Sleep interesting facts about sleep. Interesting facts about sleep. Sleep is a powerful defense

During sleep, a person periodically alternates between two main phases: slow and fast sleep, and at the beginning of sleep, the duration of the slow phase prevails, and before waking up, the duration of REM sleep increases. Polysomnography shows that sleep in most people consists of 4-6 wave-like cycles, lasting 80-100 minutes.

Dream- a special state of consciousness of humans and animals, which includes a number of stages that naturally repeat themselves during the night. The appearance of these stages is due to the activity of various brain structures.

Each cycle includes phases of "slow", or orthodox, sleep (MS), which accounts for 75% of sleep, and "rapid", or paradoxical (RS), which is about 25%.

• The record for the longest lack of sleep is 18 days, 21 hours and 40 minutes. The record holder spoke about hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, problems with speech, concentration and memory.

• It is impossible to accurately determine whether a person is awake or not without careful medical supervision. People can sleep with their eyes open.

• If five minutes is enough for you to dive into dream It means that you are clearly not getting enough sleep. The ideal gap is between 10 and 15 minutes. This means that you are quite tired, but during the day you feel alert.

• The newborn is the cause of his parents' lack of sleep. In the first year of his life, parents lose 400-750 hours of sleep.

• REM sleep begins about an hour and a half after falling asleep.

• Some scientists believe that we dream to fix events in long-term memory, i.e. we dream of things worth remembering. Others believe that we dream of elements that need to be forgotten - to eliminate memories that "clog" our brain, interfering with mental work. Maybe dreams have no purpose at all and sleep is a meaningless by-product of the process of sleep and consciousness.

• British Department of Defense researchers have developed a way for soldiers to stay awake for 36 hours. Tiny optical fibers inserted into special goggles projected a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to sunrise) around the edge of the soldiers' retinas, fooling their brains.

• Seventeen hours of uninterrupted wakefulness results in a deterioration in performance, as is the effect of a 0.05 percent blood alcohol level.
  One in six crashes is caused by driver fatigue (according to NRMA)

• Noise during the first or last two hours of sleep can disrupt your sleep.

• The so-called “biological clock,” which allows some people to wake up when they want, is driven by the tension hormone adrenocorticotropin. The researchers say that the sharp increase in its level is reflected in the unconscious anticipation of the stress of getting up in the morning.

• The tiny fluorescent beams of a digital alarm clock can interfere with your sleep.

• body temperature and cycle sleep closely connected. It is for this reason that warm summer nights can cause restless sleep.

• After five sleepless nights, the effect of alcohol on the body doubles

Today, on World Sleep Day, conferences and other events are held in different countries dedicated to this most important part of human life. And we offer for reading a selection of facts about sleep, which seemed to us the most interesting.

Night terrors are sleep disturbances associated with abnormal physical movements, behaviors, emotions, perceptions, and dreams. It's easy to confuse with a nightmare, but the only similarity is that both occur during sleep.

With night terrors, people are unaware of what is happening to them. The main difference between a night terror and a nightmare is that in the first case, a person partially wakes up, and in the second, he continues to sleep. In addition, they occur in different phases of sleep. Most often, fears occur between midnight and two in the morning, as well as during daytime sleep.

During a night terror attack, the person suddenly straightens up and starts screaming, often something quite meaningful like: “They will kill me!” The face of the sleeper is distorted with rage, or the person seems to be protecting himself from an invisible threat, or is afraid of something like worms in the bed. The heartbeat is quickened, 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 fear is that it is impossible to influence a person. In fact, it is even dangerous to interfere - a person is uncontrollable. Most people have absolutely no memory of the nighttime incident in the morning. The only good thing is that they then easily fall asleep - unlike a nightmare.

Most often, boys from five to seven years old suffer from night fears, but girls are also susceptible to this, although less often - according to statistics, about 17% of young children experience night fears. As a rule, as you grow older, night terrors occur less often, and then completely disappear.

But in addition to age, there are other factors - the cause of night terror can be emotional stress, stress, fatigue or conflict. Also, the cause may 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.

