating to think about what life must have been like in cities before electric light.

I also read that different sleeping patterns in different age ranges would have, at one point in our history, meant that someone in the tribe would always have been awake. Not sure about the source of that one though.

For a truly mind-bending stint I like to read about how quantum mechanics is seen by some as proving the existence of God. It's to do with the Copenhagen interpretation and how measurement / observation collapses the wave function of a quantum particle. Some think it means that a consciousness must have been observing in order for the Big Bang to have happened. Makes my tiny brain fizz!

Biphasic sleep fascinates me too. Sleeping all night in one burst is not how humans evolved, it was only since the Industrial Revolution that humans started to sleep on one long stretch.

when I was a single parent and my two eldest were toddlers I used to put them to bed about seven, then go to sleep for a few hours , wake up around half ten, stay up for a few hours then go back to sleep till 6 or 7.

even now I struggle with sleep and I often have two hours in the day. I work split shifts so doable then sleep about half twelve ish am.

but I’m wired tonight as I’ve had to put my dog to sleep this morning and I just can’t switch my mind off.

Recharging. Like robots. 😁

There’s a huge element of trust that goes into human sleep patterns too and that pops into my mind at times. Sure there are night time crimes, but given that almost half of our population sleeps during the exact same hours, and the way that raises our vulnerability, you’d think more crime would happen but it’s this unwritten rule that we’re safe and secure when we go to sleep.

But I don’t delve too far into that thought otherwise I might never sleep! (She says at almost 3am).

Is there any living thing that doesn't sleep, I wonder?

Worms, for instance?
Or bacteria?
Or Demodex (I did a search 'things that live on your skin' and really wish I hadn't...)

Perhaps the ongoing necessity for sleep was part of natural selection. The vulnerability during sleep may have played a part in encouraging the development and continuing existance of a necessary communal feel, which had payoffs in so many other areas of social development.

Or maybe not.

Anyway I would not trade the wallowing luxury of a good sleep for many things. I now suffer from insomnia and so, so miss earlier days when I was delighted to wake up to have to go to the toilet at 4am because I knew I had the luxury of going back to sleep, and always did.

I think about this on night flights when passing over towns, cities and even countries below. All those thousands of people in their beds at the same time. Totally unaware I am flying over them drinking coffee and looking down!

I have narcolepsy so my sleep is broken. I hallucinate on a daily basis and have sleep paralysis. I also dream while I’m still awake!
I can control my dreams and wake in and out of them.

Sleep fascinates me, but it does rule my life.

Interesting thread!
I find sleep boring and futile. Every night I get in bed I think 'oh hell, here we go again, wish I didn't have to do this!'

I sleep half as much as my best friend, my husband, everyone and think myself lucky if I get 5-6 hours. The rest of the time I'm just bored as hell waiting for the world to wake up.

P.s. I've been awake 2 hours now

So much happens when we sleep though. Our bodies need it to recharge our immune system.
We have a natural diurnal system which has unfortunately become disrupted by modern life, white light and screens.

I think social animals with complex
brains sleep more than animals that have a lot of predators. In some ways we are lucky that we can sleep in such large chunks as it means we live safer lives than say an antelope.

I am Australian and when I first went to work in Europe I had a colleague ask me how I coped with it being December in Europe, but June in Australia. After some confusion and discussion it became clear that she did not understand the months were the same, but the seasons were different. I have since found out that there are fair few people who don't really get that bit. Which sort of underscores how mind bending it all can be.

Imho I'd be much more afraid of death without the practice.

i kind of hate to point this out, but you’re going to be unconscious and unaware for a much longer period of time when you’re dead. Like, eternity.

Agree that wanting to fall unconscious is just weird.

related to the thread, I don’t like going to bed early but then also dont like waking up. Once I read a Mumsnetter describe going to bed early as a “reverse lie-in” and that made it sound sooo much more appealing!!

I feel like I haVe vivid dreams all night so I never feel.rested, more like I've been On all night. I'd much prefer just going to sleep and walking up with nothing inbetween