Argumentative Essay On Sleep

Sleep is a universal constant between humans. Although it is so orthodox, if you really think about it, sleeping is actually quite odd. When we start our sleep cycle, the body becomes paralyzed and unconscious thus making us vulnerable. There must be a reason why organisms use sleep and why it isn't meaningless. Research in this area has been slow to take off; however, no one knows exactly the concepts behind sleep. There are several intriguing theories on sleep and why we need it. One of the four popular theories on why we need sleep, is that, “Sleep allows the body to repair cells damaged by metabolic byproducts called free radicals.” says David Prober, assistant professor of biology and an expert on how genes and neurons regulate sleep. “The production of the highly reactive substances increases during the day, when metabolism is faster. Scientists have found that the expression of genes involved in fixing cells gets kicked up a notch during sleep. This hypothesis is consistent with the fact smaller animals, who tend to have higher metabolic rates, tend to sleep more.” An example of this would be that a mouse gets close to twenty hours of sleep a day, only spending approximately three hours awake, while a larger animal; giraffe or elephant, only need two to three hours a day to sleep, spending over twenty hours awake. …show more content…
One possible fuel that is burned is ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) that creates adenosine when burned. When ATP is low and adenosine is high, it tells the body that is is time to sleep. While a postdoc at Harvard University, Prober helped lead in some experiments including a zebrafish given drugs that kept adenosine from attaching onto receptor molecules, thus causing the fish to sleep less. When the experiment was reversed, and the fish was given drugs of the opposite effect, it slept more. These studies have expanded since then, at