Counting Sheep: The Science and Pleasures of Sleep and Dreams

Does the early bird really catch the worm, or end up health, wealthy and wise? Can some people really exist on just a few hours' sleep a night? Does everybody dream? Do fish dream? How did people cope before alarm clocks and caffeine? And is anybody getting enough sleep? Even though we will devote a third of our lives to sleep, we still know remarkably little about its origins and purpose. Paul Martin's Counting Sheep answers these questions and more in this illuminating work of popular science. Even the wonders of yawning, the perils of sleepwalking and the strange ubiquity of nocturnal erections are explained in full. Includes information on adolescence, alcohol, animals and sleep, beds, birds, blood pressure, body temperature, brain, breathing, caffeine, cardiovascular disease, children and babies, circadian rhythm, clocks, daylight, depression, Charles Dickens, dogs, dreams, drugs, emotions, evolution of sleep, Sigmund Freud, hallucinations, ancient Greece, heart disease, high blood pressure, hormones, hypnagogic state, insomnia, lark (morning type), artificial lighting, melatonin, memory, men, metabolism, napping, narcolepsy, nightmare, Non Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep, older people, owl (evening type), Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, William Shakespeare, shift work, sleep deprivation, sleep disorders, snoring, stress, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), tiredness, women, sleepy drivers, sleepy pilots, sleepy doctors, sleep cycle, food for sleep, exercise, lucid dreams, etc.