Stuff You Should Know - Is sleep that important?

Episode Date: September 9, 2008

Sleep is one of those funny things about being a human being -- you just have to do it. Have you ever wondered why? Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about the importance of sleep. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot who would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Brad Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Howdy, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Sitting across from me is Charles Chuck Bryant. It's the usual day here at HowStuffWorks. Thanks for joining us. What's going on, Chuck? Chuck. Hey. Hey, buddy. You ready to podcast? Mommy? No, no. No, Josh. Oh, mommy. Yeah. Hey,

Chuck. I'm right there with you. Chuck's a little sleepy here today. So am I. I actually am a little sleep deprived. I can tell. I don't like it, Chuck. I feel a little dirty. I smell a little bit. I get this weird thing growing on my jawline that won't go away. Yeah. I just feel unhealthy from not having had enough sleep lately. How about you? Yeah, you know, I was actually just finding people. I wasn't awake. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that. I was just finding people. I wasn't really asleep. But I am a bit tired. I'm going out of town this week. So I've been staying up a little later, getting things ready. And I'm in the same way. A little rundown, a little foggy headed. You know, it's kind of funny that we should both be this sleepy on the same day we're going to discuss

an article you wrote is sleep that important. Right. You would almost think that we'd planned it. Yeah. Yeah. I actually didn't, you know, lose sleep in preparation for this. If you did. That's off to me. Yeah, exactly. So Chuck, what I got from this article that you wrote, it's a fine, fine article, by the way, that the University of Chicago is the place to be if you are interested in dedicating your career to sleep research. Yeah. Is that the case? Yeah. And well, yeah, they do a lot, but there's tons of sleep research out there. This is one of those articles that almost wrote itself because there's one thing that scientists like to study, it's sleep. Yeah. Yeah. And the funny thing is, though, is we still don't have any definitive answers for

exactly why we sleep. Yeah. I mean, it sounds kind of odd to pose that question, but we don't know why we sleep other than to say, I know I mentioned the article, one of the old jokes that doctors say is that sleep is to cure sleepiness. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really the best answer they have at this point still. And it makes sense too. But lucky for you, after having been assigned to sleep that important for the site, you were able to find out that we know plenty about all the bad things that happen when you don't get enough sleep. Yeah. And there are lots of them. All right. Well, you know, give us a couple, will you? Well, I know, just let me quickly say, before this is all in the last, you know, 50 years or so, because before the early 1950s, scientists thought it was

just shutdown mode. And that like your brain slept and it was just your body's just catching up on all the, you know, your organs, they might even put your organs shut down, except for your heart. Not true. No, no, that's a really bad thing when your organs shut down. Yeah, that's not true at all. Because a doctor years later, hooked his son up to a machine, a brain wave machine. Eugene Azurinsky of surprise, surprise, the University of Chicago, Chicago. And he found that the brain actually there were periods where the brain actually sped up its activity. Oh, really? Yeah, which is REM sleep, REM sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep. Exactly. Got you. Okay. So all of a sudden what that's just like this, this huge hyperspeed launch forward in sleep research,

right? Yeah, the time it was, you know, they found out that during REM sleep, you know, your eyes would trick, I'm sorry, your eyes would twitch and the limbs and facial muscles would move. It's kind of unsettling to see somebody in REM sleep. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart.

He could do no wrong. Like he was a god. But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life? Were the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and often crossed? He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in a dancer's experience of executing it. Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. So, so we figured out basically that, you know, not only are we shut down, but we're more active in some areas of our brain. But most of the research since then has been done on what happens if you don't get enough sleep and the health impacts. Right. Well, one of the things that I understand about REM sleep is there's a theory that basically that's the stage where our brain is sorting through all the information we've taken in throughout the day. Yeah, that's one theory. And kind of filing it away. Sure. This seems pretty logical to me, actually. Yeah, that would make sense. Unfortunately, it's nothing they can really prove. But I think that's a pretty good theory because you take in things all day long. And the analogy I make in

the article is that it's like a computer desktop. And you're just filing everything away. And then when we sleep is when our brain kind of does the big master file, moves whatever needs to be in the recycle bin to the recycle bin. And everything else is put on the hard drive, basically. I think Chuck and I subscribe to that theory because we both share common hatred of a cluttered desktop. Right. Yeah, it's terrible. It's really annoying. Yeah, it is. It throws me off. Well, you know, REM sleep after that discovery really kind of it became the superstar of sleep studies, didn't it? Right. And for a long time, they assumed that if you don't have REM sleep, you are going to suffer memory loss and all sorts of other terrible things.

It sounds like from later studies, and actually this terrible accident that happened to an Israeli man who was hit in the head by shrapnel suffered a brain trauma and was incapable of achieving REM sleep was still able to go ahead and, you know, move on to graduate from law school. Wow. Which kind of undermines the idea that not getting REM sleep, you know, impairs your memory. Not getting REM sleep does screw with you physiologically though, right? Right. I know just sleep deprivation in general is no good for you at all. And we're talking we'll shorten your life. Tell them about the three week lab rat study. Oh, yeah, the three, the infamous three week lab rats study. Kind of so unsettling. Yeah, the lab rats that would normally live for three

years would die in three weeks without sleep. And you know, there's only one way to find that out definitively. Best to poke these rats and keep them alive. For three straight weeks. Can you imagine a worse existence? No, and I can't imagine being the poker of the rat either. That's probably no fun. Well, think about it. They had to have pokers work on shifts or else there'd be pokers who had to stay up for three straight weeks. So maybe people were poking the pokers and about an unfair advantage. It's an endless chain. Yeah. Yeah. So sleep, not only will it kill lab rats, and that's if they don't sleep at all. Right. So that's the far end of the spectrum. But that's still surprising. Three weeks, you know, equals death. Yeah, that's pretty scary.

