Some Fascinating and unknown Facts about good old sleep

Know more about Sleep

This is my 6^th blog on sleep. In this blog you will see some nice facts about sleep we did not know or tried to think about:

What is a Healthy Sleep?

The amount of sleep we all need varies from person to person. Experts have given us number of hour sleep we needs for our healthy body.

Infants – They need the most sleep, averaging about 16 hours a day.

Teenagers- They need about 9 hours of sleep.

Adults – They need about 7 to 9 hours of sleep to feel fully rested.

 

How to know that we are not Getting Healthy Sleep

If you're feeling drowsy during the day that means you are not getting enough quality sleep. Signs of sleep deprivation, or possibly a sleep disorder can be seen, when a person fall asleep within five minutes of lying down.

Tips for Getting Healthy Sleep

Please find some good tips to get a healthy night sleep:

1.         Mentally Unwinding Before Going to bed - About a half hour before going to bed, enjoy a low-key activity such as reading or listening to soothing music.

2.         Stop Worrying Before Going to bed - Avoid solving day’s problems from your bed. Before going to bed, make a list of problems for the following day.

3.         Use Relaxation Techniques - To reduce muscular tension, try relaxation techniques such as meditation, yoga, or even taking a warm bath.

4.         Eat a High-crab snack- A light snack that is high in carbohydrates, such as crackers, pretzels, or a plain bagel, might help you relax. But be careful not to overeat; indigestion can interrupt sleep.

5.         Drink Warm milk before going to Bed-There is scientific basis for this old-time remedy. Milk and other dairy foods contain tryptophan, a chemical that may promote sleep in some people.

6.         Follow a Sleeping routine-Go to bed and get up at the same time every day even on a weekend. Creating this routine can help condition your mind and body to expect sleep at a regular time

- Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

- Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

- REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

- Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

- It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

- One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

- The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

- REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

- Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

- REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

- Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analogous to watching a film

- No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

- Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

- Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless by-product of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.

- REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hamster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

- Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

- The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

- Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

- In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

- Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

- To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

- A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won't dream much.

- After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.

- Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

- Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

- Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep

- Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 needs the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

- Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

- Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

- Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

- As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

- Before Thomas Edison's invention of the light bulb, people slept an average of 10 hours a night; today Americans average 6.9 hours of sleep on weeknights and 7.5 hours per night on weekends

- The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.