Dear friends, I propose today to talk about the side of life to which we unconsciously give a third of our being. 22 interesting facts about sleep: do we really sleep, how much sleep is needed for longevity, salvation from madness, etc. - in the article.
1. Our body never sleeps
While we are resting at night, the body continues to work: it prepares us for wakefulness during the day, establishing biological rhythms, immune, metabolic, mental and brain processes.
It was previously believed that our consciousness falls asleep, but then who sends us a hint: “It’s just a dream, don’t be afraid!” if we have nightmares?
2. We can learn in our sleep.
The phenomenon, called “hypnopaedia” by scientists, has come to us from time immemorial.
According to historians, hypnopaedia was practiced by ancient Indian Buddhist monks, whispering the texts of manuscripts.
3. We remember things about ourselves even that we are not aware of.
Any impressions, including unconscious ones, fall into short term memory(hippocampus).
This kind of transit point of the brain has limited space, and therefore in the evenings our speed of thinking and concentration of attention are reduced. The hippocampus, like an overcrowded warehouse, requires putting things in order.
By falling asleep and disconnecting from external stimuli, we give the brain the opportunity to process the accumulated information and send it for storage to long-term (unconscious) memory with unlimited capacity.
Here, all data is stored for life, thanks to which we can remember in critical situations or under hypnosis any event down to the smallest details, the knowledge of which we are not aware of.
Natural awakening occurs only after all information has been processed and space has been freed up in the hippocampus for new impressions.
For such an important job the brain needs us to sleep at night and not disturb it for at least 6 hours, say American scientists Matthew Walker and Bryce Mander.
That's why we see things like this interesting dreams in the morning, the brain in this way keeps us in the arms of Morpheus.
If the process is not completed and we wake up, sleep does not bring rest to the mind, clarity of thoughts and sharpness of attention..
4. Short sleeping geniuses
According to statistics, most people need 8-9 hours for proper rest, but there are many famous personalities who slept less:
Julius Caesar - 3 hours,
Da Vinci - a total of 2 hours (slept 15-20 minutes every four hours),
Benjamin Franklin - 4 hours,
Napoleon - 4 hours, and in his declining years in exile he turned from a lark into a much-sleeping owl.
Edison - slept 5 hours at night, pampered himself with siestas during the day.
Tesla - about 3 hours, but from time to time I got plenty of sleep.
Churchill - 5 hours and a nap during the day.
Margaret Thatcher - about 5 o'clock. The “Iron Lady” lived for work and willingly sacrificed sleep even for the sake of her hair.
5. Albert Einstein was one of those who slept for long periods of time.
He allowed himself to sleep for more than 10 hours and did not hide the fact that he made many discoveries in his sleep.
6. Blue light delays falling asleep by 3 hours
If you strive to fall asleep at a certain time, look away from PC monitors and TV screens at least an hour before bed.
In their radiation, as well as energy-saving and LED lamps, a lot of blue spectrum, which suppresses the production of melatonin, a natural sleep aid.
7. Orange (amber-colored) glasses will help you fall asleep and sleep better
They block blue light rays that interfere with melatonin synthesis. Somnologists advise putting on “amber” glasses three hours before bedtime.
8. Sleep has decreased by 1.5 hours over 100 years
We sleep 20% less than our 19th century ancestors. The beginning of the involution of sleep was the “Yablochkov candle” and Edison’s electric light bulb.
9. Lethargy - “escape” from a cruel world and salvation from madness
The oldest genetic reaction saves the human psyche from destruction by severe stress.
16. Excessive sleep, longer than 8 hours threatens
- overweight,
- diabetes,
- depression,
- headaches,
- heart diseases.
17. People who sleep no more than 8 hours,
live 15% longer.
18. Older smokers have a harder time falling asleep:
Nicotine stimulates the psyche, increasing the level of stress adrenaline and norepinephrine - stress hormones.
19. A person’s posture in a dream is a true portrait of his personality,
reflecting character, state of mind and health, attitude towards the world and towards oneself.
20. Holidays dedicated to the phenomenon of sleep
The first holiday appeared in 1652 in Finland. Reverend Hemming dedicated his feat.
Subsequently, it turned into a fun event called Sonya Day, its motto:
“Don’t sleep through your life, otherwise when you wake up one day, you won’t recognize the world like the seven holy youths.”
World Sleep Day established by the International Sleep Medicine Association in 2008.
Its goal is to attract public attention to the global decline in health due to the low quality of sleep of modern people.
21. Lack of sleep can cause hallucinations sleepy or active. So if you're denying yourself enough sleep, don't be surprised if you hear, see, feel or smell something strange and scary.
22. If you don’t sleep enough, parasomnias may develop.- sleep disorders in which people behave abnormally in their sleep: they walk, scream, fight, eat strange foods, drive cars, beat or strangle their bed partners.
