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Hello dear blog readers! We give a third of our conscious life to this process, which is about 15 to 30 years, depending on its duration. Just imagine how many years of care for rest and recovery.
Therefore, today I want to bring to your attention various facts about sleep. Still, since it is so significant for the body, it will not be superfluous to learn more about it.
Interesting Facts
- Do you know why nutritionists recommend getting good sleep? Because if a person lacks proper rest at night, his body produces smaller doses of leptin. This is a hormone that regulates energy metabolism. Accordingly, its deficiency leads to obesity. Despite diets and sports, such a person will gradually and steadily gain weight. Sometimes up to a kilogram a week.
- Previously, sleep was two-phase, that is, people woke up at night and went about their own business, even went to visit each other, and then went back to rest. What is the reason for this and why modern man has lost this feature, you will find out by clicking here.
- If you don’t sleep well while traveling on an airplane, then there is a good reason for this. The fact is that the lack of oxygen negatively affects the ability to even just doze off.
- Did you know that until color television appeared, approximately 15% of people could boast of color dreams? The rest watched in black and white, or did not watch at all. With the advent of color in the screens, this figure has increased to 75%.
Unusual facts
- During sleep, a person can solve some of his problems by coming up with the most optimal way out of the situation. The fact is that our brain never stops working, with the exception of death. While the whole body is resting and restoring the spent resources, the brain at this time processes the information received during the day, checks the state of the internal organs and produces all kinds of scenarios for the development of events. And also something that is forced out by our consciousness, for example, some feelings that we are not aware of, but because of which we experience a lot of problems, finds an opportunity to reach out to us in the process of sleep. Accordingly, during the day some thought comes to mind, after which relief comes and so on.
- A person is the only one who, quite consciously, can refuse sleep and transfer it to another more convenient time.
- People can experience orgasms in their dreams.
- A person loses his ability to work if he spends more than 16 hours without proper rest. So, if you have deadlines, you should not work for days on end, it’s better to sleep well and then your work efficiency will increase.
Amazing facts
- In dreams, images of people we once met in our lives come to us. It turns out that our imagination is still limited. The brain does not know how to invent people in the process of sleep. Accordingly, every stranger is someone whom you once did not pay attention to, but whose image was preserved in the subconscious.
- If you have noticed behind yourself that in the morning you have no desire to get out of bed and start a new day, then take this test. Experts consider this condition one of the first signs of depression. Therefore, if you do not observe the daily routine, or have chosen a completely unloved type of activity, then the reasons for such reluctance are understandable. But if everything was different before, then you really should watch yourself.
- If you want to have a healthy sleep, during which you will really have time to recover, go in for sports. Only in the morning or in the afternoon, if you give the body loads at night, the effect will be the opposite.
Unusual facts
- People who were born blind see dreams, only without images, but only with sounds, tactile sensations, smells. Those who lost their sight at some stage of their lives continue to «see» dreams as before.
- We know that every adult needs at least 8 hours of rest. But there are mutations in the DEC2 gene, thanks to which a person can recover in just 4 hours. True, there are few such people, their number is approximately 5% of the total population of the planet.
- Leading a healthy lifestyle, but want to feel drunk? Then do not sleep fully for about 12 nights in a row. In this case, your speech will become slurred, your gait will be shaky, and your memory will begin to fail at the most unexpected moments. A person really becomes like someone who is intoxicated.
And a bit more
- By the way, if you think that you don’t dream at all, you are mistaken. During the night, a person observes not one, but several dreams, up to 7 pieces, which he immediately forgets as soon as he wakes up.
- Did you know that in the 17th and 18th centuries there was such a profession as an alarm clock? You could order a person who came at a certain time and knocked on the window.
- But the first mechanical alarm clock was invented in 1787 by the American Levi Hutchins. Only he had a huge drawback — he rang at 4 in the morning, it was impossible to set another time. And only in the 1940s, Antoine Radhier was able to create a gadget so useful to mankind that could be set up for absolutely any time. Only now it was very expensive and was inaccessible to the general population.
Mythology
Incubi, succubus and ghosts
Have you heard all sorts of frightening stories about demons and other evil spirits that immobilize a person in a dream? Sitting on his chest or just watching him, standing next to the bed or being in the corner of the room?
In fact, there is such a thing as sleep paralysis. It occurs during REM sleep and literally paralyzes the entire body. A person wakes up, but stays in this state for some time, usually from a few seconds to 3-5 minutes.
Despite the fact that this paralysis causes horror, up to the occurrence of phobias, it is actually harmless to our body.
By the way, in addition to paralysis, symptoms such as difficulty breathing, the feeling that there is someone nearby, up to the appearance of auditory and visual hallucinations, and complete disorientation in space can also occur. When a person does not recognize the room and in a panic tries to understand where he is.
There are no prophetic dreams
As I said, during sleep, the brain analyzes information and predicts events, sketching out all sorts of options. Accordingly, how true the dream turns out to be depends on the analytical abilities of the person.
That is, if you constantly observe pictures that are then repeated in reality, confirmed — I hasten to congratulate you, you are an excellent analyst, not a witch or magician.
Let me give you an example with detectives. One person from the first pages can understand who the insidious killer really is and so on, while someone has to guess until the very end. The same is true with the ability to predict.
Weekends just to sleep and recover
Many of us look forward to the weekend, dreaming that we will sleep as much as we want. But how useful is such a rest? Yes, lack of sleep is the main enemy of health and work efficiency. But, if you get out of your regime, there will be even more harm. It is impossible to accumulate energy for a week ahead, as your body will realize the energy charge received on the same day.
So, did you notice that on the weekend, waking up later, you went to bed later? Accordingly, biological rhythms go astray, and when the working morning comes, thoughts only about death, dismissal, and so on arise.
According to statistics, most of the accidents on the roads just happen on Monday morning.
Yes, getting up as early as on weekdays is blasphemy, but take care of your health, wake up at least an hour later than usual, and not after dinner.
Women sleep longer than men
There is still no clear answer to the question of who sleeps longer. According to some studies, women get 20 minutes more rest, according to others — men. The only thing experts agreed on was that pregnant women need much more time to recover, which is why they are sleepy for the most part, especially in the later stages.
By the way, it has been scientifically proven that sanguine people sleep for about 9 hours, since they are quite emotional and impressionable individuals and their brain needs to process more information than the rest.
But melancholics are quite satisfied with six hours. Perhaps this is due to the fact that they do not spend as much energy and other resources as the rest. They seem to be in «savings» mode. You will learn more about the existing types of temperament from this article.
Under no circumstances should sleepwalkers be awakened
There is an opinion that if you suddenly wake up a sleepwalker, he will not only get scared, but will experience a real shock with subsequent negative consequences for the body. To the point of cardiac arrest.
In fact, more of a danger is that he could hurt himself by running into something or tripping. This is especially true for those who are trying to get behind the wheel or cook food. Of course, you should not scream and pull it. It is enough just to gently take it by the shoulders and calmly call by name, calling to wake up. At the very least, take her to bed.
Yes, and there are very few people who do such manipulations. Basically, the maximum that sleepwalkers are capable of is to sit on the bed and say something.
After waking up, they have a so-called «sleep inertia». This is a state when a person does not recognize his relatives, does not remember his name and where he is. It usually lasts up to 30 minutes.
Completion
And finally, I want to recommend you an article that contains useful information for those who suffer from insomnia, waking up from nightmares, or having problems with the process of falling asleep.
Take care of yourself and, of course, have a good rest!
The material was prepared by a psychologist, Gestalt therapist, Zhuravina Alina