But some of the ways of death, some of the things that you can develop, like what, hypertension? Yeah, hypertension. I think Parkinson's disease you can get if you sleep more than nine hours. Too much or too little. Yeah. The trick is, I mean, everyone's a little bit different, but the trick is to get that right amount of sleep. And they say it's generally for adults between six and eight hours. And too little can lead to a bunch of problems. Too much can lead to a bunch of problems. I found one get another University of Chicago study that basically followed, I think, 10 healthy men in their 20s. I think they were college students. And they got four hours of sleep per night. And after six days, they were in a prediabetic state

after six days of just getting four hours of sleep. Wow. So yeah, apparently it can have some pretty bad health effects on you. Yeah. That's crazy. I know I was also looking into polyphasic sleep, which is aka Da Vinci sleep, which I know a lot of people know about Da Vinci was famous for taking 20 to 30 minute naps over a 24 hour period. And that was how he got his sleep. Did you ever see that Seinfeld where Kramer tries that? I did. It does not pan out well for him. No. And it's probably not. I know that mainstream science doesn't endorse it, although a lot of people are big believers in it. They have websites about polyphasic sleep where, you know, they just think it's the best thing since real sleep. Well, that's kind of the things

that you, one of the things that you pointed out in the article was that sleep is so different for everybody in demand for sleep or, you know, not needing it, that it's almost impossible to really conclusively study sleep, right? And come up with answers across the board, correct? Right. But there are some generalities, right? Like how many, how many hours of sleep do I need? I'm 32. You need between six and eight. I mean, that's the wheelhouse for everybody. If you get less than that, actually Parkinson's is less or more than that. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure. It can make you stupid. Students perform less on test scores if they don't get enough sleep. Well, check, check, and check for me,

because I get like nine or 10 hours a night. Yeah, that's, that's, you're probably, a little much. Yeah, that's no good. You need to wake up earlier, my friend. Okay, thanks. But yeah, aside from all those things, fatalities, 55% of all drowsy driving fatalities occur in kids basically under the age of 25. So it's not, you know, I think about old people, you know, falling asleep off the side of the road. This is happening more with, with kids these days and, you know, it's because kids are sleep deprived. You go to college, you're out from under the thumb of your folks, and you don't sleep. You're up partying all night. Right. Well, plus also, I mean, it's, it's kind of a common knowledge that older, older adults need less sleep, hence

early bird specials. And you know, they're up in Adam a lot earlier, that kind of thing. Right. On the other end of the spectrum, babies need like newborns, what do they need? Like 10 to 16 to 18 hours? Yeah, 16 to 18 hours for the first year of life. Yeah. And then I think of the three month mark or so is when babies start to recognize the circadian rhythm, which we've talked about, which is basically day as day, night as night, you sleep at night, you're up during the day. But they're still sleeping 10 to 12 hours and then napping a few hours on top of that. And I noticed the tone in your article made it sound like you're a little envious of babies getting to sleep that much. Are you sleep deprived? You know, I wake up pretty easily

and I'm an early riser. So I'm pretty good. And do you, do you experience daytime sleepiness? Like do you hit the wall at like three or four in the afternoon? Not really. You really don't see. I read an article that found that only 40% of people, I think it was in your article actually, 40% of people suffer from daytime sleepiness, right? So I'm like, what are the other 60% doing that they're just feeling so good all the time? I don't get it because I get, I hit a wall at like three. I have to start drinking coffee again for the second time that day. And not the second cup, fucking the second time. And each time consists of like three or four cups of coffee. Right. What am I doing wrong, Chuck? I don't know. Maybe they're taking tons and tons of happy

drugs or something. I don't know these people. Maybe so. Well, because, because, you know, I generally get to get a little sleepy during the day as well. Okay, good. Thank you. There, I said it. Thank you, Chuck. I just, I don't understand why you couldn't have been up front at the beginning. Well, that's it for this one, obviously. Chuck's nodding off and frankly, I'm about to hit the wall again myself. So why don't you go check out his sleep that important. Believe Chuck and I, it is. Stick around though to find out what article makes Chuck and I hungry for Swedish meatballs right after this. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning,

Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart. He could do no wrong. Like he was a god. But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life? Were the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and often crossed? He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you. Only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in a dancer's experience of executing it.

Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take America's public enemy, number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it.

Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chuck, you want to tell them? Can you can you come to again? What? Here you go. I'm going to just bring you up today. I asked the people to stick around and find out what article makes us hungry for Swedish meatballs. So we already podcasted?

Yeah. Yeah, we're almost at the end there, buddy. Just hanging there. Just tell them what's the article. I think most people probably, this is a giveaway, anyone who's ever been to Ikea knows that they serve up and sell some yummy Swedish meatballs. And Chuck and I are not paid in any way, shape, or form by Ikea for this endorsement. We just like their meatballs that much. Although I think I speak for Chuck, as well as myself, when I say we kind of secretly hope Ikea will send us some for mentioning them. Yeah, they'd be great. Yeah. Well, they can go ahead and email us at the podcast if they want our address.

In the meantime, you can go check out how Ikea works great article on howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at howstuffworks.com. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Chuck, I'm walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1968, five black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school

in Mount Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter Josie Duffy-Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children and how those five girls changed everything. Listen to Unreformed on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.