Myths About Sleeping and Dreaming
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Myths about Sleeping and Dreaming
There are many myths about sleeping and dreaming. Many of those myths came from a far truth. Meaning that from a fact they added to it and made a myth. There are three different myths; I will be talking about on this paper. The first myth is very common and to certain point a lot of people believe it: Everyone needs eight hour of sleep a night to maintain sound mental and physical health. The second one is: you can learn things while asleep and the last one is dreaming of dying can be fatal. I sure everyone has heard of these myths at least one time in their lives. I will tell you how each one of these myths is not true with facts and examples and why people believe them. I hope you enjoy.
The first myth and most common is “Everyone needs eight hours of sleep at night to maintain sound mental and physical health. Why do you believe people believe this? I know I use to believe this because my mother use to put me to sleep at 9:00 p.m every night because I needed enough rest for school the next day. That would mean eight hours to sleep and two hour to try to fall asleep and get ready for school the next day which included eating breakfast. Well, it was a lie. Different people need different amount of sleep; it all depends on the person’s life. I for example need seven hours of sleep at night and also a nap when the kids also fall asleep. The truth is everyone has his own sleeping requirement. The quantity of sleep also depends on our age. A new-born baby will sleep about seventeen or eighteen hours a day and this reduces quickly in infancy to ten or twelve hours. During puberty the sleep reduces to nine or ten hours. A young adult will have sufficient with six to nine hours sleep and an older person will require even less. Older people will have less REM sleep and there is almost nothing of phase 4 and they will awaken more often. So to solve the myth of the eight hours, no we don’t all need eight hours of sleep.
The second myth is that people can learn complicated things while asleep. Some things people think they can learn are foreign languages and dangerous sports. Even though people can learn things while in the first stages of sleep that is why people believe that you can actually learn, but you can only learn things at the being and what you hear right before you wake up. After they are in the remm sleep that is when it’s hard to be awaken and you usually dream you are not aware of what you are listening, so you can’t be learning during those stages. Since most people can’t remember their dreams, how can you remember what you were hearing? Every night we go through stages while sleeping. Stage one sleep; your breathing becomes more regular, your heart rate slows, and your blood pressure decreases. You can still be awaken during this stage and this is probably where you can remember what you are hearing. Stage two sleeps; this stage is noted on your electroencephalograph by occasional short bursts of rapid, high-amplitude brain waves known as sleep spindles. You also become progressively more relaxed and less responsive to the outside environment. So that means you are still somewhat aware and you can still learn what you are hearing. Like I said though stages three and four are marked by appearance of slow, high-amplitude delta waves. It hard to be awaken at these stages. Even if they shouted and they shook you, you would not wake up. That is why after you are really asleep you can’t learn. I know that when my husband is asleep and our daughters wake up crying, he is the last one to hear them and sometimes don’t even remember that I tried to wake him to help me. Although we go through these stages several times at night, we don’t go through all the stages and we don’t go through the stages in order. That is why we can’t learn complicated things while asleep.
The last myth I’ll be talking about is “Can dreaming of dying be fatal?” I looked for information on the internet to see if any one has ever been reported dead from dreaming of dying and I found no information. I have dreamed of dying and coming back as a ghost but I woke up the next morning and told my husband