Sleep as a Restorative Process: Human Clues

This chapter examines the proposition that sleep is for growth and tissue restoration, and that sleep provides optimal conditions for protein synthesis, and how the balance between degradation and synthesis can shift in favor of synthesis.

Abstract

This chapter examines the proposition that sleep is for growth and tissue restoration, and that sleep provides optimal conditions for protein synthesis. Protein synthesis and degradation proceed all the time, but they are not always equal. The metabolic conditions of wakefulness allow degradation to have priority, as indeed would be essential to cope with emergencies. In sleep it would seem that the balance between degradation and synthesis can shift in favor of synthesis. The proposition that sleep is associated with tissue restoration does not deny that sleep as a behavior may be advantageous in its own right. It would be expected that in evolution, species would so evolve that their sleep habits would be optimal for survival. Species that are constantly liable to being killed by other animals will survive better if they stay awake more. The belief that sleep is associated with tissue restoration does not rest upon assumptions about the length of time needed to be spent in sleep either by the individual or the species. It would merely be expected that there would be a broad relationship of longer or more intensely restorative sleep to counter-balance greater waking degradation.