You Get Taller as You Sleep

You grow by about 8mm (0.3 in) every night when you are asleep, but shrink to your former height the following day.

We spend one-thirds of our lives asleep. It is the most important function of our body, arguably even more essential than eating because according to studies humans can survive without food for several weeks but can only survive without sleep for 10 days.

Every night as you fall asleep, the amount of changes your body goes through are a lot including changes in the body temperature, heart rate, and the tissue-repairing processes etc.. Among the changes of this multitude, the most interesting transformation our body goes through during sleep is that our body grows, more or less, by 8mm (0.3 in) every night, but shrinks to our initial height the following day. The difference of height occurs because of the vertebral discs which function as a set of shock absorbers. They also help to protect you when you fall. These vertebral discs are actually a set of thin circular pieces which size up to 6 inches in diameter.

During the day, our bodies apply lots of weight on our vertebral discs making them lose some of their thickness. And when you rest and fall asleep, these discs retain their thickness resulting in the increase in height. Unfortunately this change is not permanent because when we wake up and start working again, the same pressure is applied resulting in the decreased mass of the discs, so we return to our former heights.