Summary
Our mental and physical health, long youth, active old age - everything begins at night when we sleep.
Or rather, we are not sleeping at all, because our soul does not fall asleep, but continues to communicate with us through dreams, the body works in a different mode, and the brain sorts out everything that we thought about, saw and heard, voluntarily or involuntarily.
The facts about sleep are stubborn: Today's poor quality sleep will result in excess weight, brain problems, diabetes or other problems decades later.
So how much sleep do you really need to live long and actively? Sleep specialists advise sleeping at least 7.5 - 8 hours.
Focus on your well-being. If drowsiness and fatigue are present, it means you are sleeping little or your sleep structure is disturbed due to snoring, periodic leg movements or other disorders.
Take care of yourself. Have a healthy sleep!
Sources: National medical library USA, A. Borbeli “The Mystery of Sleep”, A. Vein “Three Thirds of Life”
Elena Valve for the project Sleepy Cantata
Human sleep is one of the strange and mysterious states about which science knows almost nothing. Why do we see places and people we have never seen? Why do events happen in dreams that we were not participants in? Why do we dream about things we haven’t thought about at all?
Most a long period wakefulness, 18 days, 21 hours and 40 minutes, was recorded during a competition for the longest time sitting on a rocking chair (sic!). The winner escaped with hallucinations, visual impairment, speech disorders and memory loss.
It is impossible to determine whether a person is sleeping without medical examination. People often fall asleep for a few seconds with with open eyes without even noticing it.
If you fall asleep in less than 5 minutes in the evening, you are sleep deprived. The ideal time for a person to fall asleep in the evening is from 10 to 15 minutes. This time means that you are tired enough to sleep soundly at night, but at the same time you do not feel drowsy during the day.
Having a baby means an average of 400-750 hours of sleep lost for parents in the first year.
You are more likely to have insomnia later in life if you overuse bad habits instead of sleep, awakened by your child.
Long-term studies of human sleep, which led to the discovery of the so-called. " fast phase"were not carried out until 1953 due to the large consumption of paper for such studies.
REM sleep occurs in bursts throughout the night, up to 2 hours in total, starting on average at the 90th minute of sleep.
Dreams, which were previously thought to only occur during REM sleep, also occur in other stages. It is possible that a person sees dreams at any moment of sleep, but is not aware of them or does not remember them.
Dreams in the fast phase are usually strange and illogical, and in the slow phase they are repetitive and more like thoughts with a small amount of fantasy - for example, a constant memory that you forgot something.
Certain patterns of eye movement during the rapid phase correspond to certain movements in our dreams, which indicates that part of our brain looks at the dream from the outside, like a movie.
No one knows whether animals dream, but sleep phases have also been discovered in them.
Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep and lie down on the ground during REM sleep.
Some scientists believe that we dream to record our daytime experiences in long-term memory. Thus, we dream to remember information that is important to us. Others believe that we dream about things and events that we do not need in order to clear our brains of unnecessary memories and duplicates.
A dream may not have any useful purpose, but is simply a by-product of consciousness and sleep.
REM sleep can help develop a healthy brain. Children born ahead of schedule, 75% of sleep is spent in the REM phase, while their healthy brothers spend only 60%. Likewise, newborn rats and hamsters sleep entirely in REM sleep, while newborn piglets (which are more developed from birth) have no REM sleep at all.
Scientists are at a loss to explain a 1988 study showing that shining a bright light onto the back of the knee altered sleep rhythms and The biological clock people get confused.
The British Ministry of Defense has come up with a way to adjust the biological clock of soldiers so that they stay awake for up to 36 hours. To do this, tiny light emitters were mounted in glasses so that they illuminated the edges of the retina with light close to that of the sun. The soldier thus created constant feeling early morning. This system was first used by American military pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.
Staying awake continuously for 17 hours reduces productivity and impairs attention, as if you had 0.05% blood alcohol.
The 1988 Exxon Valdez disaster, the Challenger shuttle accident and Chernobyl disaster were caused by human factor, which not least depends on the level of drowsiness.
International studies have shown that at least 20% of car accidents occur due to fatigue and lack of sleep.
Sleeping in a noisy room can reduce a person's immune function, even if they are not awakened by the noise. Noise is especially dangerous in the first and last two hours of sleep; it can cause complete disruption of a person’s sleep pattern and natural clock.
Self-sudden awakening is caused by the release of the hormone adrenocorticotropin into the blood.
Some hypnotic drugs, in particular barbiturates, suppress the stage REM sleep, which causes long-term disruption of the psyche and sleep patterns.
The use of sleeping pills is justified from a psychological point of view only if insomnia is caused by a feeling of bereavement or severe stress.
Slight light from digital electronic watch enough to disrupt your sleep patterns, even if you don't realize it and continue to sleep. This light “turns off” the sleep pattern in the brain and causes a decrease in the concentration of sleep-promoting substances.
