Fun and Interesting Facts about Sleep

Sometimes talking about too much sleep can put you to sleep! It is important to know that sleep plays a key role in living a sound mind and sound body lifestyle, but learning about sleep can be a boring task at hand. This is why we take a few moments to put together a list of interesting and fun facts about sleep. The following list is one that I put together with the most interesting sleep facts that I believe are not only interesting but can help improve bad sleeping habits.

1. The Less you sleep, the more your genes contribute to how much you weigh. The more you sleep, the less your genes determine how much you weigh, and the more control you can have over your weight.
2. Lack of sleep can raise the sensation of hunger by 25 percent. Sleep more and you can eat more or burn more calories.
3. Sleeping directly after learning something new will improve your ability to remember it effectively
4. A study of sleep breathing disorders and cancer mortality shows an association between sleep apnea and an increase in your chance of dying from cancer.
5. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.
6. In 2004 more than 35 million sleeping pill prescriptions were filled in America, a number that more than doubled from the previous four years.
7. Although people born blind don’t see images when they dream, they do have an increased auditory, tactile, and olfactory experience
8. You can only dream about faces you have already seen.
9. Almost everything we know about sleep, including the facts on this list, was all learned in the last 25 years.
10. Brain waves are more active when we are dreaming than when we are awake.
11. The average dream lasts between 10 and 15 minutes
12. 42% of people felt they had had a dream about something that later came true.

These are just a few interesting facts compared to everything that scientists have listed. With growing technology, sleep facts and data will only get more and more interesting and useful. Perhaps scientists will one day figure out how to demolish sleep apnea which can cause an increase in heart attacks and stroke. Maybe one day it will be possible to download all of our dreams and replay them. These are just some of the possibilities that could happen with increased technology down the road. Until then, we can only dream about the limitless possibilities within our own minds.

Blog Author, Jesse, Channel Manager

References:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/sleep/facts.htm

http://www.businessinsider.com/15-things-you-should-know-about-sleep-2012-6?op=1

http://www.achooallergy.com/interesting-sleep-facts.asp