A new study suggests there's a placebo effect of sleep: simply believing you've gotten enough 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 reputable psychologist or doctor.

The experiment was carried out on a group of senior students. The students were briefed in lectures about the nature of sleep and then hooked up to equipment supposed to give researchers information about the quality of their sleep the previous night (in fact, the equipment simply measured brain frequencies). Then one of the experimenters allegedly calculated the ratio of how well the students slept. Those who were told they slept well performed better and faster than those who were told they slept poorly.

Of course, if students stop sleeping at all, 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 the task, then he will probably really cope with it, and if you set him up in advance for failure, then the probability of failure will increase.

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 affect sleep time: according to research by scientists from the Harvard School of Medicine, these are age and genetics.

Genetics influence not only how much sleep you need, but also sleep patterns and wake-up times, as well as your preferences for performing certain tasks at different times of the 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 - this is due precisely to their genetics.

Generally, the older you get, the less sleep you need. Here is a short list of how many hours on average people of different ages need to sleep:

• newborns (from one month to two) - from 10.5 to 18 hours;
• infants (from three to 11 months) - from 10 to 14 hours;
• small children (from one to three years old) - from 12 to 14 hours;
• children of preschool age (from three to five years old) - 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 old to the end of life) - from 7.5 to 8.5 hours.

Studies have confirmed that those who sleep too much or too little have an increased risk of death compared to those who sleep enough.

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 have killed anyone. But the only thing that changed in Paul's life after being wounded was that he could no longer sleep. Generally.

Doctors carefully examined him and could not understand how he managed to survive. In fact, the inability to sleep became the soldier's only problem. Sleeping pills and sedatives did not help. It may sound terrible, but Paul did not suffer - part of his nervous system was also destroyed. The man did not perceive the exhaustion and assured everyone that he felt great. Kern did not sleep for 40 years - until his death in 1955.

According to research, the content of our dreams is reflected in our real relationships with other people while awake - for example, causing disputes and doubts the very next day. Thus, dreams can predict the future behavior of a couple, especially for intimate relationships.

The researchers asked more than 60 men and women to write down detailed information about their dreams as soon as they woke up, as well as to keep a personal diary and pay special attention to records relating to relationships with their significant other.

If people saw a partner at night in a dream, then the next day this led to problems in relationships, and after dreams in which there was a conflict with a partner, serious difficulties in relationships followed. If the dreamer cheated on the second half in a dream, then this led to a decrease in love and trust, and the effect lasted for several days.

However, not all results were negative: those who saw something pleasant about their partner in their dreams spent more time with them and became closer to them 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 a diary and rethink.

Your body's internal clock is just as good, if not better, than a mechanical clock. At the center of the brain is a cluster of nerves called the suprachiasmatic nucleus that oversees the body's clock, the circadian rhythm. It determines periods of drowsiness and alertness, controls blood pressure, body temperature and sense of time.

In essence, our body is a perfectly tuned machine, and this machine loves predictability: the work of the body becomes most efficient when there is a routine. So if you fall asleep and wake up at the same time for several days, then the 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 is low, your blood pressure drops, your heart rate slows, and your thinking becomes foggier - you become sleepy.

If you wake up every day at the same time, then the 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 rise. To prepare for the stress of being awake, your body produces a cocktail of stress hormones called cortisol.

That is why you wake up before the alarm. In fact, your body hates this alarm clock - for it, such a sudden awakening is stress, a shock. The alarm clock cancels out all the work of your body - it prevents it from waking up gradually, naturally.

By the way, if you don’t wake up before the alarm, then you probably don’t get enough sleep or go to bed off schedule. If, for example, you get up at different times on weekdays and weekends, then you “reset” the settings of the internal clock. Without a schedule, your body doesn't know when to wake up, so when the alarm goes off, you feel overwhelmed and irritated.

You press the snooze button, and since your body is already awake, albeit under stress, the subsequent REM sleep further throws off the internal clock. The hormones that help you fall asleep mix with the hormones that help you wake up - the body gets confused and gets worse with each repeated alarm. So morning trills are the worst way to start the day.

