Facts about human sleep. Interesting facts about dreams. DNA helix, sewing machine, guillotine

Previously, it was believed that the gods themselves send dreams to people endowed with a high social status, and the interpreters of dreams accompanied the commanders during military campaigns. During the Roman Empire, some dreams even became the subject of legal proceedings.

There are many cases when people of art and science have their best ideas in a dream.

The cult creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, believed that sleep is the time when a person refuses to interact with the outside world and enters into communication with the inner world, with his subconscious.

So what is sleep, from the point of view of physiology, and why is the process of dreaming directly interesting? On World Sleep Day, which is celebrated around the world on March 17 this year, Sputnik Georgia offers the top 20 most little-known facts about dreams.

1. How much do we sleep?

It's unfortunate, but true. The average person spends a third of their life sleeping. As you know, during a properly flowing sleep, the body restores the forces spent on daytime activity and "puts itself in order." That is why a healthy person wakes up with a feeling of freshness and a surge of strength. Well, at best!

2. Dreams vs psychoses

Dreams are an excellent remedy for psychosis. In one study, participants were not allowed to dream, although they were allowed to sleep at least 8 hours a day. Three days later, all participants in the experiment began to experience difficulty concentrating, irritability, hallucinations, and the first signs of psychosis. When the subjects were given the opportunity to dream, all signs of incipient psychosis disappeared, and the subjects themselves began to dream more than usual.

3. What lies behind dreams?

We get the most mysterious, exciting and interesting experiences in life when we sleep and dream. When we fall asleep, our will loses control over thoughts, a very special type of thinking arises. It is thanks to him that we are able to observe fantastic images, distorted and unrelated plot scenes, where time flows differently than in real life. And it's wonderful!

4. We only remember 10% of our dreams.

You know that within the first five minutes after waking up, we have a real chance to "grab by the tail" about half of the plot of the dream, but after ten minutes, 90% of the content, alas, will be lost, and the meaning of the dream will crumble like a house of cards.

5. Not dreaming is impossible

Many claim that they never dream. But the complete absence of dreams is a manifestation of some severe mental illness. All normal people, plunging into a slumber, see dreams, but most, upon awakening, instantly forget them. This is confirmed by encephalograms taken during sleep. In the entire history of only one patient in a military hospital in Israel, such an examination did not show the "presence" of dreams. That man had previously been shot in the head.

6. Dreams are seen even by the blind

It has been proven that people who have lost their sight during their lives see dreams on a par with sighted people. People who are blind from birth do not see images in the usual sense, but in the same way they experience various emotions in dreams: images in their subconscious are formed through smells, sounds and tactile sensations.

7. In dreams, we only see real people.

It is noteworthy that our subconscious is not able to independently and arbitrarily generate people's faces. And this means that we once saw absolutely all strangers in our dreams, but, perhaps, we did not remember. Over the course of our lives, under various circumstances, millions of faces pass by us, which means that our brain will never experience a shortage of new actors for the most unexpected roles in the scenarios of our dreams.

8. Not everyone can see colored dreams.

Unpleasant but true! About 12% of sighted people see only monochrome dreams. More precisely, it was so until the mid-sixties. Later, the proportion of people who dream exclusively in black and white fell to 4.4% of the total study sample. Interestingly, many sleep researchers suggest that the reason for this trend is the ubiquity of color television broadcasts.

© photo: Sputnik / Cheprunov

Screensaver of the program "Good night, kids"

9. Dreams are symbolic

You've probably heard the joke about Sigmund Freud and his niece: "Sometimes a banana is just a banana." However, seriously, dreams cannot be interpreted straightforwardly and unambiguously, since any image in a dream can be a symbol of another object. Through a dream, our subconscious speaks to us in the language of metaphors and symbols. Some of them have a global unambiguous interpretation on all continents, others contain signs that are understandable only to us.

10. Subconscious games

Psychoanalysts have long noticed that dreams are a way to solve some psychological problems. A person in unrealistic conditions "loses" critical situations and finds out of them the way out that suits him and does not injure the psyche. And, even if in real life he sometimes has to come to terms with a different decision, he gives vent to emotions in a dream. Perhaps that is why men in their dreams are much more aggressive than in life, and women are more sexual.

