Fourteen Sleep and Dreaming Facts

1. You have no sense of smell when you are sleeping.
2. You burn more calories while sleeping than you do when watching television.
3. Sleeping less than 7 hours each night reduces your life expectancy.
4. The colder the room you sleep in, the better the chances are that you will have a bad dream.
5. Babies start dreaming even before they are born.
6. The three things pregnant women dream most of during their first trimester are frogs, worms, and potted plants.
7. Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream.
8. You can go without eating for weeks without succumbing, but only eleven days without sleep.
9. In a year on an average person sleeps for 122 days out of 365 days.
10. When we go to sleep and enter REM (Rapid Eye Movement), our bodies become completely paralyzed as areas of the brain that control movement are de-activated.
11. An average person has over 1,460 dreams a year which is about 4 dreams every night.
12. An average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
13. By 60 years of age, 60% of men and 40% of women will snore.
14. A human body releases growth hormones during sleep.

Sleep Calories

Many variables that go into the calorie-burning equation, such as age, sex, weight, metabolism, diet, and physical and nonphysical daily habits. The two most important factors in determining how many calories you burn while sleeping are weight and number of hours slept. On average, a person burns between 0.4 and 0.5 calories per pound, per hour. For example, a 100 lb. person burns 40-50 calories per hour. In eight hours of sleep, this person will burn approximately 360 calories.

A pound of muscle burns fifty calories a day on average and a pound of fat burns nine calories. A leaner, more muscular person is going to burn up to five times more calories per pound.

If you weigh 160 pounds, you burn 69 calories per hour while sleeping, the FitWatch website calculates up to 552 calories burned during eight hours of sleep. A 120-pound person burns about 51 calories per hour sleeping, or 408 for eight hours; a 200-pound person burns 86 calories per hour, or 868 for eight hours of sleep.

Fifteen minutes of laughter a day will burn ten to forty calories, depending on a person’s weight and the intensity of the laughter.  A study by Loma Linda University found that laughing raises the levels of immunoglobulins, which ward of disease, by fourteen percent. Laughter also has other benefits, including increased pain tolerance, relief of emotional stress and a workout for the muscles of the diaphragm, abdomen, back, and shoulders.

Sleep Juice

New research  finds drinking tart cherry juice twice a day can help you sleep nearly 90 more minutes a night. Cherry juice is a natural source of the sleep-wake cycle hormone melatonin and amino acid tryptophan. The ruby red pigments in tart cherry juice, contain an enzyme that reduces inflammation and decreases the breakdown of tryptophan.

Researchers from Louisiana State University had seven older adults with insomnia drink eight ounces of Montmorency tart cherry juice twice a day for two weeks, followed by two weeks of no juice, and then two more weeks of drinking a placebo beverage. Compared to the placebo, drinking the cherry juice resulted in an average of 84 more minutes of sleep time each night.

Another thing you might try is kiwi. Eating two kiwi fruits an hour before bed was shown to increase sleep time by 13% and decrease mid-sleep waking periods by 29% after just four weeks. Zzzzzz

Eleven Ways to be Happy

Hugs may not be on this list, but they should be.
Spend money on other people. A study  concluded that "the happiest people were the biggest givers, no matter what they earned."

Count your blessings. A University of Pennsylvania professor proved that people who wrote down three good things that happened to them every night were significantly happier than control group who did not.

Try something new. People who try new experiences are generally happier, research has shown.

Delay gratification. Anticipating happiness actually makes you happy. Studies have shown that it's human nature to forestall an enjoyable event.

Expose yourself to more blue. Researchers showed that exposing yourself to the color blue sent "self confidence soaring, cut stress, and boosts happiness."

Set goals for yourself. Psychologist Jonathan Freedman claims that people who set objectives for themselves are happier than those who don't.

Go to church. In a study, people who attended church regularly responded that they were happier and more satisfied with their lives than people who were not religious.

Sleep at least six hours every night. Six hours and 15 minutes a night of un-interrupted sleep makes for the happiest people, a British study found.

Make sure you have at least 10 good friends. Adults who said they had 10 good friends were happier than those who could count five or less close friends.

Fake it 'til you make it. Several studies have shown that just the act of smiling can cause people to experience happy feelings.

Have a romantic relationship. People in relationships were generally found to be happier than other people, and spouses have the highest sense of well-being whether they are happily married or not, according to a study from Cornell University. Of course, listening to "Don't Worry, Be Happy" always makes me smile.

Hypnic Jerk

That feeling of falling when you are about to go to sleep is called a hypnic jerk. You are just between awake and asleep when suddenly you are falling. Then you jerk awake and maybe even experience a quick hallucination or two.

When you wake up suddenly for whatever reason, your brain reacts by searching for stability under your hands and feet. It doesn't detect it because you are likely lying down. This leads to a panic reaction similar to falling. Scientists think the brain is simply misinterpreting your muscles relaxing as falling.

Speaking of Sleep

Dolphins and whales do not sleep for the first month of their life.

Giraffes. the tallest land-living animal, sleep only 4 to 6 hours a day.

Cats along with mice, pigs, and cheetahs can sleep for 12 hours per day.

Rats, gerbils and lions can sleep for 13 hours a day.

Squirrels sleep about 14 hours a day.

A human baby of age 1-12 months can sleep 16 hours a day (in between feedings and diaper changes).

The Lemur sleeps for 16 hours a day.

Owl Monkeys will sleep 17 hours a day.

Armadillos and tigers go to sleep for about 18-19 hours a day.

Brown Bats  sleep for 20 hours a day and Koalas sleep up to 22 hours a day.  I'm tired just thinking about this stuff.

Staying Awake Too Long

Rats that are continuously kept awake, die after two weeks and that is less time than it takes them to starve to death.

Human theory is when you finally run out of body fat, protein, and carbohydrates, your body runs out of energy and stops functioning. However, fat people would only be able to survive that long if they had enough vital water-soluble B vitamins in their system to help metabolize fat stores. So it is possible that a person could die of starvation and still be fat.

The longest recorded starvation was by the Irish hunger-striker Kieran Doherty in 1981, who died after fasting for 73 days.

With a supply of vitamins and water, people have been known to survive over a year without eating.

With vitamins but without water, survival time is sharply reduced. A human can be expected to survive for weeks without food, but a thirsty person deprived of water might only last a matter of days. Without water, the volume of blood in your body drops, and with it your blood pressure. Blood becomes thicker and stickier, making it harder to pump around the body, so your heart rate increases to compensate. Even in a cool environment, you wouldn't last for more than a week without water. Hmmm, a week without bacon might possibly kill a person, also.

World Record No Sleep

The world record for time without sleep is 264 hours (11 days) by Randy Gardner in 1965.

John J. Ross, who monitored his health, reported serious cognitive and behavioral changes. These included moodiness, problems with concentration and short term memory, paranoia, and hallucinations. On the fourth day he had a delusion that he was Paul Lowe winning the Rose Bowl, and that a street sign was a person. On the eleventh day, when he was asked to subtract seven repeatedly, starting with 100, he stopped at 65. When asked why he had stopped, he replied that he had forgotten what he was doing.

On his final day, Gardner presided over a press conference where he spoke without slurring or stumbling his words and in general appeared to be in excellent health. "I wanted to prove that bad things didn't happen if you went without sleep."

After completing his record, Gardner slept 14 hours and 40 minutes, woke naturally, stayed awake 24 hours, then slept a normal eight hours. Makes me tired just thinking about it.