Some Sleep Facts

  • Your heart can stop beating for as long as 9 seconds while you’re asleep.
  • Sleep deprivation lasting more than 48 hours typically causes hallucinations and psychosis.
  • The world record for going without sleep is 11 days (264 hours and 12 minutes) a feat considered extremely dangerous by sleep researchers.
  • 30 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders. Most men begin having problems falling asleep in their mid-twenties; women have the same difficulty during their mid-forties.
  • While normal sleepers change body positions about 30 times per night, insomniacs may toss and turn more than 100 times.
  • Dream sleep has been observed in all animals studied except the spiny anteater.
  • Sleep studies show that if your sleeping partner is absent in your sleep, you’ll almost always mover over to the side the bed normally occupied by him or her. (I know for a fact I do.)
  • An afternoon nap is healthy. One study indicates that afternoon nappers are 30 percent less likely to suffer coronary artery disease, although the reasons behind this are not yet known.
  • Humans stay awake much longer than many animals. Bats, cats, porcupines, lions, gorillas, and opossums sleep 18 to 20 hours a day, and some woodchucks snooze for as long as 22 hours.
  • Pigeons frequently open their eyes during sleep to watch for predators. The dolphin, remarkably, only “half” sleeps: its brain shuts down only one hemisphere at a time.
  • Horses and rats dream 20 percent of the time during sleep. Cows kept in barns dream 40 minutes per night, while cows sleeping in meadows dream only half as much.

http://abc.net.au/science/sleep/default.htm
http://www.prescriptionforsleep.com/index.html
http://www.brpt.org/sleep_facts.htm
and research I did for a college course