Things you didn't know about sleep

While using stumbleupon this morning, I found this interesting piece of information about sleep.


Via: Psychology Degree

That made me think more about sleep and dreams and what they really mean. So I headed over to the BBC Science site that is always stacked full of very interesting articles and tests relating to the human body - here is a few facts that I found very intriguing.

- We have to sleep because it is essential to maintaining normal levels of cognitive skills such as speech, memory, innovative and flexible thinking. In other words, sleep plays a significant role in brain development.

- The current world record for the longest period without sleep is 11 days, set by Randy Gardner in 1965. Four days into the research, he began hallucinating. This was followed by a delusion where he thought he was a famous footballer. Surprisingly, Randy was actually functioning quite well at the end of his research and he could still beat the scientist at pinball.

- The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

- Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

- REM dreams are often characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams tend to be repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery.

- During REM sleep you experience muscle paralysis to stop you acting out your dreams.

- Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analogous to watching a film.

- Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

- Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory.

- REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies spend 75% of their time in REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term babies. Similarly, a newborn kitten, puppy, rat or hamster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

- Blind people dream as well. Whether recognisable images appear in their dream depends on whether they where blind at birth or became blind later in life. It’s likely they still experience colour and shape. But vision is not the only sense that constitutes a dream. Sounds, tactility, and smell become hypersensitive for the blind and will be incorporated into their dreams.

Happy New Year everyone!

A new year, a new start. This concept has time and time given birth to personal renewal in people to make a positive, lasting change in their lives. Unfortunately humans, being creatures of habit, find it very hard to stick to these resolutions.
Last week a good friend of mine lend me an inspiring book called 29 Gifts. This is a story of a 33 year old woman that was diagnosed a month after her honeymoon with Multiple Sclerosis. Now as you may know, this is one scary illness with no cure. What basically happens is that your own immune system starts attacking the fatty insulating protection of your nerves and once this is damaged, your nerves start misfiring.
Now not to focus any more on the illness, this book is an inspiring story on how she followed a "prescription" given to her to give 29 gifts in 29 days to others with an open heart and without expecting anything in return. It doesn't have to be big gifts, just look past your own problems and situation to the suffering and need of those around you. She has also started a online community where you can share your daily giving to the rest of the community.
Now, I normally am against New Years resolutions (as people rarely stick to it and I don't want to doom myself to failure before I even started), instead I have a list of things that I feel work in the coming year.
First on this list is get completely out of debt. Now, I don't personally have trouble with money, I just have a problem with paying interest on money that I could have spent better somewhere else as I am considering buying my first home. Now easy steps that I'm going to follow is:
- Review what debt you have an identify the terms and interest rates you are paying (the highest interest rates are normally charged for personal loans, overdrafts, vehicle finance and credit cards)
- Make sure that you budget to be able to pay at least the minimum payment due on all accounts setting aside a little extra to be able to pay that above and beyond - even if it is just R50 - on a credit card as you will never be able to pay a credit card off if you only continue to pay the minimum payment due.
- Now to actually pay the debt off, there is a range of different ways but I personally prefer the debt snowball (Order your debts from lowest balance to highest balance, assign a certain amount of money to pay toward debts each month, pay the minimum payment on all debts except for the one with the lowest balance, throw every other cent at the debt with the lowest balance, when that debt is gone, do not alter the monthly amount used to pay debts, but throw all you can at the debt with the next-lowest balance). This does not increase your monthly disposable income, but it does get rid of your debt and fast!
Next on my list of things to do is more to do with my health - losing weight and stop smoking (both of which I've done before but with the last year filled with drama, it all just came back). Now that I will be tackling in the following ways: Slender Wonder and Allan Carr.
So what positive changes are you planning in your life for this year and what made you decide on this ?