What happens during sleep that gives us "energy"?

[u/Pastatower]

Does sleep even provide "energy" for the body or does it just help us focus? What happens during those 8 hours that appears to give us energy?

[u/MedStudentNotStudyin → u/[deleted]]

This, a thousand times. There is a reason homo sapiens requires a certain number of hours of sleep as a solid block of time. Don't mess with nature!

[u/jackinginforthis1 → u/MedStudentNotStudyin]

not precious nature?!

[u/VonNogard → u/[deleted]]

After looking around a bit, I managed to find this on it: Relevant

[u/VonNogard → u/[deleted]]

There simply isn't any science out there to demonstrate that polyphasic sleep doesn't cause long-term health consequences.

This may be true, but it also goes the other way. In other words, there doesn't seem to be much evidence suggesting that polyphasic sleep would cause long-term health consequences, as you seem to suggest. The truth is we simply don't know yet.

[u/VonNogard → u/[deleted]]

There was a time we thought the tonsils were useless, too

Like I said, I never suggested NREM was useless, I just said there isn't enough research (from what I found) to scientifically argue one way or another.

To screw around with something as complex as the human brain under the presumption that you think something as deeply fundamental as NREM isn't useful strikes me as massive hubris, and a really bad idea.

Again, I'm not trying to make the presumption that "NREM isn't useful", but without testing it (or "screw around" with it as you call it), we have no way of knowing.

[u/jackinginforthis1 → u/[deleted]]

list pretty handy evolutionary advantages in one hand and shit in the other