Acid indigestion, or heartburn, is a burning sensation in the chest. The cause of this unpleasant phenomenon is the regurgitation of stomach acid by us. Having arisen in the chest, the burning sensation can spread to the neck, throat, and even the jaw. Heartburn can lead to the development of gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Most of us are familiar with this uncomfortable sensation, but keep in mind that sleeping on the left side of the body can help with heartburn, while sleeping on the right side will only aggravate the situation.

Presumably, this happens because during sleep on the right side, the circular muscle, which prevents the penetration of food debris from the stomach into the esophagus, relaxes, ceases to perform its function, and the acidity of the esophagus thus increases.

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 60%.

The fact is that in our dreams the same visual images are often repeated, for example, “tree” or “man”. The researchers identified about 20 main categories, developed separately for each participant. Note that such items as, for example, "ice ax", "key" and "piston" belong to the same category - "tools".

Three volunteers were asked to look at photos from the Internet that matched these categories, and at that moment their brain activity was monitored. Then the obtained data were entered into a specially designed computer program, after which the scanning continued during sleep. The researchers, led by neurologist Yuki Kamitani, were monitoring the subjects' brain activity at the time. As soon as it was possible to determine what the volunteers saw 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 is currently not possible.

There is a common myth that if you wake up a sleepwalker, he can go through a severe shock, and he can 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 who walks in a dream, it is still better not to wake him up - both for him and for you.

While in itself there is nothing dangerous for the health of a person suffering from sleepwalking, there is a high probability that a person may injure himself from surprise and harm the one who woke him up. A sleepwalker usually begins walking during the third stage of non-REM sleep, also known as non-REM sleep. At this stage, sleep is very deep and it is quite difficult to wake up at this time, although it is possible. However, waking up can lead to a cognitive impairment (scientists call this state of "sleep inertia") that can last up to 30 minutes.

Experts in the field of sleep disorders say that a person who suddenly wakes up from a deep sleep can become very frightened, not understand where he is for a long time, or become extremely aroused. He can easily not recognize you, push or hit. But even if such a person did not react aggressively, he can still harm 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 taking him back to bed.

Poor sleep significantly affects your daily relationships in a couple: usually the one of the partners who gets less sleep or often has nightmares in a dream becomes grumpy, begins to complain about life and accuses the other of not being appreciated or not paying enough attention. Researchers from the University of Berkeley wondered why this is happening.

The researchers asked 60 couples of varying ages, from 18 to 56, to keep a sleep diary. Participants had to write down how well they slept each morning and add how they felt about their partner. In addition, during the resolution of disputes in the family, a video was recorded. 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 of the fact that they sleep a day and can go without sleep for a long time.

The experts recalled that proper 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.

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Almost a third of a person's life passes in sleep. Scientists around the world are studying the mechanism by which falling asleep occurs, but so far they have not come to any single conclusion. Numerous interesting facts about sleep have resulted from such research. We will now meet some of them.

Sleep phases

On one point, scholars agree unanimously. There are two phases of sleep - slow and fast. These are certainly interesting facts about sleep.

• Slow-wave sleep is approximately 80% of our total night's rest. At this time, heart rate slows down, breathing becomes more rare, and body temperature even decreases. The work of the digestive system during such sleep is less active.
• REM sleep is diametrically opposed to non-REM sleep. Everything happens exactly the opposite - the heartbeat quickens, the pressure rises. A number of scientists are sure that at this time the brain processes the information received during the day. Moreover, at the subconscious level, this information is distributed according to the degree of significance.

The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, considered sleep to be a time when a person does not interact with the outside world, but communicates with his subconscious. After falling asleep, a person loses control over his thoughts, and therefore we see fantastic images in a dream, various scenes that are not similar to what we see in real life. Physiologists have calculated that dreams appear about an hour and a half after falling asleep and occupy about 20% of the duration of sleep. During his nightly rest, a person sees several dreams, each of which lasts for several minutes. Although we think they last much longer, some of them can be compared to films in terms of plot and spectacle. Many people forget in the morning what they saw in their night visions, and sometimes during the day the dream appears in memory with the smallest details.

