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Show 'lia:..; Tanja Schaffer ArtsEntertainment Editor Sleep Facts may surprise (or put you tosleep) Editors Note: This article is the second in a three-part series on sleep. First study, then sleep The stages are set in search of a peaceful night's sleep. Here are some facts and pieces of sleep trivia. If you're cramming for an exam or memorizing facts for a presentation, plan to sleep after you study, for researchers have found that subjects who sleep before pouring over a group of facts remember less than those who nap afterward. Eric Hodde, who conducted the study and is now the director of the Sleep Disorders center at Denver Presbyterian Hospital, believes that somatotropin, a harmone secreted after sleep onset, may improve the mechanisms of memory. Sleep-in a series Once we are finally asleep, it seems we are finally asleep, it seems we experience one long, unbroken period of unconsciousness. In actuality, our night's sleep is a series of stages repeated again and again throughout the night. During the first, stages which lasts only about five minutes, we slip from wakefulness to sleep; heart and breathing rates drop slightly, our brain waves slow down and we are easily awakened. During the second stage, our pulse and breathing continue to slide and brain waves known as sleep spindles and K complexes begin to appear. In the third stage, the threshold of deep sleep, heartbeat and breathing slow down even more, and slow "delta" brain waves appear for the first time. "Thud"-you're awake! The fourth stage is deep sleep, when only a loud noise or sharp jolt would awaken us. At about ninety minutes intervals a strange sleep phase known as REM which stands for rapid eye movement fosters in dramatic changes in body functions. Heart rate and breathing become irregular; our eyes dart about underneath their lids as if they were trying to look at several things at once; hands, feet, and small facial muscles may twitch, yet our arms and legs are held immobile. Chances are, we're doing some heavy dreaming. "Make-up" sleep Researchers have found that if deprived of either REM or deep sleep for an extended period, our bodies will try to catch up by extending those phases later on. Yes, researchers agree, you can "make up" for lost sleep. Sweet dreams are made of this... A few apnea sufferers are now opting for an increasingly popular operation known as a UPPP uvulopalatopharyngoplaty or what Aaron Sher, M.D., calls "an internal facelift." In a UPPP, surgeons enlarge the space at the back of the throat by removing excess tissue, and in most cases the patient breathes more freely at night. Central apneics are sometimes given drugs to stimulate the respiratory system. What do dreams consist of? Freud considered dreams "the royal road to the unconscious" the path of discovery for all the fears, anxieties, and desires we keep buried during our waking life. Certain African tribes believe that dreams contain prophecies, while some modern researchers have theorized that dreams help the mind organize data. They point out that newborns spend up to fifty percent of their sleep dreaming time the brain may need to sort out the countless impulses that bombard an infant's mind. Erasing irrelevent memories Other scientists believe that dreams are the brain's way of erasing irrelevent memories to make way for new ones. During a dream, your body is almost totally paralyzed useful in preventing you from acting out the dream. By making small lesions in the brains of cats, researchers have recently succeeded in turning off this paralysis and allowing us to better study dream sleep. They found that the animals actually moved around while they were dreaming, just as if they were awake. Snoring: More than mere annoyance Those annoying noises, which keep many a bed partner awake, may signal the existence of a potentially deadly sleep disorder, apnea, in which people actually stop breathing. More than one million Americans mostly overweight men' are afflicted by this condition. Apnea is marked by extremely loud, jagged snoring. Sufferers often thrash about in their sleep as they gasp for air and awaken several times during the night to (see SLEEP on page 8) 38 the samme mil Seattle FilmWorks has adapted Kodak's professional Motion Picture film for use in your 35mm camera. Now you can use the same film with the same fine grain and rich color saturation Hollywood's top studios demand. Its wide exposure latitude is perfect for everyday shots. You can capture special effects, too. Shoot it in bright or low light at up to 1200 ASA. What's more, it's economical. And remember, Seattle FilmWorks lets you choose prints or slides, or both, from the same roll. 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