11. Amazing Fact

It is known that the natives of the island of Bali, when suddenly frightened, fall into sleep, as is characteristic of some insects.

12. Sad dreams

No matter how sad it may sound, the most common emotions experienced in a dream are longing, anxiety or despair, and, in general, negative emotions in dreams prevail over positive ones.

13. Number of dreams

Everyone knows the expression: "To see the seventh dream." It turns out that during the night we are really able to see from four to seven dreams. On average, dreams take up two hours per night.

14. Lucid dreaming

Most of the pictures in your dream are unique to one particular occasion. Scientists know this because some people have the ability to see their dreams as observers without waking up. This state of consciousness is called lucid dreaming, which is a big mystery.

As studies conducted on different groups of animals prove, very many of them experience similar modes of nervous activity during sleep. The mental impulses of highly developed animals during sleep practically do not differ from human ones, from which we can draw a confident conclusion - animals also dream. Moreover, many of them experience what they see no less emotionally than in reality.

© photo: Sputnik / Alexander Kryazhev

16. Paralysis of the body during sleep

Sleep scientists distinguish two key phases of sleep - deep sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The REM phase is a completely normal state of sleep, accounting for 20 to 25% of your total sleep time. It is in the phase of REM sleep that a person sees dreams. To exclude involuntary physical movements of the body, the subconscious literally paralyzes it during the REM phase of sleep, however, for unknown reasons, this mechanism often fails.

17. Women and men dream differently.

As you know, representatives of the weak and strong half of humanity see dreams in different ways. In two cases out of three, a man in a dream communicates, fights or establishes a relationship with a man. There is no such distortion in the dreams of women, and they see approximately the same number of women and men.

18. Smoker's dream

It is said that people who quit smoking have much more vivid dreams than smokers or those who have never smoked.

19. Dream - prediction

According to research results, from 18% to 38% of respondents at least once in their lives saw a prediction dream, and 70% of citizens experienced deja vu. Belief in the very possibility of a prophetic dream is widespread almost everywhere - from 63 to 98% of respondents in different countries of the world.

20. Woe from Wit

History says that some historical figures were able to sleep only 3-4 hours a day. Edison, Da Vinci, Franklin, Tesla, Churchill - they all slept much less than the recognized norm and felt quite healthy. However, scientists argue that such sleep disorders are the flip side of great talent or genius, which is not always good.

The first World Sleep Day was held on March 14, 2008 and has since been held annually, on Friday of the second full week of March, as part of the World Health Organization (WHO) project on sleep and health. Each year, the events within the day are dedicated to a specific theme. On World Sleep Day, public service announcements are activated, conferences and symposia are organized to raise awareness of the importance of sleep, sleep problems and the impact of sleep disorders on human health and society as a whole.

More recently, mass research on the nature of sleep was a rather difficult task. A person had to be persuaded or interested in participating in a scientific program, placed in a laboratory, using special equipment. Everything changed with the spread of popular fitness gadgets that can record various physiological indicators directly in the process of a person’s ordinary life. Yes, their capabilities are not too great compared to scientific equipment, but how wide is the circle of experimental subjects!

Sleep duration

A person spends a third of his life sleeping. It turns out about 25 years - think about this figure! However, it’s not so easy to take and reduce sleep time. For a full existence, our body needs about 7-8 hours of night rest. If this figure is much less, then there is a rapid decline in mental and physical abilities. However, scientists have noticed that over the past century, due to rapid technological progress, the average sleep time has decreased from 9 to 7.5 hours. Who knows, perhaps this is not the limit.