To sleep well, you need a cool place. Body temperature and sleep cycles are directly related. That is why on a hot summer night we have difficulty falling asleep and sleep little. The blood supply to the brain works best at temperatures environment 18-30 degrees. With age, this range narrows to 23-25 degrees - this is one of the reasons why older people are more likely to experience sleep disorders.
If you drink a little grog (a hot strong drink) before bed, it will help you fall asleep, but the sleep will be superficial and the healing effect will be insignificant.
After five nights bad sleep, a glass of alcohol will affect you with the same force as 2 glasses if you slept well.
A person sleeps 3 hours less than his closest animal relatives - chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans. These primates sleep at least 10 hours a day.
In the presence of danger, ducks know how to sleep with one half of their brain, while the other vigilantly monitors their surroundings.
Ten percent of people who snore have a sleep disorder called apnorea. With this disease, a person a short time stops breathing about 300 times a night, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
A person snores only during the slow phase of sleep.
Teenagers need sleep just like small children, i.e. about 10 hours a day. For older people, 6 hours of sleep is enough. For a middle-aged person, the optimal sleep duration is 8 hours.
Some studies show that women need an extra hour of sleep compared to men, which is caused by their tendency to depression and psychosis.
Posts Victorian era show that people slept an average of 10 hours a day, and the sleep schedule shifted depending on daylight hours.
Scientists have learned most of the information about sleep status in the last 25 years.
Sleep-deprived young people are less productive than older people.
Many experts point out that one of the main causes of sleep disorders is 24/7 Internet access.
Human sleep - the whole truth about dreams, interesting facts:- All people dream: about 4-6 stories per night, independent of each other. Dreams are remembered better if you wake up during REM sleep.
- “Chaotic” eye movement (during REM sleep, when you dream) takes up about a quarter of your total sleep time. By the way, the average person sleeps for about 6 years of his life.
- Within five minutes after waking up, a person can remember about half of what he saw in a dream. Then, only a tenth.
- Those who sleep 6-7 hours are less likely to die prematurely than those who sleep 8 hours. But those who sleep less than 5 hours at night are three times more likely to develop mental problems than those who sleep 8-9 hours.
- Only ~20% of dreams contain places and people that the person encountered in real life. Most pictures are unique to one specific dream. Scientists know this because some people have the ability to see their dreams as observers without waking up. This state of consciousness is called lucid dreaming, which is a big mystery in itself.
- Dreams are symbolic. The things and persons that appear to us are symbols of our own attitude towards them, symbols of our internal difficulties and contradictions. But if you are, you will definitely be given a sign in a dream.
- Almost 2/3 of people have experienced déjà vu based on dreams.
- External factors can influence our dreams. For example, if the room is cold, you may dream that you have decided to vacation in Antarctica.
- About 90% of people have colored dreams. Among those under 25 years of age, this percentage is even higher – 95%. The explanation is that the younger generation did not see black and white televisions.
- Men see about 70% of men in their dreams, while for women the proportion of "men to women" is approximately equal.
- Animals also dream. From an evolutionary point of view, the stage of REM sleep, when dreams occur, is last stage development, which can be found in the human body, as well as in other warm-blooded mammals and birds.
- For those born blind, dreams are limited to the senses of smell, sound, touch, emotion and taste.
- The REM sleep stage appears in a person already in the third trimester of pregnancy. A developing fetus can “see” something, in terms of brain activity, long before its eyes open, because developing brain works based on innate and biological models of time and space. Complete sleep cycles in the usual sense of the word come to a person much later.
- Most often, dreams demonstrate negative rather than positive emotions. Most Popular emotional state anxiety appears in a dream. People rarely remember dreams or don’t remember at all; they tend not to notice/ignore what may cause them anxiety, although this does not solve the problem (if there is one).
- Dreams do not prophesy diseases, but the first subtle signs of their manifestation are recorded. If a dream is one-time, this does not mean that it is a diagnostic dream. But you should pay attention to a dream that is repeated many times, unpleasant, disturbing, clearly remembered. This is a warning dream.
- Most likely, dreams in green and blue tones indicate that everything is fine with you, red warns of an increase in temperature, infectious disease, yellow-brown tones indicate intestinal diseases, black color indicates a nervous breakdown.
- People snore only during the slow phase of sleep, and they do not dream during snoring.
- People who
Sleep is an integral part of our life. Even while in the womb, most of us traveled to the kingdom of Morpheus. In our dreams we swam or flew, but apparently we didn’t attach much importance to it, so we didn’t remember it. So what do we know about the dreams that visit us every night? Prepare to be surprised!
We see them quite often. However, unlike Bible stories, dreams do not exist to predict the future. They are playing important role for normal brain activity. Dreams help you process information received during the day. We invite you, before you close your eyes and once again plunge into the magical world of dreams, to familiarize yourself with 9 interesting ones. Believe me, many people still do not know this data.