The people we see in our dreams

Interesting facts about sleep concern the people we see in our nightly dreams. We are very surprised where they come from and what they mean completely unfamiliar faces with whom we have never met. But in fact, we once saw all the strangers from our dreams, but we didn’t remember. It can be completely random people:

• a man who was on the bus with you a year ago;
• a woman who once flashed in a cameo role in some movie;
• one of those who once upon a time was with you in the same company, but you did not pay attention to them then.

In his life, a person under different circumstances happens to meet with a variety of people, so our subconscious never lacks characters for our next dreams.

Every evening, falling asleep, we find ourselves beyond the realm of reality. The biggest thing we do in a dream is to observe and remember pictures and events, that is, dreams, in order to try to remember, comprehend and, possibly, interpret them in the morning.

But there is another attitude to dreams. Many peoples have a practice and technique of conscious travel in the world of dreams. But, unfortunately, information about tribes and people using the technique of active behavior in a dream is too few and fragmentary. Some peoples attached too much importance to dreams.

The famous psychoanalyst Jung described Australian Aborigines who spent most of their lives trying to establish contact with the realm of dreams. To do this, they held religious rituals and ceremonies, discussed and interpreted their dreams for a long time, and turned to the spirits for advice.

North American Indians (Winnebago, Dakota, Sioux and others), as well as South American Yaqui Indians, sought in their dreams to meet with a personal patron spirit. Special preparation for such a meeting included meditation, prayers, fasting and even physical exercises. Thus, they sought to find out what lay ahead for them, as well as to get answers to some pressing questions through sleep.

Trying to find the answer to the question through dreams

Interesting facts about sleep are often discovered in our time. For example, it is possible to set the body to dream about the answer to a question that interests you or a solution to an existing problem. To do this, you need to focus on your task. Before going to bed, you need to relax and even out your breathing. Relaxing, begin to mentally repeat the phrase: "I will have a dream containing information on the following problem." The main thing at the same time, do not jump to other thoughts. It is important to focus only on the question to which you would like to see the answer in a dream. You need to think about it continuously until you fall asleep. When you wake up, immediately write down in detail everything that you saw and heard in your nightly dreams. Usually a clear answer does not come immediately, although it is possible to wake up with a clear understanding of the situation and a solution to the problem. The attempt can be repeated the next night, but the answer can come not only in the morning, but also during the day, for example, at work, on a walk, during rest.

Historical figures who received the solution of their problems in a dream

You can also tell the dreams of real historical figures. Let's look at a few examples.

• The chemist Kekule, after conducting many experiments, eventually found the formula for benzene in a dream, seeing monkeys moving in a round dance, holding each other by the tail.
• Dmitri Mendeleev saw in a dream a way to distribute chemical elements in accordance with their atomic numbers, which later became the periodic table.
• According to his own testimony, Coleridge wrote about three hundred of his poems during his sleep. 54 of them he managed to remember and write down.
• It is believed that the plot of his immortal comedy "Woe from Wit" also appeared to Griboyedov in a dream.
• The famous archaeologist Schliemann said that he saw the location of the legendary Troy in a dream.
• The great composer Wagner claimed that he heard his creation "Tristan and Isolde" in a dream.

Many musicians and poets kept a pen and paper next to the bed to write down their dream works.

What else do we need to know about our sleep

Here are some more interesting facts about human sleep, which many of us, perhaps, did not even know.

• One of the latest studies has shown that the quality of a person's sleep is affected by the diet of his diet. Eating protein-rich foods helps you fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly. But a diet that is dominated by carbohydrates can cause insomnia.
• Our sleep is also affected by external factors. For example, if the room is too stuffy, it can lead to nightmares. Therefore, you need to go to bed in a ventilated room.
• Sleep must be complete. To restore strength, you need to sleep at least eight hours. However, some famous personalities slept no more than 3-4 hours a day and felt completely healthy. For example, Edison, Franklin, Churchill, Tesla and other celebrities took very little time to sleep and did not feel tired. Scientists consider this a frequent manifestation in talented and brilliant people, but do not consider it normal.