Records

The longest period of time during which a healthy person was able to do without sleep was 11 days. The record was set in 1965 by a 17-year-old high school student from San Diego, California. Although history knows an even more impressive case when a Hungarian soldier received brain damage due to a head wound and did not sleep as a result for almost 40 years.

sleep and weight

dreams

Some people claim they never dream. However, this is not true: according to scientists, everyone sees dreams. However, we forget the vast majority of dreams. After five minutes of being awake, 50% of nightly adventures are no longer remembered, and if ten minutes have passed, then this figure approaches 90%. Hence the conclusion: if you want to fix your night's sleep, put a notepad with a pen or a voice recorder next to you to do it right away.

alarm clocks

The first mechanical alarm clock was invented by Levi Hutchins in 1787 in America. He knew how to wake up only at the same time - 4 o'clock in the morning. An alarm clock that can be set to any desired time did not appear until 60 years later thanks to the Frenchman Antoine Redier. But then they were insanely expensive devices, so ordinary people often used the services of special people who walked the streets and knocked on the window at a predetermined time.

Women and men

According to statistics compiled by Fitbit, women sleep about 20 minutes more than men. In terms of sleep quality, men sleep more restlessly and wake up more frequently. But women are 10% more likely to complain about sleep problems and mark the quality of their sleep as unsatisfactory. This can be explained by the fact that women see much richer and more emotional dreams, sometimes turning into nightmares.

Are you able to sleep? How many hours do you think a night's sleep should last?

Dreams - still cannot be explained by science. And many believe that dreams can show our future...

Of course, many scientists want to explain the nature of dreams, but much remains beyond knowledge. But our task is not to argue about what dreams are - we just learn about the most interesting facts about dreams.

1) Everyone dreams. Even those who think they can't see. The exception is people with serious mental disorders.

2) American scientists conducting research on dreams have come to a very interesting conclusion. They discovered that only smart people remember dreams. This conclusion was made after a study of more than 2,000 thousand people. Most of the people interviewed say they do not see or remember dreams.
Only those who passed several intelligence tests with excellent marks said that they constantly dream. Moreover, there is a dependence that the more intelligent an individual is, the more vivid and colorful dreams he sees.
In fact, there is nothing unusual in this, because, because one of the physiological functions of sleep is to organize the information that a person has learned over the past day, it solves a large number of issues. It is not in vain that folk wisdom says that the morning is wiser than the evening.
And if a person does not develop intellectually, does not seek to solve any issues, then it is natural that he is of little interest, except for everyday affairs - then such people very rarely remember dreams

3) Scientists have suggested that the dreams of human embryos, due to the lack of visual stimuli in the mother's womb, mainly consist of sounds and tactile sensations.

4) Psychologist Calvin Hall has compiled the world's largest report on the content of dreams - more than 50,000 records from adults and children from a wide variety of cultures. He did not analyze them in any way, but only counted what appeared to people in dreams. In whatever part of the world women live, female and male characters appear in their dreams with the same frequency, approximately 50/50. But men in a dream see men more often (and not women, as many people think) - in 70% of cases.

5) 90% of dreams are forgotten. Within 5 minutes after waking up, 50% of sleep is forgotten. Within 10 minutes - 90%. Perhaps sometimes this causes deja vu.

6) It seems that the process of fixing events in memory during sleep is disabled. For those who claim to be dreamless, this blockage is more complete than for others. Dreams can be forgotten because they are incoherent and inconsistent, or they contain information material that is rejected by our memory.

7) According to Plato, dreams originate in the organs located in the abdomen. He believed that the liver is the biological source of most dreams.

8) By the time we die, most of us will have spent a quarter of a century in sleep, and about six years of them will be filled with dreams. 4-7 dreams every night for a total duration of 2-3 hours.

9) People who grew up on black and white television see mostly black and white dreams.

10) Most of us dream every 90 minutes, and the longest dreams (30-45 minutes) happen in the morning.

11) Dreams can be controlled. With proper practice, you can arrange dream-series for yourself: return to the place where the dream was interrupted last night.

12) Nightmares are normal. They are seen by all people in all cultures. Most of the nightmares we see in childhood. With age, their number decreases.

Elias Howey (1819-1867) said that his invention of the sewing machine was related to a nightmare in which he was attacked by cannibals armed with spears shaped like a sewing needle, which he later invented.

12) Because nightmares are thought to be the result of sinister characters such as witches, folklore suggests put the knife at the foot of the bed. It is believed that the steel of the knife will scare away evil spirits.

