How Sleep Works
Today I caught up on my How Stuff Works “Daily Stuff” feed. Tucked in there, with How Subways Work and How Spontaneous Human Combustion Works, was How Sleep Works.
We hear stuff about sleep all the time… but there’s always something new.
All straight from the above article (with the exception of the bracketed text):
- Cows can sleep while standing up, but they only dream if they lie down.
Whales and dolphins are “conscious breathers,” and they need to keep breathing while they sleep, so only one half of the brain sleeps at a time. (Click here for details.) - Many medicines, including most sleeping medicines, change the quality of sleep and the REM component of it.
- After three days [without sleep], a person will start to hallucinate and clear thinking is impossible. With continued wakefulness a person can lose grasp of reality. Rats forced to stay awake continuously will eventually die, proving that sleep is essential.
[[ And what happens to people? Here‘s one depressing story. Interestingly, resentment is one of the five listed “common causes of sleep loss” in this article. ]]