Conclusion

Sleep and dreams are not only a subject of research for scientists, but also an interesting object for creativity. In different countries for many centuries, poets, writers and artists were inspired by this process to create their masterpieces, and Shakespeare used the dreams of his heroes as a way of expressing their thoughts. And more interesting facts about sleep. Since 2008, World Sleep Day has been celebrated every second Friday in March.

A person spends about a third of his life in sleep. People relate to the need for sleep in different ways - some are annoyed that sleep takes time that could be spent on some activity, while others, on the contrary, tend to sleep outside of school hours. This post contains interesting facts about sleep and everything connected with it.

1) Sleep not only people, but also animals. Moreover, by studying the sleep of animals, scientists have learned a lot of interesting things.

The need for sleep is present in all more or less complex animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, mollusks, and even worms.

Scientists have identified common patterns in the duration of sleep in different animals. It turned out that, on average, predators sleep longer than herbivores, and small animals sleep longer than large ones. Also, the duration of sleep depends on lifestyle and metabolic rate.

Sleep duration in different animals

Large ungulates, such as zebras and giraffes, sleep very little - only 2-3 hours a day, for a long time, up to 20 hours a day, cats sleep, and the record holder among animals is the koala, she spends up to 22 hours sleeping.

Koala sleeps most of his life

It also turned out that some animals are able to sleep standing up, on the move and even in flight. A study of dolphin sleep showed that these animals alternately sleep in different hemispheres of the brain. A dolphin cannot fall asleep at all, because it must constantly float to the surface for breathing, therefore, during sleep, either the left or the right hemisphere falls asleep in turn, and, accordingly, either one or the other half of the body relaxes. In the same way, some birds are able to put only half of the brain into sleep.

2) In addition to wakefulness and sleep modes, there is also hibernation and suspended animation.

Although the metabolism slows down during sleep, it is not much different from the resting state during wakefulness. Nevertheless, many animals are known that are capable of falling into such states in which metabolism and energy consumption are reduced by tens, hundreds and even thousands of times.

hibernation(stupor, hibernation) - a state that some animals (such as frogs and ground squirrels) fall into during an unfavorable period, such as winter or drought. During hibernation, the level of metabolism (metabolism) drops to 2-3% of normal, the frequency of respiration and heart rate drops tenfold, and the body temperature drops. Hibernation in some animals (in the regions of the Far North) can last up to 8 months.

Dormouse (species of small rodents) hibernating

An even more unusual state anabiosis. Some animals can fall into anabiosis when various kinds of adverse conditions occur, while the metabolism drops to almost zero, and the body can lose most of the water. The animal may appear to be dead, but when favorable conditions come, it comes to life again.

One of the most amazing animals that can endure extreme conditions while falling into suspended animation is the tardigrade. This is a small animal (only about 1 mm in size), close to arthropods. Tardigrades are able to endure cooling in liquid helium and heating in boiling water, pressure of thousands of atmospheres and the vacuum of space, exposure to toxic chemicals and high radiation.

Does all this have anything to do with humans? Oddly enough, yes. Although humans are not creatures that regularly go into hibernation or suspended animation, on rare occasions they can experience similar states. Yes, there have been many cases lethargic sleep, in which a person sharply slows down all processes, breathing and heartbeat become very weak. This state can last for a different time, from several hours to several decades. Often, people who fell into a lethargic sleep were mistaken for the dead. So, the famous Renaissance poet Petrarch, who fell into a lethargic sleep for 20 hours, woke up when he was already being prepared for the funeral. Even in our time, there are cases when people suddenly came to their senses in the morgue. The record periods of lethargic sleep are about 20 years.

People usually fall into a lethargic sleep against their will, most often as a result of severe fatigue, exhaustion or stress. But it happens otherwise. Thus, history has preserved the description of an amazing experiment carried out in 1837 in India. A yogi named Harid decided to demonstrate his abilities to the local maharaja (ruler) and the English major, who did not believe in all this. He had to spend 6 weeks in a boarded up box, without food and water, guards were assigned to him. When the box was opened, the yogi's body was stiff and showed no signs of life. The doctor stated that the yogi was dead. However, after that, the assistants began to resuscitate the yogi, pouring hot water over him and rubbing, as a result, the yogi came to life and asked the maharaja and the Englishman if they believed him now.