14) Have you ever noticed that when you go to bed late, you have bad dreams, or do not dream at all? But scientists noticed this and confirmed their assumptions with a study. - in 2011, an article was published in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms confirming that "owls" have more nightmares than "larks".

15) The feeling of falling in a dream usually happens at the beginning of the night., in the first stage of sleep. These dreams are often accompanied by muscle spasms called "myoclonic jerks" that are common in many mammals.

17) Events from the real world can be woven into the plot of a dream(clock ticking, noise from the street). For example, you must have experienced similar dreams: you dream that you are thirsty and in a dream you are trying to get drunk, but you do not succeed, and in the end, you wake up and are really thirsty.
And the thing is that our subconscious mind transforms a physical sensation, in our case, thirst, and the subconscious mind creates an empty glass in our dream. As a result of all this, the subconscious achieves its goal - you wake up and quench your thirst.

18) Even the weak light from digital clock numbers can make you sleepy. The fact is that the light turns off the “nerve switch” that is responsible for falling asleep, because of this, the level of the sleep hormone drops sharply in a few minutes.

19) When you see a dream, the body paralyzes. This is a precautionary measure so that a person does not harm himself or others. If the "fuse" flies, somnambulism and other disorders occur.

The “pre-sleep” stage is similar to meditation
As the body prepares for sleep, it relaxes. This applies not only to all processes occurring inside it, but also to the brain: it generates alpha waves that appear most often when a person is calm and peaceful, lies with his eyes closed, nothing distracts his attention, and thoughts flow more slowly. It is noteworthy that the brain gives a similar picture during meditation.

21) The Egyptian pharaohs were considered the children of Ra (the god of the sun), and therefore they dreams were considered sacred.

20) You can not snore and dream at the same time. People only snore during non-REM sleep, during this phase they do not dream.

And a little about the dangers of snoring. 10% of those who snore suffer from choking in their sleep. These people stop breathing up to 300 times a night, which dramatically increases the risk of heart disease such as a heart attack or stroke.

22) In ancient Greece, dreams were considered messages from the gods. Incubation, or the practice of inducing meaningful dreams by falling asleep in a sacred place, was also popular, especially in the Healer cult of Asclepius and Epidaurus.

23) The most common plot in dreams is cheating on a spouse. In addition, forbidden things are often dreamed of. A diabetic may dream of overeating on sweets.

24) Most often, dreams show negative rather than positive emotions. The most popular emotional state in dreams is anxiety. People rarely remember dreams or do not remember at all, they tend not to notice / ignore what may cause them anxiety, although the problem (if any) is not solved by this.

Several processes take place during sleep- a dream "takes apart" memories. First, some of the memories are moved from short-term memory to long-term memory (this is called memory consolidation). Second, the brain sorts new experiences into different memory systems to form associations and connections that help us better understand the world around us.

25) In a dream, many discoveries were made and great things were invented. Mendeleev in a dream saw a table of chemical elements, Paul McCartney - the song Yesterday.

By the way, there is one way of learning, very favorite among students, the so-called "diffusion of knowledge from a book through a pillow" :).
But there is a rational grain to this method, according to a theory that was presented at the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Sciences in Boston held in 2010. As a result of the study, it was found that sleep time helps to solve problems that bother us throughout the day.

Scientists also found that all stages of sleep are associated with learning: the stronger the brain activity during sleep, the better you memorize new things. The light sleep stage has been found to be responsible for the development of new skills in musicians, dancers and athletes. It is interesting that this does not happen immediately, but after a day or two after the first training and memorization of a play, dance or movement. And during non-REM sleep, factual information is well remembered: for example, dates from a history textbook.

26) Animals also dream. From an evolutionary point of view, the dreaming stage of REM sleep is the last stage of development that can be found in the human body, as well as in other warm-blooded mammals and birds.

27) Homo sapiens sleep 3 hours less than their relatives, the rhesus species, chimpanzees and other primates, which need 10 hours of sleep.

Some mammals, such as giraffes and Asian elephants, tend to sleep less than 2 hours a night.
Koalas are the mammals that sleep the longest. They sleep 22 hours a day.
When dolphins sleep, only half of their brains lose consciousness. This helps them maintain their breathing because, unlike humans, dolphins and whales breathe consciously.

