What most people don't know about sleep...

We sleep better at home than anywhere else due to threat detection. In a foreign environment (like a hotel room), half of your brain will resist going into a deeper sleep so that it can remain more alert and spot any potential dangers.

Just one extra hour of sleep can have a dramatic effect on our health. When the clocks go forward every spring due to daylight savings time, there is a 24% increase in heart attacks. When the clocks go back again, and we gain an hour of sleep, heart attacks fall by 21%.

We don’t simply forget dreams. When we wake up, dream memory is still available but not accessible. It’s possible that every single dream is stored somewhere in our brain, impacting our behavior in all sorts of ways, whether we realize it or not.

Sleep is “the greatest legal performance-enhancing drug” most people don’t take advantage of, according to sleep expert Dr. Matthew Walker. When we learn something new during the day, our brain replays it 20 times faster when we’re asleep. This is essential for improving skills.

Your brain needs to cool by 2-3 degrees Fahrenheit before sleeping. This is why getting out of a hot bath (which causes your core temperature to drop) at night or going to bed with less clothing helps you fall asleep faster.

People who only get 5-6 hours of sleep per night will consume an extra 200-300 calories every day on average due to lack of rest. That adds up to around 70,000 extra calories per year, which translates to 10-15 pounds of weight gain.

One in three people try to get by on six hours of sleep or less. The average sleep time for American adults is now just six and a half hours’ sleep on weekdays. The percentage of people who can survive long-term like this? Zero.

You can’t use naps to make up for lost sleep. It’s not a debt that can be repaid. There is no safety net for lack of rest because human beings are not hardwired for it: we are the only species that deprives itself of sleep.

Being awake for 20 hours or more is the mental and physical equivalent of being legally drunk. A car accident linked to sleeplessness happens every 30 seconds. This kills more people on the road than people driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol combined.

Men who only sleep about 5-6 hours per night have the same level of testosterone as someone 10 years older than them. That means they will have aged by a decade in critical areas such as wellness, virility, and muscle strength - just by not sleeping enough.