Sleep is the natural, easily reversible periodic state of many living things marked by the absence of wakefulness and the loss of consciousness of one’s surroundings. Sleep is the most vital activity for humans, akin to desires such as sexual or appetite desires. Restricting this sleep desire leads to numerous changes in human bodies. 

In 1946, a 17-year-old high school student, Randy Gardner, participated in a science fair project related to sleep. He challenged himself to refrain from sleeping, enduring 264 hours without sleep, equivalent to 11 days. On the second day without sleep, he struggled to focus his eyes and had difficulty distinguishing substances by touch. By the third day, he became emotionally unstable and moody, with slowed reactions. As the experiment neared its end, he experienced an inability to focus, problems with short-term memory, paranoia, and hallucinations. Additionally, his language skills and movements decreased.

In another experiment at the University of Chicago, a research team experimented with mice. To disrupt sleep, mice were placed on rotating glass disks in water, leading to the mice's death in about a month due to weight loss and multiple organ damage, including skin lesions.

Cells in our bodies use various signaling molecules to convey events happening outside the cell. However, if one doesn't sleep, the balance of signaling molecules in brain cells is disrupted and depleted, affecting normal neural activity. This disruption causes major problems in the prefrontal lobe, leading to a decrease in short-term memory. During sleep, the hippocampus, the central memory center, exchanges signals with the brain, reinforcing memories from wakefulness. Without sleep, this function worsens, affecting long-term memory. Lack of sleep also weakens the function of the frontal lobe, which integrates and processes various information. Therefore, sleep is a crucial activity for normal life, and obtaining sufficient sleep is an effective way to improve the quality of life.

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