Your brain is even more active during dreaming (REM sleep) than when you’re awake. As your eyes are moving back and forth, it’s stimulating the visual cortex area of your brain and your brain is sending out signals to your muscles to move, as if you were awake. Luckily, another part of your brain blocks these signals to move or you would be acting out your dreams.
As weird as some dreams can be, at the time, everything makes perfect sense. The purple lion chasing your kayak down the street seems totally real during the dream.
Adults spend about 90 minutes in REM sleep whereas infants spend half their sleep time dreaming. Dreams are thought to be used by the brain to make sense of the days’ events and to create new memory pathways while stimulating the brain.
Each time you enter REM sleep during the night your dreams usually get better, seemingly building upon the theme of the previous dream. That’s great if you’re with that special person, but not so good if the purple lion has eaten its way through your kayak to your cockpit.
How Much Sleep Do You Need?
The amount of sleep a person needs is an individual thing. Some people need only 3-4 hours per night while others require 10 or 11. So the number of 8 hours per night is just an average. The amount of sleep you need may be more or less than the average. The key point to remember is that you get enough hours of sleep that allows you to feel rested and alert the next day.
When you don’t get enough sleep, your memory is impaired, you can be in a foul mood, you lack enjoyment of the day and your judgement is off.
The amount of sleep you get can change depending on your heredity, lifestyle, stress, physical health, mental wellbeing and your metabolism. A big factor is age. Infants sleep three quarters of the day, adults about 8 hours and the elderly about 6 hours.
Forget the old wives tale (experienced, woman’s embellishment) that an hour of sleep before midnight is equal to two hours after midnight. Each hour of sleep is the same, whenever it occurs.
Your brain is even more active during dreaming (REM sleep) than when you’re awake. As your eyes are moving back and forth, it’s stimulating the visual cortex area of your brain and your brain is sending out signals to your muscles to move, as if you were awake. Luckily, another part of your brain blocks these signals to move or you would be acting out your dreams.
As weird as some dreams can be, at the time, everything makes perfect sense. The purple lion chasing your kayak down the street seems totally real during the dream.
Adults spend about 90 minutes in REM sleep whereas infants spend half their sleep time dreaming. Dreams are thought to be used by the brain to make sense of the days’ events and to create new memory pathways while stimulating the brain.
Each time you enter REM sleep during the night your dreams usually get better, seemingly building upon the theme of the previous dream. That’s great if you’re with that special person, but not so good if the purple lion has eaten its way through your kayak to your cockpit.
How Much Sleep Do You Need?
The amount of sleep a person needs is an individual thing. Some people need only 3-4 hours per night while others require 10 or 11. So the number of 8 hours per night is just an average. The amount of sleep you need may be more or less than the average. The key point to remember is that you get enough hours of sleep that allows you to feel rested and alert the next day.
When you don’t get enough sleep, your memory is impaired, you can be in a foul mood, you lack enjoyment of the day and your judgement is off.
The amount of sleep you get can change depending on your heredity, lifestyle, stress, physical health, mental wellbeing and your metabolism. A big factor is age. Infants sleep three quarters of the day, adults about 8 hours and the elderly about 6 hours.
Forget the old wives tale (experienced, woman’s embellishment) that an hour of sleep before midnight is equal to two hours after midnight. Each hour of sleep is the same, whenever it occurs.