ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Sleep and metabolism

Sleep is very important for our bodies to work correctly. When we sleep, our bodies do a lot of important things to keep us healthy. One of the things our bodies do while we sleep is called metabolism.

Metabolism is like when your mom takes food and turns it into energy that your body can use. When we sleep, our bodies still need this energy, but they don't want to use it too fast. So while we sleep, our metabolism slows down a bit. This helps our bodies have enough energy to keep going until we wake up in the morning and start eating again. If our metabolism didn't slow down during sleep, we would run out of energy too quickly and our bodies wouldn't work right.

Another thing that happens during sleep and metabolism is something called growth hormone. This hormone helps us grow and repair our bodies while we sleep. That's why it's so important for kids to get plenty of sleep!

So, in summary, when we sleep, our bodies slow down a bit and use energy from our food more slowly. This helps us have enough energy to get through the night. Plus, our bodies also do important things like growing and repairing themselves while we sleep.