MySleepCentral.com

Courtesy of comments left by Emily, I have been introduced to a wonderous new site called Mysleepcentral.com.

I highly recommend you check it out!! Seriously.

Just be sure to come back too! :)

Sleep Fact #17

The number of accredited sleep centers across the country has tripled in the past decade, from 374 in 1997 to 1,129 today, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine

Sleep Fact #18

42 million sleep-aid prescriptions were filled in 2005, a 60-percent increase since 2000, according to Medco Health Solutions, a prescription drug benefit manager. That doesn't include over-the-counter meds.

I find this fact to be especially humorous, since as a Narcoleptic I see 42 million people getting prescriptions to aid them getting to sleep and yet I take a drug to aid me in staying awake! I never did well in a large crowds anyway.... :)

Sleep Fact #19

And this is one of my favorites so far...

Ducks at risk of attack by predators are
able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

My biggest question isn't, "Ducks can really do that?" It's HOW THE F*** DID HUMANS FIGURE THAT OUT!?

Seriously, inquiring minds want to know!

Sleep Fact Countdown: #20

Boy have I ever been slacking on our sleep fact countdown! Well, never fear citizens I am now finishing the countdown to bring you the sleep enlightenment you so desperately desire!

This sleep fact is quite the goody too!

British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers' retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo

9 facts about REM sleep you probably didn't know

1. Being in REM sleep is a lot like being awake! Your brain activity, heart rate and breathing rate during REM are similar to what they are like during waking hours. WEIRD!
   
   
2. It was a graduate student from the University of Chicago who first discovered REM sleep.
   
   
3. It is common to wake for a short time at the end of a REM phase
   
   
4. We enter REM sleep about 5 times in an 8 hour time period, and if we count each period as a different dream, we will have 1,825 dreams in on year!
   
   
5. A 75 year old person will have about 136,875 dreams in a year!
   
   
6. A lack of muscle immobility during REM leads to REM Behavior Disorder; sufferers act out the movements occurring in their dreams.
   
   
7. Because our muscles are rendered immobile during REM, people who sleepwalk are not in REM sleep and thus are not acting actually out their dreams.
   
   
8. Because erections are a regular part of REM, doctor's use REM sleep testing to determine if a if a male's erectile is a physiological or mental in origin.
   
   
9. The amount of REM sleep a person gets, relative to their total sleep varies greatly with age! A newborn baby spends more than 50-80% of total sleep time in REM, while people over 70 years old spend less than 10%. The average is 20%.

Idiot's Guide to Sleep Chapter 3: REM sleep

Read Chapter 2: How we Sleep

Review: What we learned from Chapters 1 and 2

1. Understanding sleep helps us us understand Narcolepsy (ch. 1)
2. Sleeping is a way of re-energizing and rebooting our internal systems (ch. 1)
3. When you sleep you're either in a state of REM sleep or non-REM sleep (ch. 2)
4. non-REM sleep takes place in four stages (ch. 2)
5. non-REM sleep lasts around 90 minutes (ch. 2)

REM SLEEP

As noted in Chapter 2, whoever coined the term REM made it really easy to remember. When you sleep you're eyes are either making quick (aka rapid) movements, or they are not. If they are, we call it RAPID EYE MOVEMENT sleep and if they aren't, then we call it non-rapid eye movement sleep.

Nuts and Bolts of REM

• You enter REM sleep about every 90 minutes starting from the time you fall sleep until the time you wake up.
• If you do the math (and I didn't but apparently other people have), this means that in a typical 8 hour time period, you'll have 4 to 5 periods of REM sleep a night
• Each period of REM is a longer than the previous one
• Those 4-5 REM periods will add to a grand total of 90-120 minutes of total REM

REM sleep is significant because it is when most of our dreaming takes place, and it is when our most intense and vivid dreaming takes place. During REM our muscles are rendered immobile, which we call sleep paralysis, so that we can't act out what we're dreaming. It's a very handy safety feature to say the least.

REM is probably the most highly studied part of the sleep process because it is when dreaming occurs, and the purpose of the dreaming (and thus the purpose of REM) isn't fully understood. Although most researchers do agree that it is an important and necessary function of the body.

Sources Used:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/sleep.html
http://www.webmd.com/content/article/105/107660.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement

Sleep Facts #25-21

Clearly I have been slacking on our sleep fact countdown!!! Thus, here are five, count 'em five whole sleep facts you probably didn't know:

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

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

23. 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.

22. Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

21. Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes

How much do animals sleep?

Ever wanted to know how long humans sleep in comparison to other animals? Well, do I have the chart for you. Here is a nice look at how long some other members of the animal kingdom spend sleeping! Seems that we are on the really low end for amount of sleep. Although I wonder what the giraffe does with the other 19 hours it's awake?! Haha ...

Seriously though, if we sleep 8 hours and a lot of our sleep is our brain sorting stuff out, why do all the other animals need more sleep than us? We clearly have more s*** to sort out than the giant armadillo! So what's the deal?

Species	Average Total Sleep Time (% of 24 hr)	Average Total Sleep Time (Hours/day)
Brown Bat	82.9%	19.9 hr
Giant Armadillo	75.4%	18.1 hr
North American Opossum	75%	18 hr
Python	75%	18 hr
Owl Monkey	70.8%	17.0 hr
Human (infant)	66.7%	16 hr
Tiger	65.8%	15.8 hr
Tree shrew	65.8%	15.8 hr
Squirrel	62%	14.9 hr
Western Toad	60.8%	14.6 hr
Ferret	60.4%	14.5 hr
Three-toed Sloth	60%	14.4 hr
Golden Hamster	59.6%	14.3 hr
Platypus	58.3%	14.0 hr
Lion	56.3%	13.5 hr
Gerbil	54.4%	13.1 hr
Rat	52.4%	12.6 hr
Cat	50.6%	12.1 hr
Cheetah	50.6%	12.1 hr
Mouse	50.3%	12.1 hr
Rhesus Monkey	49.2%	11.8 hr
Rabbit	47.5%	11.4 hr
Jaguar	45%	10.8 hr
Duck	45%	10.8 hr
Dog	44.3%	10.6 hr
Bottle-nosed dolphin	43.3%	10.4 hr
Star-nosed Mole	42.9%	10.3 hr
Baboon	42.9%	10.3 hr
European Hedgehog	42.2%	10.1 hr
Squirrel Monkey	41.3%	9.9 hr
Chimpanzee	40.4%	9.7 hr
Guinea Pig	39.2%	9.4 hr
Human (adult)	33.3%	8 hr
Pig	32.6%	7.8 hr
Guppy (fish)	29.1%	7 hr
Gray Seal	25.8%	6.2 hr
Human (elderly)	22.9%	5.5 hr
Goat	22.1%	5.3 hr
Cow	16.4%	3.9 hr
Asiatic Elephant	16.4%	3.9 hr
Sheep	16%	3.8 hr
African Elephant	13.8%	3.3 hr
Donkey	13.0%	3.1 hr
Horse	12.0%	2.9 hr
Giraffe	7.9%	1.9 hr

Sleep Fact #26

The brain of a dolphin appears to sleep one hemisphere at a time.

More about how dolphins sleep:

How Stuff Works

Scientific American

Interesting Dolphin Facts

Sleep Fact #27

Sleep Fact Countdown: #28

Our next sleep fact on the 40 Sleep Fact Countdown comes from none other than Linus! Most of you remember Linus from the critically acclaimed comic strip Peanuts, which featured the likes of Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Linus' fact comes not a moment too soon as our last entry into the "Idiot's Guide to Understanding Sleep" was all about the sleep cycle and non-Rem sleep. And without further ado, here is sleep fact #28...



I hope everyone feels just a little smarter. Thank you Linus for that insightful sleep fact. (Feel free to applaud).

Sleep Fact Countdown: #29

We have a celebrity guest today on the blog to deliver sleep fact #29...and it's none other than Professor Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy!!!

Without further ado, take it away Dumbledore!

Idiot's guide to sleep: Chapter 2 - How we sleep

Read Chapter 1: Why we sleep

When you sleep, your body cycles between two types of sleep, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) or non-REM. We'll get more into REM during another chapter, but for now understand that the difference between REM and non-REM sleep is excruciatingly basic. Either your eyes are zippin' like a Vegas slot machine, or they're not. Not exactly rocket science.

When you're body is in a non-REM cycle, it is going to be in one of four stages. A whole non-REM cycle will last anywhere from 90-120 minutes.

Stage 1: It's that drowsy, I'm somewhere between being awake and being really deeply asleep. You're out of it, but not entirely.