1. The Man Who Lives Without Dreams
The ricochet injury that damaged Yuval's head in the war has baffled doctors around the world. Until 1982, one thing was clear to everyone: a person cannot live without sleep and dreams. Studies in which rats and cats were deprived of the dream stage showed that the experimental animals died within a few weeks of testing. These experiments left doctors with no doubts - the dreaming phase is extremely important for the continuation of life.The situation with the wounded Yuval caused experts to doubt. From the moment of the incident until today, he has not had any dreams at all. The man was tested by many professors and it turned out that the rebound hit the part of the brain called the “pons” or “pons.” It is she who is responsible for the formation of night images. Doctors believed that without dreams, Yuval would have severe memory problems. But he remains a successful lawyer, artist and lives a full, happy life.
2. Dreams in the womb
The ability to dream appears already in its infancy. The dream is especially common among infants. Babies sleep 70% of the day and spend 50% of that time looking at a variety of pictures. The first years of life are devoted to accelerated development, learning, studying the world around us and oneself, so sleep plays a very important role in the formation of mental activity.
3. 90 minutes of dreams
We spend about a third of our lives sleeping. Every night we see about 5 dreams, total duration which is one and a half hours.4. Living in a dream
The paradoxical part of our sleep, during which we dream, causes the brain to work just as intensely as when we are awake. In most stages of sleep physical processes in our body slow down, the body rests, the frequency decreases brain waves. But during the dreaming phase, our gray matter functions at 100%! The pulse and breathing speed up, but the muscles remain paralyzed.
5. Chaotic world without meaning
Unlike everyday thinking, there is no logic in dreams. You can be in one place and then suddenly, at the same time, find yourself in a completely different location and start doing strange things.Who needs this chaos? Of course, to ourselves! It is necessary in order to reorganize our memory. In a dream, the subconscious lays out everything new information and experience on the shelves. Research shows that the brains of people who are deprived of dreams perform worse, and their memory is significantly weakened compared to those who sleep and dream.
6. Falling and floating
You've probably had a dream more than once in which you had to swim or fly. Research shows that this phenomenon occurs across all cultures, races and genders. This is one of the most common types of dreams. From a physiological point of view, such flights are not particularly important. Dreams in which you swim or soar are related to psychological reaction to changes in the body that occur when immersed in various stages sleep. Your body gradually gets rid of muscle tension during wakefulness and comes to relaxation during the dreaming phase.7. Brain scan
The development of a new MRI scanning device has led humanity to a breakthrough in understanding what happens in the individual's brain during sleep. Doctors were able to observe blood flow in some parts cranium. Thus, they were able to establish that the working elements in sleep are: the hippocampus (deals with memory), the amygdala (associated with emotions) and the pons in the brain stem.
8. Mixing past and present
And although scientists were able to successfully image the state of the brain during sleep, there are still many questions about it complex mechanism, for which answers have not yet been found. Apparently, during sleep, the brain randomly takes information from the memory bank. This data is located in different places on the timeline. The subconscious then mixes the memories in random order. The elements for the dream can be taken from the previous day, from the past week, or even from events that happened several months ago. This means that if you happen to meet a person on the street, you may dream about him even after several weeks have passed, perhaps in a different set of situations and in a different place.9. Most common dreams:
- failure in exams at school or university;- appearing naked in a public place;
- airplane flight or crash;
- swimming;
- paralysis or difficulty moving;
- running away from someone;
- abduction by people, animals or fantastic creatures;
- sexual experiences;
- natural disasters;
- tooth loss;
- violence against the sleeping person or other people;
- a situation in which the sleeper finds himself abandoned or humiliated;
- being late for a bus, train or plane;
- search for hidden rooms in the building;
- search or loss of money;
- meeting people from the past or present;
- pregnancy and childbirth;
- meeting with strangers in unfamiliar situations.
Dreams are rightfully considered one of the most mysterious and interesting phenomena in our lives. It’s unlikely that anything definite can be said about them, because scientists are still studying sleep and related processes. We can only say one thing with certainty - good sleep extremely important for physical and mental health person. Be sure to monitor the quality of your sleep, and have pleasant dreams!
Only those born blind do not dream. Their dreams are limited to smell, sound, touch, emotion and taste. People who are blind after birth, like everyone else, dream.
In dreams, we see the faces only of those people whom we saw in life. We may not know them or remember them, but we have already seen them.
Within five minutes after waking up, a person can remember about half of what he saw in a dream. Then - only a tenth.
About 12% of people dream exclusively in black and white. Among those under 25, the percentage is even lower at 4.4%.
The number of those who see colorful dreams is growing every day. Scientists are sure that this is due to the transition from black and white to color television.
Dreams are symbolic. If you persistently dream about something, you will definitely be given a sign in a dream.
More often than not, dreams show negative rather than positive emotions.