3) Sleep is fast and slow.

In the early 20th century, scientists began to study sleep. It turned out that brain activity during sleep not only differs from the wakefulness regime, but also changes significantly during sleep itself. Analyzing the electrical activity of the brain and other indicators, scientists have identified five stages of sleep, which are repeated one after another. Moreover, 4 stages belong to the so-called phase. slow-wave sleep, and the latter - to the phase of REM sleep. In the phase of slow sleep, all processes in the body slow down, and waves of a large period and amplitude predominate in brain activity. In the phase of REM sleep, on the contrary, all processes are accelerated, and brain activity increases dramatically. At this time, a person usually sees vivid dreams.

After falling asleep, the phase of slow sleep usually begins, after a while a period of REM sleep begins, which is again replaced by slow sleep, etc. The duration of one cycle, including both phases, is approximately 90-100 minutes.

4) Sleep regulation is very complicated and sometimes fails.

It took scientists a long time to understand how and why falling asleep and waking up. As a result, it was found that the regulation of sleep depends on the activity of different centers in the brain, some of which are active during wakefulness, while others, on the contrary, during sleep, as well as on hormones, and several types.

Melatonin is often called the sleep hormone, the accumulation of which in the body really leads to the fact that a person is drawn to sleep. Melatonin is almost not produced during the day (and in general, when it is light around), but is actively produced in the dark. However, melatonin is far from the only hormone that affects sleep. There is a whole group of other hormones that gradually accumulate in the body during wakefulness and gradually increase in quantity to a level when a person begins to fall asleep, and the stronger the longer he does not sleep.

But sleep is not only regulated by hormones. A group of centers in the brain called the reticular formation maintains the state of wakefulness. A person falls asleep only when the activity of these centers falls, but even then the reticular formation acts as a “watchman”, continuing to receive signals from the environment and interrupting sleep if something important happens. There are other centers that, on the contrary, are active during sleep, they are located, in particular, in such a part of the brain as the hypothalamus. In experiments with animals, it was found that the impact on some parts of the brain with the help of electrical impulses led to the fact that they fell asleep.

Finally, there is another mechanism that suppresses too rapid and frequent switching between sleep and wakefulness, stabilizing the corresponding state.

Violation of this complex regulation leads to various kinds of sleep disorders. The most common manifestation of sleep disorders is insomnia, sometimes, on the contrary, increased drowsiness (hypersomnia). If the mechanism of mode stabilization is violated, this leads to narcolepsy, when a person can repeatedly fall asleep and wake up for a short time (sometimes even calculated in seconds) during the day.

5) Sleepwalking and sleep paralysis.

But there are even stranger types of sleep disorders. Usually, when sleep occurs, consciousness is turned off, and information from the senses ceases to flow synchronously, and the muscular system is also blocked. When you wake up, everything is activated at the same time. However, there are failures in this mechanism.

It happens that during sleep the consciousness does not turn on and the person continues to sleep, however, the blockage of muscles and sensory organs is removed. This leads to such a phenomenon as sleepwalking (the more modern name is somnambulism). A sleepwalker can get out of bed, walk and perform various activities, but at the same time he will be asleep and is unlikely to remember anything when he wakes up. Sleepwalking, according to various estimates, affects up to 10% of the population, while most often this sleep disorder occurs in childhood and adolescence.

Most often, sleepwalking attacks do not last long, but sometimes they drag on and lead to dangerous consequences both for the sleepwalker and for those around him. During an attack, a sleepwalker can eat inedible objects, go out a window instead of a door, and harm others or even kill others. For example, 16-year-old American Jo Ann once dreamed that a criminal who wanted to kill her entire family broke into the house. Grabbing two revolvers, she rushed to save her relatives and, before she woke up, managed to inflict several fatal wounds on her younger brother and father, and also wounded her mother in the leg. The court found her not guilty.