Flying in a dream most often they try to explain this to us by the reasons for physical growth: “If you fly, then you grow!” But is it?
Ethologists have come to the conclusion that the flights that we make in a dream are connected with the fact that the most ancient genetic program is manifested, which is recorded in the memory of mankind. As you know, ethologists are specialists who study forms of animal behavior that are transmitted from generation to generation, that is, by heredity.

Our ape-like ancestors, who lived 25 million years ago, were able, after swinging on their hands, to fly from tree to tree, that is, they owned brachiation. Despite the fact that the human hand has undergone many changes over a long period of evolution and can literally do jewelry work, nevertheless, it has retained the ability to bend its fingers into a hook in order to grab onto a branch. It is known that even physically weak people are able to hang in this way. If two fingers are extended to a newborn, he will certainly grab them, and so firmly that he can be lifted.

Flying in a dream have been known since ancient times, when no one suspected that an airplane would ever be invented.
Flying in a dream can express both our hopes and life's fears. Freud associated such dreams with sexual desire, Alfred Adler believed that the sleeper was trying to rise above others, and Carl Jung with the desire to break out of the ring of restrictions.

28) The science of dreams is called oneirology.

29) There is one phobia, and it is directly related to our topic, - somniphobia. People who suffer from this ailment are afraid to fall asleep

30) Dreams do not prophesy diseases, but register the first subtle signs of their manifestation. If a dream is one-time, this does not mean that it is a sleep-diagnostician. But on a repeatedly repeated dream, unpleasant, disturbing, clearly remembered, you should pay attention. This is a warning dream.
Most likely, dreams in green and blue tones indicate that everything is fine with you, red color warns of a rise in temperature, an infectious disease, yellow-brown tones indicate intestinal diseases, black color indicates a nervous breakdown.

In July 2010, the popular journal Neurology presented data showing that mental illnesses such as Parkinson's and insanity are making themselves felt long before they appear. The fact is that patients with these diseases, the cause of which lies in neurodegenerative disorders, constantly have nightmares, for which screams, blows, crying and groans reigning in a dream are especially characteristic.

31) Children under three years old are not able to see themselves in a dream.

32) The Ashanti people of West Africa take dreams so seriously that they could seriously prosecute a man who saw another man's wife in an erotic dream.

33) In a dream, you can experience the same pleasure from sex as in reality.

34) Discovered in 1856, the planet Neptune, which was named after the Roman god of the seas, is considered the planet of dreams, because dreams, like water, distort and cloud images and meaning.
In addition, water represents the depth of unconscious feelings and places that we find ourselves in a dream.

35) William Shakespeare (1564-1616), like his predecessors, the Greek playwrights , used the dreams of the characters in his plays to develop the plot and describe the characters. For example, the dreams of Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, King Lear, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet were the keys to psychological and symbolic motifs and helped to better open and understand the inner world of the characters.

36) The landmark work of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) "The Interpretation of Dreams"(1900), which later became a reference book for many soothsayers, sold only 415 copies in its first two years.

38) Here's an unusual observation for you. As children, our parents told us that we need to sleep more, and some of us, as adults, follow the same principle. But not everything is so simple, if sleep is useful for children, then for adults it no longer carries such benefits.
Scientists conducted research for 6 years, the result of which suggests the following: those who sleeps 6-7 hours, are less at risk of premature death than those who sleep for 8 hours.
But those who sleep less than 5 hours a night are three times more likely to develop mental problems than those who sleep 8-9 hours a night.

39) Newborns and teenagers sleep approximately 10 hours a day, young people (25-55 years old) 8 hours, and old people generally suffer from insomnia and can only sleep 4 hours a day.

The biological clock does not reset. Nathaniel Kleitman, an American scientist (by the way, an immigrant from Russia), who studied sleep, once sat in an underground cave for a whole month in the hope of finding out what was happening with the human biological clock.
He assumed that if you do not see sunlight, sunrises and sunsets, they will fail - and the cycle will either be reduced to 21 hours or increase to 28. To his surprise, this did not happen. Our biological clock is always accurate: one sleep-wake cycle lasts 24-25 hours.

