Answer 1:
I'm glad you're having good dreams and want to have more of them. Your question leads to a lot of interesting ideas. One is that you may be dreaming more often than you know. Sometimes people don't remember dreaming because we usually have periods of dream sleep separated by non-dreaming sleep. Often we forget dreams when we don't wake up right after they happen. You might try keeping a notebook right by your bed and writing your dreams down as soon as you wake up. You may remember more of them. Does this mean you should try to wake up in the middle of the night?That won't help. Most dreams happen during "Rapid Eye Movement (REMsleep). It's called this because the sleeper's eyes are closed, but their eyes move quickly. We usually have a few of these a night, but it takes about 70 minutes of non-dreaming sleep before your first REM sleep. The REM times that happen earlier are shorter than the ones that happen later. So if you stay up too late, or wake up often, you will not spend as much time dreaming because you don't have a chance to have the long dream periods. If you don't get much REM sleep, you will wind up with lots of vivid dreams, but you will also have trouble concentrating, remembering things, and staying awake. It can also be bad for your health. There's an interesting article about dreams and sleep deprivation in Scientific American: dreamsResearch shows that teenagers do better in school if they can sleep later. Why do you think this is true? Thanks for asking,
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