Why do I require sleep?

when you sleep you drift into a state of REM sleep which is when your in a very deep sleep; this completley rests your body. Just resting keeps higher brain function and dosent give the brain enough time to recharge.

There is some good information here

so you can be active the next day without your bones being all week

Sleep deprivation doesn’t cause bones to *weaken, but it will produce muscle and joint aches and pains——>induced Fibromyalgia (Google it). It’s part of nature’s plan for the whole human package. Why do we need to eat when we send part of our food down the GI tract and then out? Why don’t women just lay eggs and let the men do their little squirt thing once a year?. Why does it take 9 months for a human foetus to gestate?

@gailcalled My daughter suffers from fibromyalgia. I have never heard of sleep deprivation as a cause. Although it can worsen her condition if she doesn’t get enough sleep. Is that what you meant to say?

try going without it. That should answer your question!

@Scamp: As I am sure you know, of the ways of helping fibromyalgia patients is to try meds and techniques that make the patient’s sleep patterns more like normal ones.

And yes, it is not the root cause but does worsen the condition.. What I was trying to say was this. Sometimes healthy students are asked to volunteer for sleep deprivation experiments. They are awakened, I believe (I am doing this from memory) during REM sleep for several days in a row. They then develop, temporarily, the aches and pains of Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or whatever the name du jour is.

As far as I know, cause is unknown, altho in my case, it is exacerbated by a curvature of the spine that has given me chronic lower back pain. That’s where most of my aches are.

No fun, tho. Sorry.

Gail

@gail I found a couple of places that talk about the study you mentioned. CFS and FMS have overlapping symptoms, but they are considered two separate ailments. One of the separating factors is the level of substance P. In one of the articles I am sharing, it says that FMS is associated with a lack of growth hormones, and sleep deprivation can affect the production of them, so I am guessing that has a lot to do with the symptoms manifesting during the study.

Thanks so much for bringing this up. My daughter took 100mg of elavil nightly to improve her sleep pattern, but can no longer take it because she is pregnant. Pfizer has a drug that is so far the only FDA approved drug showing significant improvement in relieving painful symptoms of FMS. It’s called Lyrica, and it helped my daughter enormously, but she can’t take it during the pregnancy. You might want to ask your doctor if it’s right for you. I’m sorry you have to deal with such a painful condition. I’ve seen my daughter unable to walk for days because of it, and it is creating havoc on her pregnancy. It’s a horrible syndrome, and I hope they are able to find some answers about it very soon.

Anyway, here are the links I promised.

substance p in CFS
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9839828
Sleep study
http://arthritis.about.com/cs/fms/a/fmscause.htm