40) So-called a biological cycle that allows some to wake up whenever they wish, works because of the stress hormone - adrenocorticotropin. Scientists say that this effect causes an unconscious expectation of a stressful situation upon awakening.

42) Everyone knows that you need to sleep, but why? The minds of many scientists are occupied with this question, and although there is no complete explanation for this phenomenon, there are some results. Scientists have proven that dreams prevent psychosis in one experiment... A group of subjects were allowed to sleep for the required 8 hours a day, but they were deprived of their dreams, waking the test subjects in the initial period of each dream. As a result, after 3 days of the experiment, the subjects began to experience difficulty concentrating, hallucinations, unreasonable irritability and initial signs of psychosis began. When these people were allowed to dream again, the pathological manifestations immediately disappeared.

The longest period of lack of sleep, which was recorded by the Guinness Book of Records. The record is 18 days, 21 hours and 40 minutes. The man who set this record spoke about hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, difficulty with speech, concentration and memory.

In the 20th century, a genetic disease called “fatal familial insomnia” was discovered: it was this disease that caused the death of members of more than 30 families around the world. The symptoms are the same. At first, people stopped sleeping - it just didn’t work out, then the pulse quickened and the pressure increased, in the next phase, the patients could not speak, stand and walk. Everything ended in a couple of months: before death, people fell into a state that looked like a coma, and died. As a rule, the disease affects middle-aged people, and sometimes teenagers.

43) But it also happens that you simply cannot sleep, but at the same time eliminate the side effects of lack of sleep. British scientists of the Ministry of Defense came up with a method that allows soldiers to stay awake for 36 hours. Microscopic optical fibers embedded in special goggles that project a ring of bright light (identical to the spectrum pattern at sunrise) near the edge of a soldier's retina. And the soldier's brain is sure that it's morning and he just woke up! For the first time, these technologies were used by American pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

44) Such a "boring" science as statistics can give very interesting facts. According to statistics, the Spaniards sleep 40 minutes less than the rest of Europe, while the French, on the contrary, are big sleepers, they spend 9 hours a day sleeping.

45) Despite all the variety of dreams and the people who see them, scientists have divided dreams into separate groups: an accident at work or school, an attempt to escape from an intruder, a fall, death, flight, loss of teeth, accidents, failure in an exam.

Sleep is a rehearsal- Scientists are increasingly inclined to believe that the biological significance of sleep is to ensure the survival of the species, whether it be a rat or a person. In dreams, we train ourselves to avoid danger (it seems that this is what dreams with threatening content are for), such as swimming across a river or running away from a dangerous animal. But thanks to a special state in sleep, in which our muscles are almost immobilized, all this rehearsal takes place at the level of the brain. Thus, we memorize ways to save our lives in a dream so that someday we can use them in real life.

Now, I hope you will appreciate the time you spend in the realm of Morpheus. And how much interesting and unknown even lies, not somewhere in the depths and expanses of our universe, but also in the depths of our mind.
According to 1001facts.info,

Did you know that when you snore, you don't dream. Or that infants, up to three years old, do not see themselves in a dream. From this age until about age 7 or 8, children have many more nightmares than adults.
Surprisingly, a person sleeps for a third of his life. It would seem that this is an integral part of being, but why then do most people know so little about it? Everyone should study this concept. That is why we present you 10 interesting facts about human sleep.

People who are blind after birth can see pictures in their dreams. However, those who were blind at birth do not see them, but experience dreams that include all other senses such as sound, smell, touch, and emotion.

5 minutes after waking up, a person forgets half of the dream, and after 10 minutes, 90%. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke up one morning from a dream (probably caused by opium) - he began to write and describe his "dream", which became one of the most famous English poems - Kubla Khan. After writing 54 lines, he was interrupted. When Coleridge returned to his poem, he could not remember the rest of the dream. As a result, the verse was never completed.
Interestingly, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the story "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" after seeing it in a dream. Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was also the brainchild of a dream.

