• Question: Why do people sleep and why do we HAVE to grow???

    Asked by to Dre, Charli, Heather, Oliver, Becky on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Charlotte Flavell

      Charlotte Flavell answered on 20 Jun 2014:


      Hi again sirnyancat22 🙂

      You sound like you don’t want to grow up – I can sympathise with that but don’t worry, I promise it’s not that bad!

      First of all, sleep. All human beings need sleep. The record for not sleeping is 264 hours, or about 11 days, and was set by a teenager called Randy Gardner in 1965. It’s not recommended though as you can start seeing the problems of too little sleep after just a few hours, including getting confused and seeing things that aren’t there! After a while your body will take over and you’ll have microsleeps – times where you’re not properly asleep but you just black out for a bit. This can be very dangerous if you’re driving – people who are very tired can be as bad as drivers who are drunk!

      We don’t know exactly why we need to sleep, but we do know that when we nod off our brains keep on going. In fact, we think they are re-organising themselves, maybe putting everything you’ve done that day into nicely ordered memories – like putting all your things away at the end of the day.

      As for growing, like ageing, we can’t help it. It’s a natural process that starts off when you are an egg in your mum’s tum and and you can’t get off that roller coaster ride until it’s finished 🙂

      As it happens, sleep and growth go together as if you don’t get enough sleep you wont grow properly – so get to bed on time!

    • Photo: Rebecca Williams

      Rebecca Williams answered on 20 Jun 2014:


      Hi sirnyancat22,
      I think Charli has answered your question very well. I used to think that people needed to sleep because they need to rest, but it turns out that we don’t burn that much more energy awake than we do when we’re asleep! Like Charli says, sleep is all about your brain sorting itself out.

      I need a lot of sleep – do you? I like to sleep a lot, its one of my favourite things to do! 😉

      If we didn’t grow, we’d all be babies for all our lives, and that’d be very silly! Who would look after the babies and run the world if there were no grown ups?! 😯

    • Photo: Andrea Cristini

      Andrea Cristini answered on 20 Jun 2014:


      I have no idea why we need to sleep, but I do know like Charli said that it can be very bad if you don’t.

      When you are a baby, you are still developing your senses and getting used to the world around you. We grow then grow into teenagers and adults as part of evolution. From an evolutionary point we grow up to become strong and aware of our surroundings, so that we can go out and hunt for food. We don’t need to do this nowadays though as we can just go to Tescos and buy a pot noodle! We also grow into big, strong adults so that we can make babies and protect them from predators. We don’t have to worry about that now either, as the only scary predators are kept in zoos.

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