Author: Archit Tripathi / Source: did you know?
Sleep: we all need it, and most of us never seem to get enough of it. A good night’s rest helps detoxify the brain, promotes memory retention, and boosts your immune system, just to name a few benefits.
For a long time, however, sleep was considered a “passive” activity where neither the brain nor the body did much of anything.
It was only with the discovery of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep in 1953 that scientists saw just how busy our brains and bodies remain while we catch 40 winks.
We’ve come a long way in our understanding of sleep since then, but there are some sleep myths that linger on to this day. Here are 7 of the most popular ones.
We’ve all heard you shouldn’t try to wake someone who is sleepwalking because the shock might give them a heart attack. The truth, as always, is more complicated.
When we sleep, we alternate between lighter and deeper sleep cycles where different parts of the brain are active. Italian researchers found that sleepwalkers may have an imbalance between parts of the brain that are awake and parts that are asleep.
Essentially, sleepwalkers have their conscious memory and decision-making turned off, while mechanical behaviors like walking, talking, peeing, and sometimes even driving, are still turned on. That’s why, according to Stanford sleep specialist Dr. Mark Mahowald, you’ll likely never see a sleepwalker doing something they can’t already do in real life.
All that said, there appears to be virtually no scientific evidence actually linking waking a sleepwalker to serious consequences like heart attacks. That’s not to say, however, that waking sleepwalkers up from a deep sleep isn’t going to cause a certain level of distress. Just think of how stressed you get when something startles you from a dead sleep. Some folks also swing out when they feel startled, so you might want to watch your own safety too.
All in all, you can wake up a sleepwalker… but you should probably still be gentle!
At some point in all of our lives, we’ve come across someone who snores in their sleep. It’s definitely annoying if you’re sleeping anywhere near them, but snoring is generally seen as just that – a harmless annoyance.
While a little snoring doesn’t really hurt anyone, chronic snoring can actually be a pretty serious problem. Heavy snoring can be indicative of obstructive sleep apnea, a serious condition which leads to a higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, and even death if left untreated.
Additionally, heavy snoring can also lead to less restful sleep, which deprives you of all the health benefits of a good night’s rest that we mentioned at the start of the video.
When it comes to sleep, most of us are drowning in debt. It’s generally accepted that the average adult needs 6-10 hours of sleep a night. According to the CDC, however, a full third of American adults aren’t getting enough sleep.
Being sleep deprived leads…
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