Scientific facts about sleep that will surprise you

Before the advent of col­or tele­vi­sion, only 15% of peo­ple had col­or dreams. Today we are 75%.

What do we dream about, why can’t we live long with­out sleep, and what hap­pens to the body while we are dream­ing? Inter­est­ing facts about sleep and dreams tells Med­AboutMe.

1. Every night we go through several cycles of sleep.

When we plunge into the “embrace of Mor­pheus”, we enter into a slow phase of sleep. We begin to doze, but we are still aware of the sur­round­ing real­i­ty, so loud sounds and nois­es can still dis­turb our sleep.

Then the body goes through the sec­ond, third and fourth stages of slow wave sleep, and then the fun begins! This is the REM phase dur­ing which we dream.

Every night a per­son goes through 4–5 com­plete sleep cycles, each of which lasts from 90 to 120 min­utes.

2. During sleep, we consolidate the acquired knowledge.

While we sleep, our brain works. Dur­ing sleep, it trans­fers infor­ma­tion from short-term mem­o­ry to long-term mem­o­ry. That is why a per­son who sleeps lit­tle can­not study at full strength. Knowl­edge sim­ply will not be fixed!

3. We briefly lose the ability to move while we sleep.

This hap­pens dur­ing REM sleep, that is, when we dream. And this is nec­es­sary for our own safe­ty so that we, under the influ­ence of dreams, do not start kick­ing, push­ing, jump­ing out of bed and doing oth­er things that we dream about.

This con­di­tion usu­al­ly lasts for a short time, about 20 min­utes, and it is called atony.

4. Some people experience sleep paralysis

This is a state where a per­son sud­den­ly wakes up and real­izes that they can­not move, speak or scream. Some­times it is accom­pa­nied by audi­to­ry, visu­al or phys­i­cal hal­lu­ci­na­tions.

For exam­ple, it may seem to a per­son that some­one is stand­ing in the cor­ner of the room or feel some­one’s hands on his throat. The aver­age dura­tion of a “wak­ing night­mare” is usu­al­ly 6–7 min­utes.

Accord­ing to sci­en­tists, such phe­nom­e­na were once expe­ri­enced by every fifth per­son in the world. Luck­i­ly, it’s not dan­ger­ous at all!

5. Each of us has experienced a hypnotic jerk.

This is also a unique state. If you once, when falling asleep, sud­den­ly felt that you began to fall, this is a hyp­not­ic jerk. That is, invol­un­tary mus­cle con­trac­tions that occur at the time of falling asleep.

These move­ments can be both soft, that a per­son does not even notice them, or quite strong, which can wake him up.

6. People become sleepwalkers 1–2 hours after falling asleep

And this hap­pens dur­ing the deep­est stage of sleep. While walk­ing in a dream, “sen­so­ry per­cep­tion” is prac­ti­cal­ly turned off, which means that a per­son is not ful­ly aware of real­i­ty, smells, sounds, and even pain.

He can not only walk around the room, but also get behind the wheel of a car and dri­ve around the city, clean the house or paint the walls. There are even cas­es of vio­lence dur­ing som­nam­bu­lism.

The next morn­ing, a per­son, as a rule, does not remem­ber his night­ly adven­tures.

7. Lucid dreaming is not a myth!

Dur­ing lucid dreams, a per­son is ful­ly aware that this is a dream and can take con­trol of the plot of the dream, dic­tate what will hap­pen next. This is very use­ful if a per­son, for exam­ple, suf­fers from night­mares and has the same dream every day. So he can replay a con­flict sit­u­a­tion or change the course of sleep, mak­ing an unex­pect­ed turn.

Accord­ing to sci­en­tists, 55% of peo­ple have expe­ri­enced lucid dreams at least once in their lives. Many peo­ple specif­i­cal­ly learn to man­age their dreams.

8. You get taller when you sleep.

Dur­ing the day, due to the load on the spine, the ver­te­brae are com­pressed, as a result of which flu­id par­tial­ly flows out of the inter­ver­te­bral discs. This leads to the fact that a per­son by the end of the day becomes actu­al­ly 1 cen­time­ter low­er.

And when a per­son sleeps, the load on the back decreas­es, the flu­id returns to the artic­u­lar joints, there­by allow­ing the body to “stretch”, that is, to regain that same cen­time­ter.

By the way, this is one of the rea­sons why chil­dren and teenagers grow up in sleep, there is no pres­sure on the spine. Anoth­er rea­son is that more growth hor­mone is pro­duced dur­ing sleep.

9. There are people who talk more often in their sleep.

And these are chil­dren and men. Usu­al­ly a per­son has no idea that he is talk­ing in his sleep until some­one tells him about it. Sci­en­tists are con­vinced that the rea­son for talk­ing in a dream is stress. This is how the psy­che reacts to phe­nom­e­na and sit­u­a­tions with which a per­son fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­agrees.

10. Recurring dreams call the brain to solve the problem

Some­times peo­ple have recur­ring dreams, where the same sto­ry goes from one night to anoth­er. Psy­chol­o­gists believe that in this way the brain encour­ages a per­son to pay atten­tion to what he miss­es, to solve some prob­lem. As soon as a per­son does this, such dreams stop.

11. Some people leave their body in their sleep.

Or rather, they just think it is. Sci­en­tists call this a neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. A per­son, being in a half-asleep or sleepy state, sees him­self out­side his body, that is, he watch­es him­self from the side.

While sci­en­tists do not deny the exis­tence of the out-of-body illu­sion, they can­not explain how or why it occurs. Believ­ers explain this phe­nom­e­non as “walks of the soul.”

12. Sometimes in dreams enlightenment comes

Prob­a­bly every­one remem­bers from school that the Russ­ian chemist Dmit­ry Mendeleev his table was dreamed of in a dream, but not every­one takes into account the back­ground. The chemist was obsessed with cre­at­ing a peri­od­ic sys­tem of ele­ments, so he con­stant­ly thought about it, and one day he just saw her best incar­na­tion. A sim­i­lar sto­ry hap­pened with the chemist August Kekulewho want­ed to cre­ate the for­mu­la for ben­zene.

Sci­en­tists explain such moments by the games of the sub­con­scious. He already knows the answer to the ques­tion, but has not yet had time to con­vey it to con­scious­ness, so we are dream­ing of the answer.

Strong and sweet dreams to you!