I love stuff like this.

Now, take it a step farther.

Why Sleep Science is Cool!!

· ─ We spend a third of our lives doing it and we still don't fully know why. Like the leading theories are good but none of them are the answer and that's insane for something so universal

· ─ Every single system in your body (Immune, metabolic, cardiovascular, neurological, hormonal) is affected by sleep and yet we treat it like optional DLC and "hustle culture" made skipping it a personality trait. the audacity...

· ─ The glymphatic system (your brain literally washes itself at night, flushing out toxic waste including amyloid plaques linked to alzheimer's) was only discovered in 2013. 2013!! we had iphones before we knew that

· ─ Dreams are a whole sub-mystery nested inside the bigger mystery, I mean.. we don't know why we dream, what they mean functionally, why they feel so real, or why your brain decided 3am was the time to process your childhood dentist

· ─ REM vs non-REM do completely different jobs and we're still mapping what those jobs are (Memory consolidation, emotional processing, motor learning, cellular repair) it's not one thing it's an entire night shift of workers

· ─ Sleep deprivation research is some of the most ethically complicated stuff in science because you cannot fully ethically replicate what happens to humans when they're severely deprived, so a lot of what we know came from... not great historical contexts

· ─ The things we've learned from deprivation anyway are genuinely terrifying. hallucinations within days. immune collapse. personality changes. the brain starts eating itself (literally, autophagy goes haywire). it is not a soft consequence

· ─ Links to alzheimer's, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, immune function, learning, memory, reaction time, emotional regulation, at some point you stop listing what sleep affects and just say "everything. it affects EVERYTHING"

· ─ Chronotypes are real and genetically influenced (morning larks and night owls aren't a vibe they're biology) and teenagers shift 2-3 hours later during puberty by design, and yet school starts at 7am, and that is a policy choice someone made, and that someone was wrong

We have basically no good pharmacological solution for sleep. The stuff that knocks you out mostly suppresses the stages you actually need. We are so behind on this

· ─ Animals do it too, even the ones where it seems actively suicidal (prey animals, dolphins, birds on migration)... so whatever sleep is doing it's worth the evolutionary risk of unconsciousness, and that tells you something huge about how non-negotiable it is

after i finished the red wheelbarrow

and more

that's it ty this is my fav show and most reletable shi to me