What should everyone know about sleep?

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What sleeping tricks or tips should everyone know? What's the best way to sleep? What interesting facts about sleep should be common knowledge?

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When you wake up, 90% of your dreams are forgotten. If you remember a dream, you forgot the other dreams you had.

This urban legend sounding factoid is credited to dream researcher Ludwig Strümpell in the 19th century. He says that we learn from association and repetition, so the reason why we are prone to forgetting our dreams, is because they are uniquely peculiar and vague to begin with, so our brains have trouble understanding them. By that logic, the most realistic and occuring dreams, are the most easily remembered.More information here. http://www.psywww.com/books/interp/chap01d.htm (Different psychologists have drastically varying theories of why we dream. http://www.psywww.com/books/interp/chap01e.htm )

rem sleep diagram

Above is a graph of how you fluctuate between different REM stages when you sleep, which scientists discovered when trying to find out why people are easier to wake up at certain times. When you're in Stage 4, you're dreaming and it's harder to be woken up.

While we sleep, our brains go through five different stages. The first is light sleep. During this phase while we’re just falling asleep, our muscles will begin to slow down and our body might have experience light twitching in some areas such as the arm or the leg. Stage 2 is still considered to be light sleep but it is during this phase that the body temperature will drop slightly, and our breathing and our heart rate will slow down. In Stage 3, deep sleep begins and the brain will begin to develop delta waves. These are the slowest brainwaves that the brain has. In Stage 4 of sleep, delta waves are produced in a greater amount. The breathing becomes more rhythmic and muscles have very limited activity. This is a stage of very deep sleep. These four phases of sleep are just as important to our nighttime rest and dreams as the fifth stage of sleep. However, unlike the fifth stage, these stages are considered non-REM sleep. The fifth stage is the only stage that REM sleep takes place, and it’s in this stage that most of our dreaming takes place.

Not only is REM sleep when most of our dreaming takes place, it’s also when our brain is most active while we’re sleeping. This phase begins with the brain sending out alpha waves instead of delta waves. Alpha waves allow the brain to become as active as it is while we are awake. Because of this, the heart rate once again starts to quicken as will our breathing, blood pressure will rise, and the body temperature is not as regular as it normally is. However, the rest of the body falls into a sort of temporary paralysis. This is because the brain releases glycine, which is an amino acid, into the spinal cord. The reason for this paralysis is thought to be so that we cannot act out our dreams while we are still asleep. Throughout the night, it’s possible to go through each of these five phases several times. However, each subsequent cycle, will include more REM sleep and less non-REM sleep.

http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/how79.html

Apparently shining a torch just behind your knee resets your bodyclock. It can also help you avoid jetlag.

Yes it can!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/47947.stm