Why Do We Need To Sleep Anyway?
This post answers the questions - Why We Sleep and What Your Body Actually Does at Night? I also explain Why Natural Materials Matter.
After 36 years of making mattresses, I’ve had a lot of time to think about sleep. Not just the mechanics of building a good bed, but the deeper question: why do we actually need to sleep at all?
It’s a strange thing when you think about it. We spend a third of our lives unconscious, vulnerable, completely shut down. From a survival standpoint, it seems like a terrible design. But here’s what I’ve learned: sleep isn’t a weakness or a waste of time. It’s when your body does some of its most important work.
And the environment you create for that work matters more than most people realise.
What’s Actually Happening While You Sleep
Let me start with the science side, because it’s genuinely fascinating.
When you fall asleep, your body doesn’t just power down like a computer going into standby mode. It shifts into a completely different operating system. Your brain starts running maintenance programs. Your cells begin repair protocols. Your immune system kicks into high gear.
During deep sleep, your body:
∙ Clears metabolic waste from your brain (literally takes out the trash accumulated during the day)
∙ Repairs damaged tissues and builds new ones
∙ Consolidates memories and processes emotions
∙ Resets your immune system
∙ Regulates hormones that control everything from appetite to stress response
Miss enough sleep, and these processes don’t just pause – they start to break down. Your immune system weakens. Your brain can’t clear the toxic proteins that contribute to cognitive decline. Your body loses its ability to regulate blood sugar properly. Inflammation increases.
I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just being straight about what the research shows: sleep isn’t optional maintenance. It’s essential repair work.
The Part Science Can’t Fully Explain
But here’s where it gets interesting. Science can tell us a lot about what happens during sleep, but it can’t fully explain why we need to become completely unconscious to do it.
There’s something deeper going on.
I spent a lot of time in Japan over the years – made more than 80 trips since 1996. One thing that struck me was how differently they think about rest. There’s this concept called “ma” (間) – it means the space between things, the pause, the interval. It’s the silence between notes in music, the empty space in a painting that makes the rest make sense.
Sleep is like that. It’s the ma of your life.
Without that pause, the active parts lose their meaning. You can’t appreciate being awake if you never rest. You can’t build if you never allow time for restoration.
Ancient cultures understood this instinctively. Sleep was sacred. It was when you were closest to the dream world, to the unconscious, to whatever you want to call the part of existence we can’t access when we’re thinking and doing and pushing.
Modern culture treats sleep like an inconvenience, something to minimise so we can be “productive” longer. We’ve got it backwards.
You Can’t Hack Your Way Through Sleep
I see a lot of people trying to optimise sleep like it’s another problem to solve. Track it, measure it, control it, reduce it, make it more efficient.
But sleep isn’t something you conquer. It’s something you surrender to.
That’s not a romantic idea – it’s practical truth. You cannot force good sleep any more than you can force a plant to grow faster by pulling on it. You can only create the conditions where it happens naturally.
And part of creating those conditions is understanding that your body doesn’t stop interacting with its environment just because you’re unconscious.
What You’re Breathing All Night Long
Here’s something most people don’t think about: you take about 20,000 breaths while you sleep.
Twenty thousand breaths in close contact with whatever your mattress is made of.
If that mattress is off-gassing chemicals, you’re breathing them in. If it’s treated with flame retardants, you’re absorbing them through your skin. If it’s made from synthetic materials that trap heat and moisture, your body is working against that all night instead of resting.
Your conscious mind isn’t aware of this. But your body is dealing with it for eight hours straight, every single night.
I’ve had customers with unexplained headaches, congestion, skin irritation – problems that cleared up when they switched to a natural latex mattress. Their doctors couldn’t figure it out. But their bodies knew something was wrong with where they were sleeping.
The Way We’re Meant to Sleep
Humans have been sleeping for hundreds of thousands of years. For the vast majority of that time, we slept on natural materials. Grass, leaves, animal skins, eventually cotton and wool and natural fibers.
Our bodies evolved in relationship with these materials. They breathe with us. They regulate temperature naturally. They don’t require chemical treatments to resist mold because they naturally resist it.
Then, in the last 50 years or so, we decided to sleep on petroleum-based foams and synthetic fibers treated with fire retardants and stain blockers. We created sleep environments our bodies have no evolutionary history with.
And we wonder why so many people struggle to sleep well.
I’m not saying natural materials are magic. I’m saying they’re what we’re designed for. They work with your body’s natural processes instead of against them.
Natural latex from rubber trees. Organic cotton. Wool. These materials breathe, regulate temperature, resist dust mites naturally, and don’t require chemicals to do their job.
The Earth Connection Nobody Talks About
There’s another piece to this that sounds almost mystical, but I think it’s real.
When you sleep on materials that come from the earth – actual plants, actual trees – there’s a kind of resonance there. Your body recognises it at some level.
The Japanese have this concept of “shokunin” – the craftsman who works with natural materials and respects their essential nature. You don’t force wood to be something it’s not. You work with its grain, its character, what it wants to be.
I think about sleep the same way. You can’t force your body to rest on materials it doesn’t recognise. You can only create an environment where your body feels safe enough to truly let go.
Maybe that sounds too philosophical for a mattress maker. But after 36 years of watching people sleep better when they switch to natural materials, I don’t think it’s philosophy. I think it’s just paying attention to what works.
What This Means for How You Sleep
I’m not here to tell you that buying a natural mattress will solve all your sleep problems. Sleep is complicated. Stress, light exposure, what you eat, when you exercise, your mental state – it all matters.
But your sleep environment is the foundation. If that’s wrong, everything else is fighting an uphill battle.
When you create a sleep space with natural materials, you’re removing obstacles. You’re not breathing chemicals. Your body temperature regulates naturally. Your skin can breathe. The materials work with your body instead of against it.
You’re creating the conditions where that essential repair work can happen without interference.
Why I Keep Making Natural Mattresses
After 36 years, I could be making synthetic mattresses like everyone else. They’re cheaper to produce, easier to ship, higher margins.
But that’s not why I got into this.
I measure my success by how many people are sleeping on natural, non-toxic materials. By how many families I can help sleep safer. By getting people back to what their bodies actually need instead of what marketing tells them they want.
Sleep is when you’re most vulnerable. When your defenses are down. When your body is doing its deepest repair work.
You deserve to do that on materials that support what your body is trying to do, not fight against it.
That’s not just good business. After 36 years of watching people transform when they sleep naturally, I know it’s the right thing to do.
Your body knows what it needs. Sometimes you just have to give it the chance to show you.