Russel Foster: Why Do We Sleep?

     Russel Foster could not have made his point any clearer: sleep is essential. Despite the modern view of sleep as a waste of time, not only does it improve mental functions as a whole; sleep deprivation causes a myriad of problems, even some potentially dangerous ones. 

     The shift in attitude towards the idea of sleep over the past several centuries is incredible. In Shakespeare's time, it was hailed as a sweet and valuable "golden chain," yet by the time Thomas Edison rolls around, it's being condemned as "a criminal waste of time." In this modern day, we view sleep as an impediment to our extensive to-do lists and busy schedules.

     How did this enormous paradigm shift occur? Why? Perhaps it's because in Shakespeare's day, they had no choice but to sleep when it was dark unless they wanted to be carrying around oil lamps. Once electricity was harnessed and we had the power to create artificial day, people began to eagerly take advantage of it, neglecting their sacred sleep. 

     Perhaps this shift is in part due to how work has changed as well. Centuries or even just decades ago, work stayed at the workplace. Work was for work and was a very separate thing from home. Now that we have the ability to connect to our work wherever we want, we're taking it home with us. Not only do students have more homework, but employees in many fields are expected to continue work at home - or at least could not reasonably finish their monumental tasks solely during the hours at the workplace. 

     This change in sleep habits is undoubtedly a contributor to the skyrocketing occurrence of obesity as well. Sleep deprivation causes people to crave carbs, particularly sugar, in order to help keep them awake. Stress from more time-demanding jobs leads to less sleep which leads to more stress from sleep deprivation, causing a destructive and costly cycle.

     So sleep is important. Foster drilled that into our heads with many points. But in a society that ignores this, how can we allow ourselves to get as much sleep as we need? Our society does not exactly accommodate the time for what Foster considers to be adequate sleep, as I somewhat previously touched on. Not only does it not accommodate time, but it actually shuns those who do get enough sleep. Many people today would consider someone who actually got to sleep for 8 hours as lazy or at least resent them for it. Instead of taking pride in how well-rested one is, people boast about how little sleep they've gotten in the past week. It would actually be a tremendous effort to get enough sleep in Foster’s terms. He defines too little sleep as when you need an alarm clock to wake yourself up. I can’t even imagine sleeping enough every day that I didn’t have to forcefully drag myself out of bed. How would I even have time to do everything I needed to? But I suppose that’s the point. Until society recognizes the importance of sleep and correspondingly reduces the demands it places on people, most of the population is going to walk around sleep deprived. While some might say that’s never going to happen since you’d be asking businesses to lessen their productivity by reducing demand on employees, others – perhaps including Foster – would argue that a well-rested population is much more productive and creative than a sleep-deprived one anyway.

     Public schools are one example of how the current structure of society inhibits proper sleep. Most high schools start at around 7:30, which is really just a cruel joke because, as Foster said, teenagers are hardwired to go to sleep late and wake up late. Right now, most teenagers get 5 out of a recommended 9 hours of sleep on a school night. In order to get those nine hours, high schoolers would have to go to sleep around 9:30…Yeah that’s going to happen. Unless the system changes, it would be nearly impossible for a teen to get their “required” amount of sleep. And that is really quite ironic, considering sleep deprivation decreases critical thinking skills, creativity, and the ability to learn, all of which are required at school. Our current society makes it almost impossible to allow our brains to function at their full capacity.

     Getting away from how society’s view on sleep has changed and how that makes it nearly impossible to get enough sleep, Foster made a number of other interesting points. Sleep consumes 36% of an average person’s life. That’s one third of their life. One third. You’re sixty? Great, you’ve only been conscious for forty years of it. Isn’t that incredible? Out of my 18 years of life, I’ve really only “lived” for 12 of those years. 6 entire years have just been spent sacked out under some blankets. And for such a fundamental process, something everyone has to do in order to survive and something we’ve probably been doing since early in our evolution, we don’t know why we do it yet. For all of the technology we have and sleep experiments that have been conducted, we have yet to know its purpose with certainty. Foster also points out that there is a difference between sleep and sedation. This made me wonder exactly what that difference is. Does sedation just put certain parts of the brain to sleep? How does sleep medicine – which induces true sleep, not just sedation – trigger such a complex state that involves parts of the brain that aren’t even turned on when we’re awake?

     And going off on quite a tangent, all of this talk about sleeping got me started thinking about dreaming. If part of the reason for sleep is to store memories, are dreams a result of this shuffling and filing process? Why do we dream? And a question that’s perplexed me for a long time: why can’t we remember some of our dreams? Or why do we wake up remembering bits but slowly completely lose the ability to recall even the slightest detail?

     It seems sleep is quite a mystery.


This blog is based on a TED Talk by Russel Foster: http://www.ted.com/talks/russell_foster_why_do_we_sleep.html