Sleep; let the Brain rest.

Why we sleep?

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All animal sleeps, even worms sleep. Sleep must be important but we don't know why. One theory says that sleep allows us to replenish the molecules that are need to transfer energy between our cells. Another theory is that sleeping allows the body to repair damaged cells. A third idea is that sleeping is when our brains have a chance to clean our junk that has accumulated in them during the day, just like clearing junk files and cache memory which are of no use. Fourth theory is that sleeping is necessary for our brains to be able to run through the information they received during the day and file it accordingly for later use, just like we defragment our computer hard drive.

We know one thing is that sleep deprivation can have consequences like paranoia and even death.
But it still does not help us discover what sleep does? 

Deprivation: an act or instance of withholding or taking something away from someone or something : an act or instance of depriving : LOSS

Paranoia: is the irrational and persistent feeling that people are 'out to get you'. The three main types of paranoia include paranoid personality disorder, delusional (formerly paranoid) disorder and paranoid schizophrenia

Why do we dream?

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Based on the few theories dreaming include the following:

• When we dream we are rehearsing our behavior in threatening situation, that's why so many dreams are horrifying.
• Throwing out the rubbish from the day's experiences, makes dreaming unorganized.
• Dreams are when brain is resetting in more useful way.
• Dreams are our form of psychotherapy. 
• Dreams are just the result of our brains freewheeling after a hard day and mean nothing at all.  

We really don't know why we sleep and why we dream.

Sleeping and learning

In 1950s some successful marketing was done around the theme of sleep-learning. Put a tape with a lesson on it, feel asleep, and in the morning you would have learned at least some of the information played on tape while you were sleeping. Scientific investigations, however, thoroughly discredited the idea. You don't learn anything if you are really asleep.

One Typical test involved teaching people something in the morning, then testing them twelve hours later. Thier results were compared to group who had learned the same thing at night, then had a good night sleep and were tested again in the morning after twelve hours. The result of second group were 20% better than the first group. One could argue that it was merely being awake and doing something else that caused forgetfulness in the under-performing group. Similar improvements in performance have also been found in animals that are taught something then allowed to sleep.

Reading good book before sleep will be a good habit.