The opposite type of disturbance is the phenomenon when the consciousness turns on, but the blockage of the muscles is not removed, and the person still continues to see and hear some images that usually accompany a dream. This phenomenon is called sleep paralysis. People who encounter him describe him in a similar way - they wake up, but at the same time they are unable to move their arms or legs for some time. Sleep paralysis is often accompanied by a feeling of heaviness and pressure, as well as visions of various scary creatures. Although sleep paralysis is unpleasant, it is harmless and ends with a full awakening within 1-2 minutes.

6) Lack of sleep is extremely harmful.

Scientific studies have shown that sleep is not just rest for the body, it performs important functions. So, it turned out that it is during sleep that the information accumulated during the day is systematized and transferred to long-term memory. Psychological tests showed that people who were given the task of remembering some information and then allowed to sleep remembered it much better than those who spent the same period without sleep. Therefore, if you pass some kind of exam, you must definitely sleep well before it!

The whole list of harmful effects of lack of sleep, in addition to problems with memory and concentration, turned out to be very diverse. It has been established that lack of sleep leads to overeating and obesity, to an increased risk of colds, to an increase in the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes, to the development of diabetes, and, finally, in general, reduces life expectancy. An adult should sleep at least 7-8 hours a day.

7) How many people can live without sleep?

An ordinary person cannot live long without sleep. It is almost impossible to survive without sleep for more than a week, a person cannot fight drowsiness and falls asleep against his will. Prolonged sleep deprivation is considered dangerous - a person can go crazy and even die. Previously, some countries used torture by sleep deprivation and even execution using a similar method. For example, according to the British, in 1850 a merchant convicted of murdering his wife was executed in China by depriving him of sleep. He died of insomnia on the 19th day. It is known about experiments on dogs to deprive them of sleep, while puppies survived for about 4-6 days, adult dogs died on the 11th day.

Studies on volunteers have shown that with prolonged sleep deprivation, headaches occur, concentration and memory decrease, it becomes much more difficult to perform any activity that requires mental abilities, and the sharpness of vision decreases. After 4-5 days, hallucinations begin, an adequate perception of reality is disturbed, speech becomes inconsistent, a person forgets what happened a minute ago.

Despite the clear harms of sleep deprivation, sleep deprivation (i.e., not sleeping for a period of time) is used as a treatment for depression. True, at the same time, people are not brought up to several days of sleep deprivation, they are limited to a period of about 36 hours.

And yet, surprisingly, reliable examples are known when people could do without sleep at all. Among them are people with rare diseases or those who were wounded in the head in the war. One of the most famous examples is the case of the Hungarian soldier Paul Kern, who was shot in the temple during World War I. A significant part of the brain was damaged, but this did not hurt the soldier. The only consequence of the injury was that Paul stopped sleeping. He didn't want to sleep at all, moreover, he didn't have any negative effects from the lack of sleep. Paul Kern lived another 40 years, but he never fell asleep until his death.

8) Interesting facts about dreams.

Most people (and animals, by the way) dream. True, about 90% of dreams seen are forgotten, so people who think that they do not see dreams, most likely, they simply do not remember them.

Through research, scientists have found that there is a connection between dreams and the level of intelligence. Namely, the more dreams a person sees, the brighter they are and the better they are remembered, the smarter this person is.

Psychologists have established that there is a connection between the contents of dreams and the contents of the subconscious. In other words, between the plot of a dream and secret motives, subconscious desires, thoughts that a person can hide even from himself. Psychoanalysis has developed methods for interpreting dreams that will help a person better understand himself and get rid of certain psychological problems. But the interpretation of dreams with the help of "dream books" is nonsense.

9) There are prophetic and prophetic dreams.

Are there prophetic dreams? Many scientists and psychologists deny anything paranormal in principle and strive to give any phenomena a materialistic explanation. From their point of view, prophetic dreams can indeed take place, however, they are the work of the subconscious, which, regardless of consciousness, analyzes the available information and, on this basis, gives a forecast of upcoming events in a dream. However, there are numerous cases of prophetic dreams that are difficult to explain in this way. Some of them are quite famous, for example, on the eve of his assassination, President Lincoln had a dream three times in which he passes through the White House and sees the coffin in which the President is buried. He told his wife about this dream, and a few days later he was shot from a revolver by an assassin.

