Sweet dreams
THE WEIRD WORLD OF SLEEP
★ WAKE up! The creativity of children’s dreams has inspired the new show LEGO DREAMZzz.
When a group of school pals realise their dream world has become a reality, they join a secret agency where they learn to use the power of imagination to enter it and defeat the Nightmare King.
★ Here KIM CARR reveals 15 dizzy facts you never knew about dreaming…
1 The idea for the periodic table of chemical elements and Google came to their inventors Dimitri Mendeleev and Larry Page in dreams. James Watson’s discovery of DNA’s double helix spiral form was also inspired by a dream.
2 Notice your pet wriggling around when their eyes are shut? When dogs move their paws and make noises while asleep, they are dreaming. Same goes for cats.
3 Dreams are more often negative than positive and around 12% of people dream in black and white.
4 Boffins still haven’t been able to figure out why we dream but theories include helping to process memories and emotions.
5 Teeth falling out in a dream can be the brain interpreting worries such as a missed opportunity.
6 Our clearest dreams happen during rapid eye movement sleep (REM) that comes in bursts between 90 to 120 minutes apart. To prevent us from acting on what happens, our muscles are paralysed.
7 The concept of being able to control your dreams and do things like time travel is called lucid dreaming. This is portrayed in Leonardo DiCaprio movie Inception and Tom Cruise’s Vanilla Sky.
8 You’re more likely to dream about sex if you sleep on your stomach. This position is also linked to dreams about hand tools, swimming and being locked up.
9 Think twice before that bedtime snack if you suffer from nightmares. They’re more common when your metabolism has been boosted.
10 Dreams about loved ones who have died are more common around special occasions such as Christmas.
11 The year before World War One, psychiatrist and dream analyst Carl Jung had a dream in which a flood covered the land between the North Sea and the Alps and the sea turned into blood.
12
Former US president Abraham Lincoln had a dream about a murder in the White House and woke to ask who had died. Ten days later, he was assassinated.
13 In Roald Dahl’s book The BFG, the giant uses a net to catch good dreams and put them in jars before blowing them into sleeping children’s ears.
14 Singer Gabrielle was dumped by the man she wrote No1 smash Dreams about the day after she gave birth to their son. He was later charged with stabbing his stepfather 52 times before cutting off his head and burying it in woodland.
15 Eurythmics, top, had to find a studio with a lift big enough to transport a cow after featuring a purple one in the video for classic track Sweet Dreams.
● LEGO DREAMZzz launches with 10 episodes of original content today across Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky, ITVX and the LEGO Group’s YouTube channel.