The Science of Sleep

A Dream - a stream of thoughts and images experienced during sleep

Sleep - a natural, regularly recurring rest for the body, with little or no consciousness.

Between the ages of 18 and 23, we will generally sleep for about 9 hours. Astonishingly, the likes of Napoleon, Florence nightingale and Margaret Thatcher used to survive on a measly 4 hours a night. Thomas Edison even once claimed that it was a waste of time sleeping.

sleep per chance to dream...

Some scientists believe that we sleep to save energy, but it has since been found that during an 8 hour sleep, the human body only saves about 50kcal, the same amount of calories that are in a slice of toast.

A better theory is that sleeping plays a significant role in brain development. After one night without sleep, concentration becomes more difficult and attention span shortens considerably. After only 17 hours of being awake, your brain starts to perform as well as it would after downing two full glasses of wine, The legal drink drive limit in the UK. The current world record for no sleep is 11 days, set by Randy Gardner, which is also Alan Titchmarsh’s nickname. After 4 days randy started hallucinating, however over the last few days he was still able to beat his scientist friend at pinball.

When we are asleep, we actually sleep in cycles of about 100 minutes. There are two different types of sleep, non-REM, and unsurprisingly, REM. REM standing for rapid eye movement.

Just 5 more minutes

In non REM sleep, there are three stages

1 - light sleep - the muscles start to relax. we are only half asleep and can be easily wakened

2 - true sleep - after 10 minutes of light sleep, breathing and heart rate begin to slow, this lasts for about 20 minutes

3 - deep sleep - breathing and heart rate are now at there lowest levels

The REM sleep cycle begins about 70/90 minutes after we fall asleep and happens approximately 4 times a night. During this sleep are brain is at its most active and as such is when most dreams occur. As well as the rapid eye movements,
our breathing rate and blood pressure rise. However, our bodies are effectively paralysed, said to be nature's way of preventing us from acting out our own dreams.

Since the days of Adam, people have had dreams, but to this day the reasons for dreaming and what dreams mean remain a complete unknown. There are many theories, each one as likely as the next, ranging from theories where dreams are essential for your mental and emotional health, to theories which suggest that dreams really mean nothing at all.