[Health and Wellness] Little-known facts about sleep revealed. If you know more than three of them, you are awesome.

Sleep is simple. Just find a place to sit or lie down, close your eyes and you can sleep. Sleep is also complex. There are two states: NREM (slow-wave sleep) and REM (rapid-wave sleep). Each alternation is a sleep cycle. The sleep cycle is divided into 5 stages. There are usually 4-6 sleep cycles in one night.

In this simple yet complex sleep, most people's understanding of sleep only hovers in the basic and common knowledge area, and their understanding of it is too limited and one-sided. Today, let's explore ten little-known sleep facts.

01 Grinding your teeth while sleeping may not necessarily be caused by worms in your stomach

Old people say that if you grind your teeth while sleeping, you must have worms in your stomach, which can be removed. In fact, there are many other reasons for teeth grinding, such as poor tooth occlusion, mental tension, stress, excessive intake of caffeine or carbohydrates, oral diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, etc.

02Drooling while sleeping may be a sign of illness

It is normal for children to drool, but adults may drool due to diseases, such as oral diseases (mouth ulcers, pharyngitis, dental caries, periodontal disease, etc.), neuroregulatory disorders (facial paralysis, Alzheimer's disease, etc.), etc.

03 When sleeping in an unfamiliar environment, half of the brain is awake

When we arrive in a new environment, we always have trouble sleeping, which is attributed to the lack of "security" in the brain. Studies have found that when people are in an unfamiliar environment, half of the brain will remain awake and alert to prevent dangerous situations.

04 Lack of sleep is more likely to cause cancer

Studies have found that if you sleep less than 5 hours a night, the immune Natural Killer cells in your body that specifically fight cancer cells will be reduced by 70%, making you more susceptible to colon cancer, prostate cancer, or breast cancer. In addition, lack of sleep can also accelerate the growth of cancer cells.

0524 hours without sleep, the state is like being drunk

If you don't sleep for 17 consecutive hours, your alertness is similar to that of a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05%, which will damage your concentration. After 24 hours of sleep deprivation, the body's state is equivalent to a blood alcohol concentration of 0.1%. At this point, you'll have prolonged reaction time, weakened motor control, slurred speech, etc., and you've reached a state of drunkenness.

06Lack of sleep affects sexual function

Studies have shown that men who sleep less than 5 hours a night will have their testosterone levels reduced by 10% to 15%. Severe lack of sleep can disrupt men's sex hormone secretion and affect sexual function. Women who lack sleep are more likely to become infertile or have miscarriages.

07Lack of sleep makes you more sensitive to pain

Not only does sleep deprivation boost pain-sensing areas in the brain, it also suppresses natural pain-relieving centers, according to a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Even slight changes in nighttime sleep, reducing what we consider to be a negligible amount of sleep, can have a noticeable impact on your pain burden the next day.

08On average, a person spends 6 years dreaming in his or her lifetime

In a person's lifetime, the total time spent dreaming is more than 6 years. Everyone has several dreams every night, and each dream lasts 5-20 minutes.

09 Women are more likely to have nightmares, while men are more likely to have erotic dreams

Psychology researchers at the University of the West of England found that women are more likely to have nightmares, while men are more likely to have erotic dreams. Among them, women's nightmares can generally be summarized into three categories: being chased by people or beasts, losing a loved one, and getting into trouble.

10. Playing games may control your dreams

Guckenbach, a psychologist at MacEwan University in Canada, said that playing video games or online games is equivalent to traveling back and forth between the real world and the fantasy world. People who play games for several hours a day are practicing controlling dreams invisibly. This is because the process of players controlling virtual game characters is similar to participating in the process in dreams. According to his research, game players are much more likely to have "lucid dreams" than ordinary people.

Playing video games is said to have a rehabilitative effect on soldiers suffering from PTSD (traumatic stress disorder) after returning from combat operations, by helping them suffer fewer nightmares.

How much do you know about these ten little-known facts? Understanding sleep from a new perspective can help us better control and optimize our sleep.