Sleep is essential for everyone. Here are some things you may not have known about sleep.

1. While you are asleep, your body’s cells are repairing themselves, your brain is recharging and your body is releasing important hormones.
2. Age-dependent, you need a certain amount of sleep each night. Babies up until the age of 3 require 16 hours of sleep. Thereafter children need 10 hours of sleep a night until they are 18. People from the age of 19 to 55 require 8 hours of sleep a night.
3. It is impossible to dream about faces that we have not first seen in reality.
4. Parasomnia is a proven sleep disorder whereby you make unnatural movements during your sleep, although you may not be aware of your actions.
5. 12% of people cannot dream in colour and dream in black and white only.
6. Out of every four married couples, one couple does not share a bed and rather sleeps separately.
7. Giraffes sleep for 1.9 hours a day in 5-10 minute sessions. They are the mammals that sleep for the shortest period of time. Koala bears, in contrast, sleep the longest of all mammals, getting 22 hours’ worth of shuteye a day.
8. British soldiers were the first people to develop a method of staying up for thirty-six hours without having a wink of sleep. When they were tired, they would wear special visors that simulated the brightness of the sun and would keep them awake.
9. Within five minutes of waking up, you have already forgotten 50% of your dream. Within ten minutes, you have forgotten 90% of it.
10. Before you die from being deprived of food, you will die from being sleep deprived. Refraining from eating for two weeks will cause you to starve to death, but not sleeping for ten days can kill you.