Ever given thought to what happens during your snooze sessions? You might not know this, but your body actually does a lot of crazy things the moment you fall into the arms of Morpheus. And there’s a good chance that you’ve never heard about any of them until now.
The good thing is, all the body processes are perfectly normal; well, except the rare exploding head syndrome — spoiler alert!
Without further ado, let’s check out a couple of things that happen to your body system when you hit the hay after a pretty long day.
1. Your Eyes Dart Back and Forth
For starters, there are up to five stages of sleep, and each serves a specific purpose in keeping your brain and body in good shape. It’s also good to point out that each stage is deeper than the former and you’ll start all over again after passing through all five.
For the most part, REM (rapid eye movement) is the last and most active phase — it typically starts 60 to 90 minutes after you fall asleep and you’re likely to spend up to 20% of your time sleeping in this phase.
Now, during REM sleep, your eyes dart quickly back and forth, but you won’t even have an idea of what’s going on because your mind is totally immersed in what Morpheus has in store for you.
2. Your Muscles are Temporarily Paralyzed
With your eyes still twitching as a result of REM sleep, your limb muscles also get completely paralyzed — this is one paralysis you’ll want to happen every night. It’s what prevents from acting on whatever weird thing that’s going on in your head in the middle of the night.
It’s important to note that this kind of paralysis is not the same as sleep paralysis which tends to occur for a few seconds or minutes after waking up in the morning.
This particular disorder extends the normal paralysis that happens during sleep for a few scary moments after you awaken. It’s common among people with narcolepsy, so you may want to head to the doctor’s office if this happens to you.
3. Release of a Human Growth Hormone
Hitting the hay also activates the production of a substance known as HGH hormone — it’s what allows your bones, muscle, and tissue to regenerate.
That’s not all — the human growth hormone also promotes healing and cell renewal. Speaking of growth, you’ll be glad to know that you get taller when you sleep at night and it’s all thanks to this hormone!
4. Your Throat Narrows
Falling into the arms of Morpheus changes your breathing pattern and decreases the size of your throat — it happens when your muscles relax.
This is one of the reasons why your partner snores noisily! There’s a good chance that the person’s throat is way too narrow thus the annoying noises. It’s however important to note that there are still other culprits including nasal obstruction and the like.
5. Your Kidney Slows Down
What’s the normal of the kidneys? As you probably guessed, it filters toxins out of the bloodstream and produces urine.
Well, this function actually slows when you hit the hay, and that’s why your urine looks a bit dark when you pee in the morning.
Essentially, the filtering action of your kidneys slows down to reduce the production of urine.
And that’s it! As you can see, there are quite a few normal and bizarre things that happen when you shut your eyes and drift off to dreamland.
Now, you know that there’s more to hitting the hay than getting your beauty sleep!
Subscribe for more! https://goo.gl/nJ8d6r
Royalty free Pictures from
www.pixabay.com
Royalty Free Music from
Audio Library – No Copyright Music