Interesting Facts About Sleeping

◆ About one-third of our lives are spent sleeping,but very little is really known about.

◆ we sleep in different stages.These range from light sleep to deep sleep,with periods of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) in between , during which we dream.

◆ The connection between REM sleep and dreaming was discovered in 1953 .It usually begins about 90 minutes after falling asleep and occurs in bursts,totalling about two hours a night ,or 20 % of your total sleep time.

◆ Newborn babies can sleep for up to 21 hours out of 24 hours . Children and teenagers need approximately 10 hours of sleep a night,while most adults need only 7-9 hours.Those over 65 need the least of all -six hours.Older people also have less deep sleep and less REM than young people.

◆ Trains have a"dead man's handle",which must be held at all times .If the driver falls asleep and loses his grip,the train stops.

◆ It is claimed that several famous people have existed on polyphasic sleep-short naps of a few minutes-instead of one long period of sleep.These include Leonardo da Vinci and Winston Churchill.Solo round-the-world voyagers such as pilot Steve Fossett and yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur have had to train themselves to survive on cat-naps.

◆ The scientific word for stretching and yawning is pandiculation.

◆ Atleast 30%of adults snore.M any inventors have come up with anti-snoring gadgets to solve the problem.These include mouth or nose devices that alter breathing by blasting the snorers with sound , giving them electric shocks or shaking their beds.

◆ In 1977 Maureen Weston of Peterborough,UK,stayed awake for 449 hours during a rocking chair marathon.She stuffed from hallucinations but was otherwise unharmed.Extreme sleep deprivation can be dangerous and even lead to death.