10) Other facts about dreams.

In fact, there are many more interesting facts about dreams. Here are just a few of them:

• Introduction to hypnotic sleep has long been successfully used to treat various mental disorders, especially all kinds of phobias, fears, neuroses, etc. In hypnotic sleep, a person can answer various questions and receive installations without realizing it.
• In a dream, a person continues to receive information from the senses, but does not perceive it consciously. However, such information can influence the content of dreams - for example, if a person is lightly sprinkled with water, he can see a leaking roof in a dream.
• At one time, the idea of ​​using sleep for learning was popular among psychologists. The first results were encouraging, but later it turned out that this method is not as effective as learning in the waking state, and in addition is applicable only to memorizing certain types of information, such as mathematical tables and foreign words.

How the brain works is extremely complex and largely unexplored. This is confirmed by the features of mental and physiological processes that manifest themselves when a person sleeps. Let's talk about some of them.

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Scientists have found that in the first five minutes after waking up, half of the content of the dream disappears from memory, and in the next five minutes - another 40% of the information. The physiological meaning of this process has not been established. But almost everyone knows about the cases of memorizing the remaining 10%: they include the image of Frankenstein that Mary Shelley dreamed of, the periodic table of D. I. Mendeleev and a number of well-known scientific discoveries and artistic achievements.

The content of sleep can be influenced by the environment in which the sleeper is located.

Most people are also familiar with the phenomenon of merging reality and dreams. It manifests itself when external factors seem to be built into the fabric of the dream. This role can be played by sounds, smells, air vibrations and changes in its temperature, even the features of the physical condition of the sleeping person. For example, if the body needs to replenish fluid reserves, a person sees himself in a dream looking for a spring, drinking water, etc. Similarly, a hungry person sees food in a dream and eats them. Interestingly, in this case, the feeling of thirst or hunger disappears for a while, then returns and the episode of satisfying desires is repeated with the same result.

Blind people also dream

People suffering from acquired blindness see the same dreams as sighted people. If blindness is congenital, dreams are also there. They are based on other senses (olfactory, tactile, auditory), but can be very rich and emotional.

The content of dreams depends on gender and age

A mentally healthy person usually dreams about himself (something like films with himself in the lead role). Such dreams appear in a child from the age of three (the smallest do not see themselves in a dream). Children very often have nightmares, but by the age of seven or eight this feature, as a rule, disappears.

Representatives of the stronger sex see dreams mainly with the participation of men. In women's dreams, women and men appear equally often.

Dreamless sleep is bad for mental health

The complete absence of dreams is an alarming sign. It has been established that severe mental disorders manifest themselves in this way.

Another fact has been experimentally confirmed: if a person fails to experience the phase of REM sleep for two or three days, during which dreams come, he becomes distracted, irritable, and aggressive. As the study continued, the subjects developed hallucinations and other signs of a mental disorder. At the same time, the total duration of a night's sleep was quite sufficient for a good rest. In addition, scientists noticed that the brains of people who were given back the ability to dream normally began to make up for lost impressions: the subjects saw extremely vivid and meaningful dreams for several days after the end of the experiment, the duration of which was much longer than normal.

Dreams are not always in color

There is an opinion that color dreams indicate the presence of mental disorders. This is not true. Most people see about 88% of their dreams in color. Moreover, the content of the dream is in no way connected with its color perception.

The events and people we see in a dream are partly familiar to us.

During sleep, the brain continues to process sensations and emotions experienced in reality, creating bizarre combinations of familiar situations and images. Therefore, the belief that we see strangers in a dream is not based on anything. Every face that appeared before a person in a dream was at least glimpsed by him in reality.

In life, different people often find themselves in similar situations and that is why they can see dreams of the same content. Most often there are dreams in which we are in a hurry somewhere, we are late, we ride in transport, we pass exams, we catch up with someone (or run away).