The most popular emotional state in sleep is anxiety.
Chaotic (at first glance) eye movement during sleep takes up about a quarter of our total sleep time.
External factors can influence our dreams. For example, the singing of a neighbor behind the wall can transport you to a concert hall in a dream.
Men see about 70% of men in their dreams, while for women the proportion of “men to women” is approximately equal.
Almost 2/3 of people have experienced déjà vu based on dreams.
Animals also dream.
Our body never sleeps
While we are resting at night, the body continues to work: it prepares us for wakefulness during the day, establishing biological rhythms, immune, metabolic, mental and brain processes.
It was previously believed that our consciousness falls asleep, but then who sends us a hint: “It’s just a dream, don’t be afraid!” if we have nightmares?
In our dreams we can learn
The phenomenon, called “hypnopaedia” by scientists, has come to us from time immemorial.
According to historians, hypnopaedia was practiced by ancient Indian Buddhist monks, whispering the texts of manuscripts to their sleeping students.
We remember about ourselves even what we are not aware of
Any impressions, including unconscious ones, end up in short-term memory (hippocampus).
This kind of transit point of the brain has limited space, and therefore in the evenings our speed of thinking and concentration of attention are reduced. The hippocampus, like an overcrowded warehouse, requires putting things in order.
By falling asleep and disconnecting from external stimuli, we give the brain the opportunity to process the accumulated information and send it for storage to long-term (unconscious) memory with unlimited capacity.
Here, all data is stored for life, thanks to which we can remember in critical situations or under hypnosis any event down to the smallest details, the knowledge of which we are not aware of.
Natural awakening occurs only after all information has been processed and space has been freed up in the hippocampus for new impressions.
For such an important job the brain needs us to sleep at night and not disturb it for at least 6 hours, say American scientists Matthew Walker and Bryce Mander.
That is why we see such interesting dreams in the morning, the brain in this way keeps us in the arms of Morpheus.
If the process is not completed and we wake up, sleep does not bring rest to the mind, clarity of thoughts and sharpness of attention..
Short sleeping geniuses
According to statistics, most people need 8-9 hours for proper rest, but there are many famous personalities who slept less:
Julius Caesar - 3 hours,
Da Vinci - a total of 2 hours (slept 15-20 minutes every four hours),
Benjamin Franklin - 4 hours,
Napoleon - 4 hours, and in his declining years in exile he turned from a lark into a much-sleeping owl.
Edison - slept 5 hours at night, pampered himself with siestas during the day.
Tesla - about 3 hours, but from time to time I got plenty of sleep.
Churchill - 5 hours and a nap during the day.
Margaret Thatcher - about 5 o'clock. The “Iron Lady” lived for work and willingly sacrificed sleep even for the sake of her hair.
Albert Einstein was one of those who slept for a long time
He allowed himself to sleep for more than 10 hours and did not hide the fact that he made many discoveries in his sleep.
Blue light delays falling asleep by 3 hours
If you strive to fall asleep at a certain time, look away from PC monitors and TV screens at least an hour before bed.
Their emissions, as well as energy-saving and LED lamps, contain a lot of blue spectrum, which suppresses the production of melatonin, a natural sleep aid.
Orange (amber-colored) glasses will help you fall asleep and sleep better
They block blue light rays that interfere with melatonin synthesis. Somnologists advise putting on “amber” glasses three hours before bedtime.
Sleep decreased by 1.5 hours over 100 years
We sleep 20% less than our 19th century ancestors. The beginning of the involution of sleep was the “Yablochkov candle” and Edison’s electric light bulb.
Lethargy - “escape” from a cruel world and salvation from madness
The oldest genetic reaction saves the human psyche from destruction by severe stress.
A person suddenly falls asleep for several hours, tens of years or centuries, if you believe the story of the youths of Ephesus.
Sleep - gymnastics for the eyes
Eyeballs healthy person make up to 1500 movements under the eyelids per night.
This is how our oculomotor system maintains the tone of deep vision so that during the day the world does not appear double before our eyes, says Ralph Berger from the University of Edinburgh.
Sleep is a powerful defense
against cancer: Stanford scientists have found that lack of sleep reduces the production of the main hormones that fight cancer - cortisol and melatonin, which are most actively produced at night during sleep.
Women are especially at risk. If they don't sleep enough, the level of estrogen, which provokes cancer, is high, and the level of melatonin, which reduces the synthesis of estrogen, is low.
For diabetes. A qualitative study was conducted in England: men 18–27 years old had night sleep no more than 4 hours.
Result: imbalance of the hormonal system, glucose is increased, natural insulin is 30% below normal. Similar tests are performed by people with initial stage diabetes
For longevity women need
sleep at least 6.5 - 7.5 hours, Daniel Kripke found out with a group of American specialists during a 14-year experiment involving 500 representatives of the fairer sex.
