Do you know that on March 17th is World Sleep Day?

I’m sure of it because I like sleeping and I’m also a daydreamer as my friends say of me. Moreover, I’ve just finished reading a book about this topic written by Richard Wiseman a psychologist and the best selling author of the book “Night School: the Life-changing science of sleep”  also published in Italian by Valardi as “Il potere del sonno”. And to be honest I read it in Italian.

Some years ago Dr Wiseman started having strange hallucinations during the night, so he began to do some researches and he collected them in his book.

During an interview, he underlined we spend a third of our life asleep and how the importance of a correct and balanced sleep can have psychological and health benefits.

 

According to him, if you reduce your sleep hours, you are damaging yourself. However not everybody needs eight hours of sleep, for example, Margaret Thatcher, ex-British Prime Minister, could just sleep for four hours a night. Most people need to sleep about eight hours and if they cut this time they will increase the risk factor for heart disease, diabetes and for early death.

Dreaming also serves a purpose. It is a sort of inner therapist. People who are suffering from depression dream up to five times more than other people because they’re trying to work through their problems in their sleep. Dreams can be also creative in fact many artists and writers took inspirations, for their masterpieces, from their dreams. One example is represented by Paul McCartney who wrote The Beatles song “Yesterday” after a dream. Stevenson, the Scottish writer of “Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, actually dreamt the entire plot of his novel in dreams. So it’s very clear that sleeping and dreaming have high power in the survival of human life and for our creativity and mind too.