Its been a few years, but I have read some great articles about sleep and attended a few related lectures.
Do we really need sleep? Maybe not.
I read about a European lady that only slept for 45minutes per night. She came to the US (forget which university) for a sleep study. On the first night she didn't sleep. The second night was 20min and each night after was about 45min each. She was just as normal as everyone else, just needed less sleep.
I read about another sleep study with a teenage boy. He stayed awake for 6 days (IIRC). On the last day he was playing a video game (baseball) against one of the scientists and still managed to beat him allmost every time. When it was over, he slept 18 hours and then was right back to his normal schedule.
Why do we NEED sleep? I haven't found a good answer to that question. Why DO we sleep? One of my old professors brought up an interesting reason. He said that just like many other things, it evolves over thousands of years based on need. When the cave man was running around avoiding dinosaurs, he was at a real disadvatage at night time. They didn't have Surefire, so he was often easy prey for a dinosaur. What did the caveman do to protect himself? He went inside a dark cave and laid down very still until daylight came. You can picture how this turned into what we call sleep thousands of years later.
How many of you have had to drastically change your amount of sleep or sleep patterns; e.g. new job, school/work, new born, etc ?
When I was in school and working full time, there were some semesters that I would only be able to sleep 3-4hours per day. Coming down from 7/day, it seemed really difficult. I was tired all the time. However, after a week or two to adjust to the new conditions, my body was better able to handle the 3-4hours.
I think that sleep is not really as important as many folks believe. I think we can all get by with much less of it. I'm not truly convinced that we even need it.