Insomniacs are tortured and treated
Torture by insomnia- one of the most cruel in the history of mankind, used since prehistoric times. There are known cases of executions due to insomnia.
Treatment for insomnia depression has been practiced since 1966, when Walter Schulte, a psychiatrist from Switzerland, discovered healing effect sleep deprivation.
Insomnia has been compared to electroshock therapy: in a short time, patients recover from deepest depression and restore sleep.
No sleep for 11 days
or 264 hours spent by a 17-year-old American, Randy Gardner. The record was recorded by the Guinness Book of People in 1965, after which its representatives announced the cessation of registration of records that threaten health.
However, this did not stop those who like to make fun of themselves: in 2007, the Englishman Wright Tony was able to stay awake for 275 hours. It’s not hard to guess what his wakefulness turned out to be like for his body.
Insufficient sleep
shortens life.
Lack of sleep is one of the the most important factors premature aging. This is what Tokuiro Namikoshi, the creator of Japanese shiatsu therapy, believed.
This fact has been confirmed by numerous scientific evidence. By the way, Namikoshi lived to be 95 years old.
Harmful to the brain.
In the body, lack of sleep increases the level of stress hormones that slow down speed. cellular renewal in the brain.
Leads to obesity:
proved by a large-scale 20-year experiment conducted by American scientists. It began in 1982 and reached 39,000 Americans aged 32 to 49.
Bottom line: Participants who slept less than 7 hours were more likely to experience sleep disorders two decades later. excess weight and obesity. It's all about imbalance of digestive hormones:
- ghrelin, which controls appetite and energy expenditure,
- leptin (satiety hormone). With insufficient sleep, leptin levels drop by 20%, and we experience a feeling of false hunger.
Excessive sleep, longer than 8 hours threatens
- overweight,
- diabetes,
- depression,
- headaches,
- heart diseases.
People sleeping no more than 8 hours,
live 15% longer.
Older smokers have a harder time falling asleep:
Nicotine stimulates the psyche, increasing the level of stress adrenaline and norepinephrine - stress hormones.
A person's posture in a dream is a true portrait of his personality,
reflecting character, state of mind and health, attitude towards the world and towards oneself.
Holidays dedicated to the phenomenon of sleep
The first holiday appeared in 1652 in Finland. The Monk Hemming dedicated it to the feat of the youths of Ephesus.
Subsequently, it turned into a fun event called Sonya Day, its motto:
“Don’t sleep through your life, otherwise when you wake up one day, you won’t recognize the world like the seven holy youths.”
World Sleep Day established by the International Sleep Medicine Association in 2008.
Its goal is to attract public attention to the global decline in health due to the low quality of sleep of modern people.
Summary
Our mental and physical health, long youth, active old age - everything begins at night when we sleep.
Or rather, we are not sleeping at all, because our soul does not fall asleep, but continues to communicate with us through dreams, the body works in a different mode, and the brain sorts out everything that we thought about, saw and heard, voluntarily or involuntarily.
The facts about sleep are stubborn: Today's poor quality sleep will result in excess weight, brain problems, diabetes or other problems decades later.
So how much sleep do you really need to live long and actively? Sleep specialists advise sleeping at least 7.5 - 8 hours.
Focus on your well-being. If drowsiness and fatigue are present, it means you are sleeping little or your sleep structure is disturbed due to snoring, bruxism, periodic leg movements or other disorders.
Why you might wake up from your own scream
Night terrors are sleep disorders associated with abnormal physical movements, behavior, emotions, perceptions and dreams. It is easy to confuse it with a nightmare, but the only similarity is that both occur during sleep.
With night terrors, people are not aware of what is happening to them. The main difference between a night terror and a nightmare is that in the first case the person partially wakes up, and in the second he continues to sleep. Moreover, they occur in different phases sleep. Most often, fears occur between midnight and two o'clock in the morning, as well as during daytime sleep.
During a night terror attack, a person suddenly sits up and starts screaming, often something quite meaningful like, “They're going to kill me!” The sleeper's face may be distorted with rage, or the person may seem to be protecting himself from an invisible threat, or he may be afraid of something like worms in the bed. The heartbeat is rapid, sweat appears on the body, the pupils are dilated. This condition can last from ten to twenty minutes, and if the condition is chronic, then attacks can occur up to 16 times per night.
A distinctive feature of night terror is that it is impossible to influence a person. In fact, it is even dangerous to interfere - a person is uncontrollable. Most people in the morning remember absolutely nothing about the night's incident. The only good thing is that they then fall asleep easily - unlike a nightmare.
Most often, boys from five to seven years old suffer from night terrors, but girls are also susceptible to this, although less often - according to statistics, about 17% of young children experience night terrors. As a rule, as you get older, night terrors occur less frequently and then disappear altogether.
But besides age, there are other factors - the cause of night terror can be emotional tension, stress, fatigue or conflict. The cause may also be related to post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder or sleepwalking.