Every person dreams (this is impossible, only in case of serious mental disorders), but men and women have different physical reactions to what they see. Men most often dream of other men, while women dream of both sexes equally. In addition, men and women experience sexually related physical reactions to their dreams, whether they are dreaming about sex or not.

In recent studies, students were awakened at the start of each nap, allowing them to sleep fully for 8 hours. As a result, they experienced concentration problems, irritability, hallucinations, and all the signs of psychosis after only three days of the experiment.

Dreams are often full of strangers that we meet in different parts of the world. However, did you know that our mind does not invent them - these are the real faces of real people that you have ever seen in your life and simply did not remember. The evil killer in your last dream could be the guy who poured gas into your dad's car when you were a kid. Throughout our lives, we have seen hundreds of thousands of faces that are now the heroes of our dreams.

Not everyone sees colorful dreams

12% of sighted people see black and white dreams. The rest see color. People also have similar themes in their dreams, such as various situations related to school, stalking, sexual experiences, falling, being late, meeting dead people, teeth falling out, flying, failing an exam, and a car accident. It is unknown if dreams of death or violence in color evoke the same reaction if they were dreamed in black and white.

If you dream about a particular topic, it is not necessary that the meaning of the dream is related to it. Dreams communicate with us in the language of symbols. The subconscious is trying to compare your dream with something that looks like it. Agree, you will never compare something with him: "This sunset is as beautiful as a beautiful sunset." Therefore, sometimes the symbolic meaning of a dream can be completely opposite to that seen in the dream itself.

Heavy smokers who quit this addiction begin to see more colorful and vivid dreams than usual. In addition, according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, among 293 smokers who abstained from cigarettes for 1 to 4 weeks, 33% reported having at least one dream about smoking. In most dreams, people saw themselves smoking and experienced strong negative emotions, such as panic and guilt. Such dreams are more vivid and rich.

Most of us have experienced a similar experience - when the sound is in reality, we hear it in a dream. The same effect occurs when you are thirsty in reality, and this feeling is embedded in your dream. You dream that you drink a large glass of water, but do not get drunk, you drink more and more until you wake up and drink it in reality. A famous painting by Salvador Dali, "Dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate, a second before awakening", depicts this concept.

Believe it or not, your body is virtually paralyzed while you sleep. This is necessary in order to protect him from any actions (movements) experienced in a dream. The thyroid gland secretes a hormone that induces sleep, after which neurons send signals to the spinal cord that relax and virtually paralyze the body.

Dear friends, today I propose to talk about the side of life to which we unconsciously give a third of our being. 22 interesting facts about sleep: do we really sleep, how much sleep do we need for longevity, salvation from insanity, etc. - in the article.

1. Our body never sleeps.

While we are resting in a night's sleep, the body continues to work: it prepares us for wakefulness during the day, establishing biological rhythms, immune, metabolic, mental and brain processes.

Previously, it was believed that our consciousness falls asleep, but then who sends us a hint: “It's just a dream, don't be afraid!” If we have nightmares?

2. In sleep we can learn

The phenomenon, called by scientists "hypnopedia", has come down to us from time immemorial.

According to historians, hypnopedia was practiced by ancient Indian Buddhist monks, whispering the texts of manuscripts.

3. We remember about ourselves even what we don’t know about

Any impressions, including unconscious ones, fall into short-term memory (hippocampus).

This kind of staging post of the brain has a limited space, and therefore in the evenings we have a reduced speed of thinking and concentration. The hippocampus, like a crowded warehouse, needs to be put in order.

Falling asleep and disconnecting from external stimuli, we give the brain the opportunity to process the accumulated information and send it to long-term (unconscious) memory with unlimited volume for storage.

Here, all data is stored for life, thanks to which, in critical situations or under hypnosis, we can remember any event to the smallest detail, the knowledge of which we do not suspect.

Natural awakening occurs only after all the information has been processed and space in the hippocampus is freed up for new experiences.

For such an important job the brain needs us to sleep at night and not interfere with it for at least 6 hours, say American scientists Matthew Walker and Bryce Mander.

