Sleep Trivia

Approximately 220,000 hours, or one third of your life will be spent sleeping.

Babies sleep in cribs that are 27 inches wide. That may be enough for a baby, but hardly enough for an adult, and that’s what two adults on a double mattress face nightly. No wonder we have territorial disputes about “Who’s on whose side of the bed?”

Double beds are only 75" long. This was adequate during World War 1 when the average height of a male was 5'7", but hardly suitable today, when the average height of a male is 6'0".

65% of people sleep on their side, 20% on their back, and 15% on their stomach.

17% of the human spine is located in the neck. No wonder pillows are as important to how one sleeps as a mattress. Pillows that do not provide proper support for your neck, can result in kinks and tightness in the shoulders, that can require chiropractic relief.

The Sleep Council of Canada recommends pillows of average quality be replaced every 6 months.

Humans shed 1 lb of skin each year while sleeping. An unprotected mattress gains 1 lb of dust mites and fecal matter remains every year. No wonder using a mattress pad and washing it frequently is so important.

In children, the growth hormone is produced while sleeping. Studies in the UK have found that kids can grow up to 1.5 cm in one night. *St Thomas Hospital, London 1997

A newborn baby sleeps 16 hours a day.

Forty two percent of College students nap five to six times a week.

Thirteen percent of North Americans suffer from nightmares.

Thirty six percent of all North Americans have insomnia.

Before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb people averaged 10 hours of sleep a night. The average number of hours the average person sleeps now is 6.9 hours.

Businesses lose an estimated $70 billion annually in lost productivity due to sleep disorders.

There are 170 sleep disorder centers in North America.

Twenty percent of highway accidents and half the fatalities, are caused by drowsy drivers.

More than 100,000 car crashes in the United States each year result from drowsiness.

In a 2002 survey, 17% of the people admitted to momentarily falling asleep behind a wheel in the previous year.

In 2004, Americans filled more than 35 million prescriptions for sleeping pills.

Your alarm is set for 6 A.M. ... why do you wake up at 5:59? The body’s internal alarm clock is triggered by the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Levels of this hormone begin to rise an hour or two before an expected wake up call, preparing the body for the stress of waking up.

A six year study or a million adults showed that people who get only six or seven hours of sleep a night have a lower death rate than those who get eight or more.

The official record for staying awake is held by Randy Gardner who in 1964 stayed awake for 264 hours and 12 minutes. He then slept for 15 hours.

Thanks in part to siestas, Spaniards sleep an average of 40 minutes less per night than other Europeans. Spain also has the highest rate of workplace accidents in the EU and the third lowest productivity rate.

Whales and dolphins can literally fall half asleep. Their brain hemispheres alternate sleeping, so they can continue to surface and breathe.

Dreaming is related to bursts of electrical activity that blow through the brain stem every 90 minutes during REM sleep. Over a lifetime an average person spends more than six years dreaming, clocking more than 130,000 dreams in all.

Nobody knows why we dream.

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