Psychotherapy helps with night fears - the point is that life stresses should be reduced to a minimum.
You don't have to sleep a lot - just believe that you slept well
New research suggests there may be a sleep placebo effect: Simply believing you got a good night's sleep is enough to keep you productive and energized throughout the day. This technique will work especially well if people are told that they slept well by some authoritative psychologist or doctor.
The experiment was carried out on a group of senior students. The students were given a brief lecture about the nature of sleep and then hooked up to equipment that would supposedly give researchers information about the quality of their sleep the previous night (in reality, the equipment simply measured brain frequencies). Then one of the experimenters allegedly calculated a coefficient of how well the students slept. Those who were told they slept well performed better and faster on the tests than those who were told they slept poorly.
Of course, if students stop sleeping altogether, this technique will not work. The effect is rather similar to another effect already familiar to us: if a person is told that he will cope with a task, then he will probably actually cope with it, and if he is set up in advance to fail, then the likelihood of failure will increase.
Only 3% of people are able to feel normal if they sleep no more than 6 hours a day
Sleep is a purely individual thing, so the time of sleep during which a person gets enough sleep also depends on the person. There are two factors that influence sleep time: according to research by scientists from the Department of Medicine at Harvard School, these are age and genetics.
Genetics influences not only how much sleep you need, but also your sleep patterns and wake-up times, as well as your preferences for performing certain tasks in the morning. different time day. Most adults need about eight hours of sleep per night, and a very small percentage of people (about 3%) can be productive during the day with just six hours of sleep - which is due to their genetics.
Typically, the older you get, the less sleep you need. Here is a short list of how many hours people of different ages need to sleep on average:
newborns (from one to two months) - from 10.5 to 18 hours;
infants (from three to 11 months) - from 10 to 14 hours;
small children (from one year to three years) - from 12 to 14 hours;
children preschool age(from three to five years) - from 12 to 14 hours;
children (from five to 12 years old) - from 10 to 11 hours;
teenagers (from 12 to 18 years old) - from 8.5 to 9.5 hours;
adults (from 18 years to the end of life) - from 7.5 to 8.5 hours.
Research has confirmed that those who sleep too much or too little have an increased risk of mortality compared to those who sleep enough.
The Hungarian soldier did not sleep for 40 years and felt great
Paul Kern was a Hungarian soldier who fought in the First World War. He was an excellent soldier and fought even when all the other soldiers from his company were killed, for which he was awarded a medal. Despite his fighting skills, he also received a gunshot wound that should have killed him, but Paul survived.
Paul was shot in the temple and part of his brain was damaged. The bullet destroyed part of the frontal lobe - such a wound would kill anyone. But the only thing that changed in Paul’s life after being wounded was that he could no longer sleep. At all.
The doctors examined him carefully and could not understand how he managed to survive. In fact, the inability to sleep became the soldier’s only problem. Sleeping pills and sedative pills did not help. This may sound terrible, but Paul did not suffer - part of him nervous system was also destroyed. The man did not perceive exhaustion and assured everyone that he felt great. Kern did not sleep for 40 years - until his death in 1955.
Your dreams really affect your real life
According to research, the content of our dreams is reflected in our real relationships with other people while awake - for example, causing arguments and doubts the very next day. Thus, dreams can predict the future behavior of a couple, especially in intimate relationships.
Researchers asked more than 60 men and women to record detailed information about your dreams as soon as they wake up, and also keep a personal diary and Special attention devote notes relating to relationships with their other half.
If people saw a partner in a dream at night, then the next day this led to problems in the relationship, and after dreams in which there was a conflict with the partner, serious difficulties in the relationship followed. If the dreamer cheated on his other half in a dream, this led to a decrease in love and trust, and the effect lasted for several days.
However, not all the results were negative: those who saw something pleasant about their partner in a dream spent more time with him and became closer to him in real life.
True, the researchers are not entirely clear whether the subjects acted unconsciously under the influence of dreams, or whether their actions were dictated by the analysis of their dreams - they could then re-read all the dreams in their diary and rethink them.
Why do you wake up five minutes before your alarm goes off?
Your body's internal clock is just as good, if not better, than mechanical watches. In the center of the brain is a collection of nerves called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which controls the body's clock - the circadian rhythm. It determines periods of drowsiness and alertness, controls blood pressure, body temperature and sense of time.
Essentially, our body is a perfectly tuned machine, and this machine loves predictability: the body's performance is most efficient when there is a routine consistency. So if you fall asleep and wake up at the same time for several days, your internal clock adjusts to this schedule.
The sleep-wake cycle is regulated by the PER protein. Protein levels rise and fall throughout the day, peaking in the evening and falling at night. When PER levels are low, your blood pressure drops, your heart rate slows, and your thinking becomes foggy—you become sleepy.