Stage 2: A period of light sleep. Your muscles are contracting and relaxing intermittently, the heart rate is slowing and your body temp is dropping. It's at this stage that the body prepares to enter deep sleep (which I envision is sort of like NASA's central command when it prepares to launch a space shuttle).

Stages 3 & 4: Deep Sleep (but not dreaming sleep). During these deep sleep stages of non-REM sleep, the body is repairing and regenerating tissue, building bone and muscle mass, strengthening the immune system.

After non-REM sleep, you'll have a short burst of REM sleep, which as I said, we'll dive into more later.

One sleep cycle will then look like this.

1. Stage 1 (non-Rem)
   
2. Stage 2 (non-Rem)
3. Stage 3 (non-Rem)
4. Stage 4 (non-Rem)
5. Stage 2 (non-Rem)
6. Stage 1 (non-Rem)
7. REM SLEEP

Think of it like putting your clothes in washing machine. First they soak, then they spin, then they may soak and spin again, and the final two stages are the clothes getting rinsed of all the soap and then the basin drains all the water out. It's not like you just throw your clothes in, they sit for an hour and then are clean. The machine puts them through various stages to complete its wash sequence to get the clothes clean.

Your brain/body does the same thing during sleep. Each night your mind uses sleep as a way to sort of reboot. To do this, you go through a series of sleep stages, consisting of either REM sleep or non-REM sleep.

And just like you can't do all of your laundry in one load, your body can't complete all of its tasks in one cycle, so the cycle noted above will repeat in that order throughout the night.

Okay, there will be a 10 question true/false quiz over this material on Monday, any questions?

Idiot's guide to sleep Chapter 1: Why do we sleep?

To understand Narcolepsy, it is often easier to first understand normal sleep. Basically, before you can understand what is wrong with us oddballs , you have to be able to grasp what healthy sleep is. I will cover this topic throughout multiple posts.

The first question isn't really how do we sleep, but WHY do we sleep?

Sleeping is basically way of rebooting our system.

According to WebMD:

When you sleep, your body rests and restores its energy levels. However, sleep is an active state that affects both your physical and mental well-being. A good night's sleep is often the best way to help you cope with stress, solve problems, or recover from illness.

And for those of you looking for more scientific details, Wikipedia's article states:

Sleep is the state of natural rest observed in most mammals, birds, fish, as well as invertebrates such as the fruitfly Drosophila. It is characterized by a reduction in voluntary body movement, decreased reaction to external stimuli, an increased rate of anabolism (the synthesis of cell structures), and a decreased rate of catabolism (the breakdown of cell structures). In humans, mammals and many other animals which have been studied, such as fish, birds, mice and fruitflies, regular sleep is necessary for survival. The capability for arousal from sleep is a protective mechanism and also necessary for health and survival. Sleep is not synonymous with unconsciousness.

Sleep Fact #29

To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess they are referring to degrees Celcius and not Fahrenheit, just a thought...

Sleep Fact Countdown: #30

In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

I can't think NOT sleeping is any better for you ... but hey, that's just one man's opinion!

Sleep Fact: #31

Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

Well that explains why people in big cities are always cranky, and why it's so hard to get a good night's sleep when in a new place. So maybe we should all tape recordings of our homes and then just put headphones of the noises we are used to as we sleep.

Although in my case, I may be able to tape the 4am and and 5am trains that rumbles by my apartment, but you just can't duplicate that vibration!

Haha, not that it usually bothers me being a Narcoleptic and and all.

Sleep Fact Countdown: #32

The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.

This is precisely why I've been paying more attention to being responsible and napping before driving or not driving when I'm sleepy.

For example, the other day my Pops called and wanted to know if I wanted to go out to lunch. While, I didn't want to turn down free food (Im a poor skinny college kid!), I had to because I needed to nap before I went somewhere. I mean like really really needed to nap.

I might have been okay, without the nap, but when people's lives are at stakes, why roll the dice when I don't have to.

I sort of feel like Spider-man (don't laugh!) and the whole "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" thing. As a Narcoleptic, I have to really pay attention to certain decisions I make, such as driving. I just wish my great power was shooting webs from my wrists and not napping all the time!

-Jim-

Sleep Fact #33: The Victorian Era

Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

For those of us who are simple-folk, I googled "Electric-Light-Globe" and as I'm sure we all could have guessed, but weren't quite sure, that's just a fancy way of saying the light bulb.

Apparently light-bulb was too easy to say. Scientists, yeesch ...