Eye Opening Facts About Sleep:

- Anything less than 5 minutes to fall asleep at night means you are sleep deprived.  Ideally a 10 to 15 minutes can be interpreted as you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but no so exhausted you feel sleepy during the day.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours of lost sleep for parents in the first year.  Goodluck!

- One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

- No one knows for sure if other species dream, but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

- The 1998 Exxon Valdez oil spill off of Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster, and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep deprivation was a factor.

- The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one of 6 fatal road accidents.

- Snoring only occurs in non-REM sleep.

- Most of what we know about sleep, we have learned in the past 25 years.

- Humans spend 1/3 of their lives sleep (25 years or more).

- Giraffes sleep only 1.9 hours a day (in 5-10 minutes sessions), while koalas sleep up to 22 hours.

- Over 70 million Americans suffer from a sleep disorder.

- A person's core body temperature drops to facilitate the onset of sleep.  This means that artificial heat sources such as electric blankets can negatively effect a person's quality of sleep.

- Each year, sleep related errors and accidents cost US businesses an estimated $56 billion, cause nearly 25,000 deaths, and results in 2.5 million disabling injuries.

- Scientists have determined that counting sheep is ineffective for putting oneself to sleep.  Evidently it is too boring and imagining a calming landscape generally works much better.

- The best room temperature for quality sleep is 60° - 67°F.

- "Pulling an all-nighter" can reduce your ability to study and remember new facts by 40%.

- Sea otters hold hands when they sleep to prevent drifting away from each other.

- English Bulldogs are the only animals known to have sleep apnea most likely due to their short snouts and under-bite.