That is why, we see such interesting dreams in the morning, the brain in this way keeps us in the arms of Morpheus.

If the process is not completed, and we woke up, sleep does not bring rest to the mind, clarity of thought and sharpness of attention..

4 Short Sleeping Geniuses

According to statistics, most people need 8-9 hours for a good rest, but there are quite a few famous personalities who slept less:

Julius Caesar - 3 hours,

Da Vinci - a total of 2 hours (sleep 15-20 minutes every four hours),

Benjamin Franklin - 4 hours,

Napoleon - 4 hours, and in his declining years in exile from a lark he turned into a sleeping owl.

Edison - slept 5 hours at night, pampered himself with siesta during the day.

Tesla - about 3 hours, but from time to time he slept enough.

Churchill - 5 hours and a mandatory daytime sleep.

Margaret Thatcher - about 5 hours. The "Iron Lady" lived for work and willingly sacrificed sleep even for a haircut.

5. Albert Einstein was one of the long sleepers.

He allowed himself to sleep for more than 10 hours and did not hide the fact that he made many discoveries in his sleep.

6. Blue light delays falling asleep by 3 hours

If you tend to fall asleep at a certain time, break away from PC monitors and TV screens at least an hour before bedtime.

In their radiation, as well as energy-saving and LED lamps, there is a lot of blue spectrum, which suppresses the production of melatonin, a natural sleeping pill.

7. Orange (amber) lenses will help you fall asleep and sleep better

They block blue light rays that interfere with melatonin synthesis. Somnologists advise wearing "amber" glasses about three hours before bedtime.

8. Sleep decreased by 1.5 hours in 100 years

We sleep 20% less than our ancestors in the 19th century. The beginning of the involution of sleep was the "Yablochkov candle" and Edison's electric light bulb.

9. Lethargy - "escape" from the cruel world and salvation from madness

The oldest genetic reaction saves the human psyche from destruction by severe stress.

16. Excessive sleep, longer than 8 hours threatens

• overweight,
• diabetes
• depression
• headaches,
• heart disease.

17. People who sleep no more than 8 hours,

live 15% longer.

18. Older smokers have a harder time falling asleep.:

nicotine stimulates the psyche, increasing the level of stress adrenaline and norepinephrine - stress hormones.

19. The pose of a person in a dream is a true portrait of his personality.,

reflecting character, state of mind and health, attitude to the world and to oneself.

20. Holidays dedicated to the phenomenon of sleep

The first holiday appeared in 1652 in Finland. Reverend Hemming dedicated him to the feat.

Subsequently, it turned into a fun action called Sony Day, its motto:

“Don’t oversleep your life, otherwise, waking up one day, you won’t recognize the world like the seven holy youths.”

World Sleep Day established the International Sleep Medicine Association in 2008.

Its goal is to draw public attention to the global decline in health due to the poor quality of sleep of a modern person.

21. Sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations. sleepy or active. So if you're denying yourself enough sleep, don't be surprised if you hear, see, feel, or smell something strange and frightening.

22. Sleeping too little can lead to parasomnias.- sleep disorders in which people behave abnormally in their sleep: walking, screaming, fighting, eating strange foods, driving cars, beating or strangling bed partners.

Summary

Our mental and physical health, long youth, active old age - everything originates at night when we sleep.

Or rather, we don’t sleep at all, because our soul does not fall asleep, but continues to communicate with us through dreams, the body works in a different mode, and the brain sorts everything that we thought about, that we saw and heard voluntarily or involuntarily.

Sleep facts are stubborn: today's poor-quality sleep will turn decades later overweight, brain problems, diabetes or other problems.

So how much sleep do you really need to live long and active? Sleep experts recommend sleeping at least 7.5 to 8 hours.

Focus on your well-being. If drowsiness and fatigue are present, it means that you are not getting enough sleep or that your sleep structure is disturbed due to snoring, occasional leg movements, or other disorders.

Take care of yourself. Have a healthy sleep!

Sources: US National Library of Medicine, A. Borbeli "The Secret of Sleep", A. Wayne "Three Thirds of Life"

Elena Valve for the Sleepy Cantata project