Sleeping is one of the bigger and more relevant needs that people have in life. Without it, many of us would feel tired almost every day; we won’t have the energy to go on to the following day to work in order for us to live. Aside from the satisfying and relaxing feeling that it gives us, here are seven more of the fascinating things that happen to our bodies when we are sleeping.
Eyes move at full speed
As some of us know, we enter different stages of sleep when we decide to rest our eyes. All phases serve a distinct purpose in keeping our entirety healthy. To simplify and shorten it, we enter 5 phases of sleep which is deeper than the previous one. After those five, we start all over again. The last and most extreme stage of sleep which is called the Rapid Eye Movement (REM), starts about an hour to 90 minutes after you fall asleep. Based on its definition, your eyes move at full speed forward and backward.
Throat narrows
The muscles responsible for holding our throat open when we are awake relax when we are sleeping causing our throat to decrease in size. The tightening of the throat is one of the many reasons why people snore when they sleep.
Spontaneous se*ual arousal
Ever wonder why some men experience se*ual arousal when they wake up? or for Females that they find their beds wet in the morning? This is because of the extreme brain activity during the REM period of our sleep. Our brain is in dire need of more oxygen which means faster flow of blood which activates most organs in our body including the private ones.
Muscles become paralyzed
REM is where most of these things happen and it is quite possibly the most interesting phase. When you enter this phase, which is the deepest of all, it’s temporarily impossible to move. It prohibits you to move your muscles. There is a condition where this still happens a few seconds or minutes after a person opens their eyes.
Your brain detoxifies and replenishes itself
Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that while asleep, our brain flushes up the waste that it has built during the day. The glymphatic system is the feature or the mechanism that is activated that allows our brain to remove all of the irrelevant information and gather stuff that is important while we are resting.
We make up stories
Although dreams are now being studied, it is still a mystery on why we experience them when we are asleep. The way our brain forms these types of phenomena still remains as a mystery. Emotions, feelings, traumatic events, nostalgic moments, are factors on where we travel to when we sleep but the biggest mystery of why we dream still remains unsolved.
We grow
Whenever we are asleep, the human growth hormone a.k.a HGH is activated. It is the hormone responsible for the regeneration of tissues, bones, and muscles causing our body to transform into something better. This process also allows cells that are damaged to renew and to be rejuvenated.
Sleeping is critical so we should never miss on sleep. It is approximated that a person should sleep at least seven hours a day to ensure that sufficient rest is done. Sleep is for the weak, they say – can you say that it really is true?