Word: asleep
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...that help to bring on sleep, but these also affect different people in different ways. Ironically, some of the best-known pep pills put some people to sleep. Many of the antihistamines, intended to relieve allergies, are also prescribed as soporifics. Virtually all the tranquilizers tend to make falling asleep easier, but their mechanisms vary...
...like a Log. There is no single best position for falling asleep, though the Encyclopaedia Britannica says all humankind adopts an approximately horizontal position. This is in contrast with birds, which sleep standing on one leg, with beak tucked under wing. Most people sleep on their sides, spending more time on one than the other, and tend to bend the hips and draw up the knees a little, the better to relax. Sleeping supine is likely to cause snoring, which may wake the sleeper himself, besides disturbing others...
Though many people claim that once they fall asleep they don't move, Dr. Kleitman is emphatic: "No normal person sleeps 'like a log.' " Anyone gets uncomfortable from staying in one position while asleep, just as he would while awake. To check this, his University of Chicago researchers rigged up Rube Goldberg devices to bedsprings and got electrical recordings of sleepers' tossing and turning. The average: 20 to 60 major movements during a night's sleep...
...Instant Dream. However long they sleep, many men and women have difficulty staying asleep for the desired number of hours. Mothers get the habit of sleeping "with one ear open," afraid they may miss a high-pitched cry from a child's bedroom. Men in their 40s and over are more likely to be waked by bladder pressure...
...Dement devised an ingenious experiment to find out what happens if a person is allowed to sleep his normal number of hours, but is not allowed to dream. His volunteers were awakened whenever their REMs indicated the beginning of a dream. Then they were allowed to fall asleep again. And so on, night after night. By the third night, most volunteers began to get edgy and act strange. In the final part of the experiment, when they were allowed to sleep as long as they wanted, they dreamed twice as much as usual...