Sleep: More Than Brain Rest, a Full-Body Reset

Harvard Medical School research challenges our understanding of sleep. While long considered mere brain rest, sleep deprivation experiments showed that fruit flies and mice died within ten days due to a buildup of reactive oxygen species in their guts. Sleep resets the brain, clearing neurotoxins, consolidating memories, and regulating genes, metabolism, and hormones for bodily homeostasis. Even organisms without central nervous systems, like hydra, exhibit sleep-like behavior, indicating that sleep's function transcends the brain and is crucial for whole-body health, reducing cardiovascular disease and cancer risk.