30 Things We All Do While We Sleep

1. Salivate

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If you thought you weren't a nighttime drooler, then we hate to burst your bubble. It's actually super common, much more so than you think. And the majority of the times you drool, you would have no idea. But we also salivate with our mouths closed from time to time to save our pillows.

2. Wake up for brief moments

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When you wake up in the morning and feel like you've had an amazing night's sleep you may assume that you never even woke up. In fact, that's usually how we define a good night's sleep. The reality is that we do (half) wake up frequently throughout the night, but most of the time we are not aware of it.

3. Pull facial expressions

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If you saw a recorded video of yourself through the night you'd probably be super shocked to see how much your facial expression changes throughout the night. Sometimes we smile or frown in accordance with our dreams, and we never even know about it!

4. Move our eyes

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Rapid eye movement (REM sleep) is of course a stage of sleep where our eyes are moving super fast. So throughout the night, your eyes are moving, even when we are not in this phase of sleep our eyes are still moving, less so, but they're always active.

5. Dream

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Sometimes you wake up remembering the craziest dreams and sometimes you think 'I had no dreams last night'. But that wouldn't be the case. Sure, we may not remember them, but we're actually all dreaming the majority of the night but are not actually aware of it.

6. Toss and turn

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Some people are more still when sleeping than others. Some people wake up on the other side of the bed as to where they fell asleep. But nobody is truly still while they sleep, we all toss and turn to some degree but again we do not do this consciously.

7. Twitch our muscles

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We all also twitch throughout our sleep, making involuntary spasms and muscle movements. These are gentle and something we don't notice, unlike 'sleep starts' where we jerk awake as we transition from wakefulness to sleep. These are often paired with dreams of falling!

8. Release hormones

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We release multiple hormones throughout our sleep cycle to help with many different aspects of our health. For example, cortisol is released at a certain point in the night, it peaks during the morning time to keep us alert and then decreases toward the evening to prepare us for sleep.

9. Repair our bodies

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Another thing we unknowingly do while we sleep is repair our bodies. It is the time when our cells start to repair themselves, maintaining what has been damaged and removing waste products from the cell. It's also the time when our tissues grow and repair.

10. Digest our food from the day

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Our digestive system is active throughout the day, especially when we're awake. Yet it continues to digest our food as we sleep and it continues to empty the contents of the stomach into the small intestine overnight. We also absorb nutrients from our food into our body during sleep!

11. Breathe deeply

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Our breathing pattern changes throughout the different stages of our sleep cycles. During our deep sleep phase, our breathing naturally becomes slower and deeper, Then, during our REM stage of sleep it becomes faster and somewhat more irregular like our wake pattern.

12. Adjust our blanket

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Everyone adjusts their sleeping arrangement at night. The blanket that started tucked up right to the chin could end up completely hanging off the bed by the morning. Although we may be asleep, we are still adjusting the blanket around us subconsciously in accordance with our temperature.

13. Fidget

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And fidgeting is something that nobody is exempt from. We all fidget in our sleep. It's a lot more common during some stages of sleep than others. For example, we do not tend to do much during deep sleep but during REM sleep we can be fidgeting constantly without knowing.

14. Change the temperature

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Our temperature changed throughout the night while we were asleep. This has nothing to do with our environment, although this impacts it of course. But it has to do with our bodies. Our temperature naturally drops as our bodily functions slow down. But, at other times we may feel much warmer, for example, as we experience dreams.

15. Change stages of sleep throughout the night

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Everybody goes through multiple different stages of sleep in one night. Nobody can simply enter one sleep stage and then come out of it. It's a process where one leads to another. There's non-rem sleep, slow wave sleep, REM sleep, deep sleep, and more!

16. Have 'micro dreams'

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So not every dream that we experience as we sleep are impactful, long dream. Sometimes we do not remember any kind of dreams because we have 'micro dreams'. These are passing thoughts or small dreams that are not classed as a full dreams and they cannot be remembered.

17. Filter out the senses around you

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Our senses while we sleep are dramatically reduced. Our brain filters out our senses so that we can achieve a good sleep, in order for our body to rest and heal. Otherwise, we would be tuning into the surrounding sounds and smells and would never be able to get a real night's sleep.

18. Fights off any infections

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Sleep plays such a vital role in supporting our immune system, and it does it for each and every one of us while we sleep. Our body's defense systems are optimized due to sleep. Not only do they repair themselves, but they also work at fighting off any kind of infection or virus.

19. Lower our heart rate

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During sleep, your heart rate naturally tends to lower as your body becomes more relaxed. It's a way for your body to rest and recover. Although heart rates vary for everyone, during the slow wave sleep stage our heart rates reach their lowest point in the night.

20. Processing our thoughts and emotions

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Our brains have SO much information to process even on a daily basis. Without sleep, our brains would not be healthy because sleep allows us to process our thoughts and emotions. This means that we feel more emotionally stable and happy which is another reason sleep is super important.

21. Regulate our metabolism

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Another thing we all do while we sleep is regulate our metabolism. This happens to us, as our body converts our food into energy. It also releases hormones and chemicals. So, the better sleep we get every night, the more we produce a chemical that makes us feel 'full'.

22. Produce melatonin

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Melatonin is a hormone that helps our sleep-wake cycle, and it's something our body produces every night. Melatonin acts as a signal that makes us sleepy when it's time for us to go to bed. When it becomes dark, our body naturally produces more melatonin so that we can sleep.

23. Lower our brain usage

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Our brain function reduces massively while we sleep in order to rest and recuperate and so that our body has a chance to conserve energy. It's a time when the brain is the least active, as in waking hours our brain activity is constantly working away even when we don't feel like we're doing an activity that requires much thinking.

24. Sweat

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Sometimes you really know about night sweats when you wake up in a patch of dampness. But the majority of the time, we will sweat at some point through the night but it is so minimal that it will not wake us up and we would most likely not know about it in the morning.

25. Maintaining our memories

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If we didn't sleep there would be no way that we could remember all of the memories that we do. Sleep is when each and every one of us maintain our memories. They solidify within our brains so that we don't forget them. This happens to us all, every night!

26. Snore

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You may be thinking 'I don't snore', but we can safely assume that at some point we have all snored in our sleep. Even if it was just a little bit and nobody ever noticed. Statistically speaking, the majority of people will have snored at some point in their lives, no matter how loud or quiet!

27. Sleep talk

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Okay not EVERYBODY does this. But actually, it's shown that the majority of people will sleep talk at some point. Not everybody will have a conversation, someone will just mumble an indecipherable word. Either way, most of us will sleep talk at some point - even if we never know.

28. Clench our teeth

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Some people experience really bad teeth grinding and clenching in the night, whereas some people won't even be aware that they do it. The truth is we all do it at some point, just not to the same degree. Some people do it so subtly that they would never even know, it's just a natural tension in the jaw.

29. Have phases of light sleep

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Something else that e all do while we sleep is experience phases of light sleep. When you are asleep it can be very difficult to know what sleep phase you are in. In fact, if you are not in the very beginning of the cycle, you will not be conscious, even when you have light stages throughout the night.

30. Become conscious of those around us

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At different times in our sleep, we become more conscious of what is around us. Depending on where we are at in our sleep phase, and what is happening around us this awareness changes for us all throughout the night. But there are times when we might not realize but our awareness grows.