Postaday for May 18th: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream. Sleep is one-third of our lives: write a post about it. Do you love naps? Have trouble falling alseep? Wish you could remember your dreams? Remember something especially vivid? Snuggle under a blanket, or throw the windows wide open? Meditate on sleep.
Out of all the human organs, the brain is the least understood. And out of all the things it does, why it sleeps is the biggest mystery. And yet there are some fairly compelling theories out there, theories that I find fascinating. For example, one theory holds that when we sleep, our brain shrinks in on itself a little bit. This opens space between the folds, and spinal fluid literally washes our brains, removing free radicals (destructive oxygen molecules) that have built up during the day.
Which is why I reject utterly that manliness or toughness includes being able to go long periods without sleep, or being able to survive on very little sleep. There’s nothing manly about a dirty brain.
If the brain is so little understood, and sleep is at the top of what we don’t know about the brain, then dreaming is at the top of what we don’t know about sleep. And yet, one very interesting theory holds that dreaming is nothing more than a function of learning. When we have experiences we encode those in short-term memory. When we sleep, we “move” these memories into long-term memory. Sort of like moving patterns out of RAM into a hard-drive. And to continue the computer analogy: the “pointers” our brain uses to “catalog” memories for easier retrieval are novel associations. The “weirder” the better. And that’s why dream can seem so weird: we’re experiencing our brain’s making odd associations to help us remember things later.
When we’re conscious, we don’t experience the novelty of these associations, usually. Who won the last Superbowl? My brain tells me it was the Patriots, and it might have “tagged” that for me when I went to sleep on one bitter night last February, maybe by creating a picture of Christmas carolers throwing flattened volleyballs at a guy in prison stripes eating a bowl of chicken soup. That’s Pete Carol, head coach of the Seahawks, a lynch mob for RB Marshawn Lynch, deflated balls and a criminal for the Patriot’s so-called deflate-gate scandal, a volleyball or a “Wilson” for QB Russell, and chicken soup for Bill Belichick, the Patriot’s head coach.
(I’m pretty sure, if this theory is accurate, our brains are much more subtle than the above scenario.)
So, given these theories, I for one embrace sleep and and encourage it in everyone. As I said above, I am never impressed when someone tells me how little they’ve slept (in hospitals, I always ask residents: how long since you last sleep, and how much did you sleep? If the answer is not satisfactory, I ask for another doctor). Teenagers need to sleep in— it’s essential to their brain health. And this is why newborns sleep up to 20 hours a day.
So every nap— and I take a lot— is like an IQ boost. I’m not lazy, I’m a genius!