There's a lot of scientific research and almost endless theories on the role and importance of sleep in humans and other living creatures. Not quoting any specific research but anecdotally it sounds like a couple of the key points of why sleep is useful (beyond "curing tiredness"):  - Repair and rebuilding the body on a cellular level  - Neurological (brain) function, including building and "storing" long term memory It could be interesting (thought experiment) ponder if reducing sleep overall might lower life expectancy (ignoring accidental death) Maybe there is an upper limit to "active awake time" for any particular person. e.g. someone who's life expectancy is 80 years, and assuming 7 hours sleep daily (56.67 years awake) if they self limited to 4 hours sleep daily would they still only achieve the same number of years awake? Therefore reducing their life expectancy to 68 years instead of 80? Hard to say, but I think we should sleep on it.
There's a lot of scientific research and almost endless theories on the role and importance of sleep in humans and other living creatures. Not quoting any specific research but anecdotally it sounds like a couple of the key points of why sleep is useful (beyond "curing tiredness"):  - Repair and rebuilding the body on a cellular level  - Neurological (brain) function, including building and "storing" long term memory It could be interesting (thought experiment) ponder if reducing sleep overall might lower life expectancy (ignoring accidental death) Maybe there is an upper limit to "active awake time" for any particular person. e.g. someone who's life expectancy is 80 years, and assuming 7 hours sleep daily (56.67 years awake) if they self limited to 4 hours sleep daily would they still only achieve the same number of years awake? Therefore reducing their life expectancy to 68 years instead of 80? Hard to say, but I think we should sleep on it.

There's a lot of scientific research and almost endless theories on the role and importance of sleep in humans and other living creatures. Not quoting any specific research but anecdotally it sounds like a couple of the key points of why sleep is useful (beyond "curing tiredness"):  - Repair and rebuilding the body on a cellular level  - Neurological (brain) function, including building and "storing" long term memory It could be interesting (thought experiment) ponder if reducing sleep overall might lower life expectancy (ignoring accidental death) Maybe there is an upper limit to "active awake time" for any particular person. e.g. someone who's life expectancy is 80 years, and assuming 7 hours sleep daily (56.67 years awake) if they self limited to 4 hours sleep daily would they still only achieve the same number of years awake? Therefore reducing their life expectancy to 68 years instead of 80? Hard to say, but I think we should sleep on it.

There's a lot of scientific research and almost endless theories on the role and importance of sleep in humans and other living creatures. Not quoting any specific research but anecdotally it sounds like a couple of the key points of why sleep is useful (beyond "curing tiredness"):  - Repair and rebuilding the body on a cellular level  - Neurological (brain) function, including building and "storing" long term memory It could be interesting (thought experiment) ponder if reducing sleep overall might lower life expectancy (ignoring accidental death) Maybe there is an upper limit to "active awake time" for any particular person. e.g. someone who's life expectancy is 80 years, and assuming 7 hours sleep daily (56.67 years awake) if they self limited to 4 hours sleep daily would they still only achieve the same number of years awake? Therefore reducing their life expectancy to 68 years instead of 80? Hard to say, but I think we should sleep on it.