Fun Facts Sleep

1. Briton Tony Wright set the world record: He managed not to sleep for 266 hours. This is 11 days and 2 hours. The German record, on the other hand, is only 38 hours and 35 minutes. However, since so much sleep deprivation is hazardous to health, this category was removed from the Guinness Book of Records.

2. 93 decibels - This is how loud Kare Walkert snores. This corresponds to the noise level of passing trucks on the highway. The poor neighbors!

3. sleeping makes slim! When sleeping, a 70kg person burns about 65kcal per hour. With an average of 8 hours of sleep, that's a total of 520 calories. How many calories are burned depends, among other things, on body weight.

Some people (about 25%) can gain consciousness in dreams. This is called lucid dreaming: the dream self is aware that it is dreaming during the dream. This occurs during REM sleep, but is very rare overall (0.3% of all dreams). Specific techniques can help to train the occurrence of lucid dreams and show success for example in the therapy of nightmares.

5. sleep is considered the best exam preparation! A study showed that the group that slept in made fewer mistakes on a memory test than the group that was consciously kept awake. So: Treat yourself to a good night's sleep before an exam, rather than tossing and turning all night long!

6 In the Middle Ages, it is said to have been normal for adults to sleep in two stages. In between, they are said to have been awake for about an hour, working, studying or praying.

7 We humans give a lot of lifetime to our sleep. We spend about 24 years sleeping! In comparison, we devote "only" 5 years to eating.

8. sleep deprivation works like alcohol! According to the ADAC, after 17 hours without sleep, the ability to drive is equivalent to a blood alcohol concentration of 0.5 per mille. After 24 hours, the driver behaves about the same as at 1 per mille.

9. seals can even sleep in the water. In doing so, they float up and down in the water and thus repeatedly catch their breath at the surface without waking up. Remarkable!

10. Some sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don't drift off or get separated. Isn't that cute! For the same reason, some other sea otters wrap themselves with seaweed before sleeping.

11. Birds sleep while they fly on. How do they do that? They sleep with only one half of their brain. The other, awake half is used to navigate, for example, to take advantage of rising air currents so they don't collide with other birds. Frigatebirds are a well-known example.