30 Amazing Facts about Sleep | Amazing Facts 4U
- The amazing fact is that humans spend a third of their life sleeping. That’s about 25 years. In fact, the average person also spends 6 years of their life dreaming.
- Most of what we know about sleep we’ve learned only in the past 25 years.
- Parents of new babies miss out on 6 months’ worth of sleep in the first 2 years of their child’s life.
- Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal.
- The fact is sleeping less than 7 hours each night reduces your life expectancy. Sleep is just as important as diet and exercise.
- You strengthen memories made during the day while you sleep.
- Man is the only mammal that willingly delays sleep.
- Amazingly you will die from sleep deprivation earlier than food deprivation. You may starve for 2 weeks but probably 10 days of sleep deprivation can kill you.
- If it takes you less than five minutes to fall asleep then very likely you are sleep deprived. The ideal amount of time is about 10 to 15 minutes.
- It has been found that women who sleep less than 5 hours a night gain a significant amount more weight over time than those who sleep 7 hours or more.
- The Challenger space shuttle disaster, the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, and the 1989 Exxon oil spill were all caused to some extent by sleep deprivation.
- Not sleeping for 16 hours leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to having a blood-alcohol level of .05%
- 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.
- Within 5 minutes of waking up, 50 % of the dream is forgotten. Within 10 minutes, 90 % of it is gone.
- Sometimes it may be impossible to tell if someone is really awake as people can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.
- REM (Rapid Eye Movement ) sleep occurs in bursts totaling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.
- 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.
- Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep.
- 10 % of snorers have sleep apnea, a disorder that causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.
- There are two periods of maximum sleepiness, the late afternoon (from around 3 to 5 PM) and the end of the night (from around 3 to 5 a.m.). There are also two periods of maximum alertness around 1 a.m. in the morning and 1 p.m. in the afternoon.
- It’s impossible to sneeze while sleeping.
- 1 out of 50 teenagers still wet their beds.
- The amazing fact is that you burn more calories watching TV than you do sleeping.
- The British military amazingly figured out a way to reset soldiers’ body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hours by simulating a sunrise on their retinas.
- 12% of people dream in black and white. Before color television, the number was 75%.
- You can only dream about faces you have already seen.
- 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.
- Both whales and dolphins literally fall half asleep. Their brain hemispheres take turns so they can continue surfacing to breathe.
- Ducks can also sleep with half their brain at a time.
- A snail can amazingly sleep for 3 years.
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