Saliva streaming from your oral orifice. Boogers caking your optical corners.
Revolting respiratory noises coming from your unconscious body while the world goes on without you…
Sleep’s about the most the idle, vile, and pointless thing you can do – right?
Plus it punts the pedestal from under even the most Goddess-like of us.
Not necessarily, says science.
(Well, minus the “Waking up in heinous” fact we all hafta face every A.M. after a good rest)
In fact, I happened upon a fascinating Huffpost article last night as I was trying to (what else but) fall asleep. I lay there, thinking about all the stuff I had to get done that I could be doing right then if my indolent body and brain hadn’t rebelled against my mind’s reign in a rain of their fatigue machine gunfire. (Like the second workout I’d skipped.) And, as I scrolled through my feed, that’s when I saw it. That our brain’s actually work harder when we’re asleep than when we’re awake. Sure, our consciousness may clock out, but the wrinkly meat that lives in our heads stay on the treadmill long after we hit the pillow with our tails between our legs. Arms, legs, and abs day is every damn night for this silent beast, working in the shadows.
At the same time, although our mind grinds through the night, it needs that time outta our conscious control just as much as we need the work that it does. Presumably to deal with all the the thought induced stress toxins (And food. And possible chemical ones, for that matter.) that we assault it with once we come to. And actually that – toxins – are one of the first big tasks it takes on during lay down time:
1.) Brain Drain
Much like those detox teas you might be downing between workouts, our brain does something similar. When we’re snoozing, there’s a whole cerebral septic system ensuing unbeknownst to you or I. Scientists have only discovered this within the past couple’ve years, but what it does is flush out all those aforementioned toxins accrued throughout the day. (Or days, if you’ve been short on sleep.)
Next, it tries to make sense of the world.
2.) Brain Train
If you’re a fighter in training, you may do a lotta shadow boxing. Over and over, you rehearse the drills you’ve learned till they stick and become second nature. Similarly, our brains spend downtime catching up on memories. While our flesh rests, the organ that lives in your head is rehearsing memories over ‘n over again from that day so they can be transferred from our short term to long term memory.
Then, after tattooing in our memories comes order.
3.) Brain Arranging
When I was little, I always noticed my dad would keep a running log – cataloging his stats from the gym that day. These days, people (and by people, I mean me) tend to share that with their friends and binary buddies they’ve never met on social media. Either way, it’s a nice means for some of us to categorize our exercise. Either for self betterment or encouragement. Our brains tend to do the former thing in the evening – quietly organizing all the mental deadlifts so that we can make sense of yesterday’s chaos come sunrise. Which is probably why they tend to say, “Everything looks better in the morning.” Sleep gives us a nice high-def panorama first thing in the A.M. versus the cognitive kaleidoscope we went to bed with.
And, finally, immunity:
4.) Brain Safe
In flu and cold season, med experts’ll often tell you that the best thing for you is a good workout. Why? Because it boosts immunity. Halts invader enemies in their tracks. Likewise, when we zonk out, our brain’s also muscling up, battling bad guys, chewing its after-gym protein by the spoonful, and thus building up immunity for you ‘n me. Sleep’s an excellent opportunity to fortify our defenses.
So, there we have it.
Our cephalic gym rat’s doing push ups under the moonlight while you ‘n I slip into a consciousness coma.
Who knew such a passive non-activity could be so productive?