While our guides to sleep provide useful help and information on healthy sleep, this page gives some interesting facts and trivia on the topic of sleep.
Interesting sleep facts
- The average adult needs between 7 - 9.5 hours sleep a night
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Insomnia is the leading cause of lost productivity and costs the average US worker 11.3 days a year worth of work
- 23.2% of employees report insomnia
- 27.1% of working women report insomnia
- 19.7% of working men report insomnia
- We spend approximately one third of our lives asleep, which on average equates to around 26 years
- There are two types of sleep: REM and non-REM
- Dreams occur in the REM stage of sleep
- Dolphins have the ability to send half the brain to sleep and thus keep the other half awake
- The amount of sleep a person needs will vary during their lifetime
- Teenagers need, on average, an hour more sleep than adults
- In 2009, BBC News reported that the amount of sleep needed by ants varied depending on social position. The queen ant sleeps, on average, 90 times a day for an average of six minutes a time, compared to worker ants who sleep around 240 times for a minute each time – this works out at less than half the sleep the queen ant gets in a day. The worker ant’s life expectancy is months, whereas the queen ant can live for years…