If you wake up at the same time every day, your body will learn to produce enough PER at the right time - about an hour before waking up, the PER level along with body temperature and blood pressure will begin to grow. To prepare for the stress of waking life, the body produces a cocktail of stress hormones - cortisol.
This is why you wake up before your alarm clock. In fact, your body hates this alarm clock - for it, such a sharp awakening is stress, shock. The alarm clock nullifies all the work of your body - it prevents it from waking up gradually, naturally.
By the way, if you don't wake up before your alarm clock, you're probably not getting enough sleep or going to bed on schedule. If, for example, you get up at different times on weekdays and weekends, you “reset” your internal clock. Without a schedule, your body doesn't know when to wake up, so when your alarm goes off, you feel dazed and irritable.
You hit the snooze button, and since your body is already awake, albeit in a state of stress, the subsequent phase of REM sleep further throws off your internal clock. The hormones that help you sleep get mixed up with the hormones that help you wake up - the body gets confused and gets worse with each repeat alarm. So morning warbles are the worst way to start the day.
Sleeping on your left side can relieve heartburn
Acid indigestion, or heartburn, is a burning sensation in the chest. The cause of this unpleasant phenomenon is our regurgitation. Gastric acid. Once it starts in the chest, the burning sensation can spread to the neck, throat and even jaw. Heartburn can lead to the development of gastroesophageal reflux disease.
Most of us are familiar with this unpleasant feeling, but keep in mind - sleeping on the left side of the body can help cope with heartburn, while sleeping on the right will only make the situation worse.
Presumably, this happens because while sleeping on the right side, the orbicularis muscle, which prevents the passage of food debris from the stomach into the esophagus, relaxes, ceases to perform its function, and the acidity of the esophagus thus increases.
Brain scans can help you see what you're dreaming about
Scientists have been able to develop a technique for decoding brain impulses that allows you to understand the category to which your dream belongs with an accuracy of up to 60%.
The fact is that in our dreams the same things are often repeated. visual images, for example, "tree" or "person". The researchers identified about 20 main categories, developed separately for each participant. Note that such objects as, for example, “ice axe”, “key” and “piston” belong to the same category - “tools”.
Three volunteers were asked to look at photos from the Internet that fit these categories, while their brain activity was monitored. Then the data obtained was entered into a specially developed computer program, after which scanning continued during sleep. Researchers led by neurologist Yuki Kamitani monitored the brain activity of the subjects at this moment. Once it was possible to determine what the volunteers were seeing in their dreams, they were woken up and asked to describe their dreams.
So far, the system is far from perfect and can only guess visualizations from a wide range of categories. Decoding the details of dreams this moment does not seem possible.
If you suddenly wake up a sleepwalker, nothing bad will happen to him
There is a common myth that if you wake up a sleepwalker, they may go into severe shock and even have a heart attack. In fact, waking up from such a dream is not dangerous in itself. But if you happen to see a person walking in his sleep, it is still better not to wake him up - both for him and for you.
While there is nothing dangerous to his health in the awakening of a person suffering from sleepwalking, there is a high probability that a person from unexpectedness may injure himself and cause harm to the one who woke him up. Typically, a sleepwalker begins to walk during the third stage of slow-wave sleep, also known as non-REM sleep. At this stage, sleep is very deep and waking up at this time is quite difficult, although possible. However, waking up can lead to cognitive impairment (scientists call this condition “sleep inertia”) that can last about 30 minutes.
Experts in the field of sleep disorders say that a person who suddenly awakens from deep sleep, may become very frightened, not understand for a long time where he is, or become extremely excited. He could easily not recognize you, push you or hit you. But even if such a person did not react aggressively, he can still cause harm to both you and himself: many sleepwalkers go to the kitchen to cook in a dream or even try to drive a car with all the ensuing consequences.
Instead of waking a sleepwalker, experts advise gently and slowly guiding him back to bed.
Lack of sleep is ruining your love life
Poor sleep significantly affects your daily relationships as a couple: usually the partner who gets less sleep or often has nightmares becomes grumpy, begins to complain about life and accuses the other of not being appreciated or not being given enough attention. Researchers at the University of Berkeley wondered why this was happening.
Scientists asked 60 pairs of different ages, from 18 to 56 years old, keep a sleep diary. Participants had to write down each morning how well they slept and add how they felt about their partner. Moreover, during the decision controversial issues The family was recording a video. Those people whose sleep was worse turned out to be much more intolerant and irritable.
There are several reasons why a person may not get enough sleep - for example, snoring or loud noises from the next room that interfere with sleep. And some people are proud that they sleep 4–5 hours a day and can go without sleep for a long time.
Experts recalled that adequate sleep is extremely important for physical and mental health, and in order to feel alert and active, a person needs from 5 to 8 hours of sleep every day.
Today, every third person on Earth suffers from insomnia. Only 40% of the world's population gets enough sleep.
