This week’s topic is something I’ve touched upon before in previous podcasts as it’s come up multiple times; in particular with regards to fat loss and stress reduction. But, sleep goes way beyond that in terms of how paramount proper sleep is to optimal health. And since 45% of the country is still chronically sleep deprived, it’s an even more relevant topic of conversation. Today’s podcast we’re going to be talking about the top 5 reasons sleep is so important. But before we get into those reasons, let’s discuss why we sleep to begin with. The question of why we sleep has been something scientists have pondered for centuries. There are a very small number of things that we cannot live without. Oxygen, food, water, and then there is sleep. That’s a small list, so sleep must be pretty important. If you forcibly keep an animal awake for a long enough time, it will die. To be honest, we still don’t know the exact reasons why we sleep, because from an evolutionary perspective it makes absolutely zero sense. You’re way more likely to be killed or robbed while you’re asleep, so it creates a huge disadvantage to have to sleep. All we have at this point are a number of theories, and they’re all true to some degree but there isn’t really just one definitive answer on how sleep came to be wired into our systems. One of the earliest theories of sleep was just that we fell asleep after we had eaten and taken care of all our duties and there was just nothing else to do. Another was that it was to conserve energy because the food was scarce and if we were awake too long we’d run out of food. Obviously, those theories aren’t very popular now and we’ve moved on to better theories backed by science. The restorative theory of sleep posits that sleep serves to “restore” what is lost in the body while we are awake. A lot of the restorative functions like muscle growth, tissue repair, protein synthesis, and growth hormone release occur mostly or sometimes exclusively while we’re asleep. In addition to that, while we’re awake the brain builds up what’s known as adenosine, which is a by-product of brain cell activity. When we have a big buildup of adenosine, that leads to us feeling tired. Side note, caffeine consumption counter-acts the tired-inducing feeling of adenosine and keeps us alert. But, the only time we can clear this adenosine from our system is when we sleep. So, we still don’t have a definitive answer as to WHY we sleep but at this point it’s an unanswerable question. We’re never going to be able to answer exactly why, but we know what happens when we don’t sleep and from that we can easily see why it’s so important that we do. So, after discussing some of those theories, let’s get into the top 5 science-based reasons of why sleep is so important. Be sure to follow my social media pages to stay up to date with new posts, announcments and more! Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC70zNelRS5evBRcKZ-k3I0w Apple Music: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/doc-may-diet-podcast/id1566469274 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4VVgvaPcBHcdTDA6W1LRO0?si=mVeYGQ-iTsymQ-E0D36G4w&dl_branch=1 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/doc-may-diet Allow Media: https://allow.media/