Sleep
Interesting facts about Sleep
- During a normal night's sleep, there are five different stages of sleep – and each of them is quite different from the other four.
- When we are sleeping deeply, our breathing, our heart rate and blood pressure reach their lowest levels of the day.
- While we are dreaming, we experience REM – rapid eye movement. This is a very active time for both the body and the brain.
While we are dreaming, our brain patterns are similar to those we experience while being awake. - Most adults need about eight hours of sleep to function at their best, but studies have shown that most adults don't get much more than seven.
- We sleep more lightly during the second half of the night than during the first.
- Cats sleep up to 18 hours a day, giraffes usually not more than 20 minutes.
- Your body is on a 24-hour body clock, which makes you wind down between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. and again in the three hours directly after lunch. We are really made to have siestas.
- It is more difficult to wake a child than an adult from deep sleep – often children will be disorientated and have no recollection of this later.
- Many people who suffer from insomnia suffer from anxiety and depression.
- Our large body muscles are paralysed while we sleep – most probably to stop us from doing what we are dreaming about.
- We go through four to six sleep cycles during a good night's sleep, moving through the different stages and back again.
- The average person wakes up about six times per night.
- Your body temperature falls in the early morning hours, reaches a low at about 4 a.m. and then rises again just before sunrise.
- Researchers have never been able to agree exactly why the body needs sleep, except that it is restoring to our bodies and our brains.
- Even when we are sleeping very deeply, there is still a part of us that picks up sounds and signals from the world around us. That's why parents wake up when the baby cries, but they don't hear the howling southeaster.
- Women and older people most often suffer from insomnia.
posted by iridium @ 6:37 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
do you just have this crammed in the back of your mind?? i love sleep.
I totally believe the fact about women suffering from insomnia more than men. A lot of that may have to do with men having selective hearing. (Eric never hears the kids cry out, but he can hear me TIP TOE into bed after staying up too late...hmmmm).
Being pregnant, I get up pretty much every hour now to go to the bathroom. I've officially kicked Ethan out of his full sized bed and make him sleep with Eric so I can have his bed all to myself. I am sooo much more comfortable that way, especially when rolling over. I don't have to pick my belly up and flop back down like I did in my own bed (sharing bed=getting only half a bed). Now I can just roll. Plus I don't have to hear Eric's snoring.
The up side to all of this is it definitely gets my body ready for getting up in the night with the baby. :)
I'm telling you, we gotta get this guy on a game show! I think that one where they take on the "mob". I'm going to hunt for the site and see if you can audition online!
Follow-up: my dreams are dashed.
I'm depressed and stressed.
I think I'll go get eight hours of sleep.
I still think you are brilliant.
Next topic...Interesting facts about Cotton Candy. How in the world is that stuff made? Was it invented by accident? Is it a solid? Why does it melt instantly in your mouth? What's with the machine that whirls around and around. Is that how it gets fluffy?
I love the stuff. It makes me happy.
any facts in that bottomless pit called your brain about people sleeping with their eyes partly open? Josiah pointed it out to me one day while I was napping that I sleep sometimes with my eyes open a bit. And I can feel it in the morning.
What cycle of sleep would a terrifying dream of the parasailing-type be classified under?
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