9 things you never knew about dreaming

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For something we do every night, dreaming is less understood than string theory, flightless birds, and man nipples combined, which makes what science does know even cooler.

Here are nine super-trippy facts about dreams, including when you have them and why they are floating through your head. Prepare to have your mind blown.

You dream a lot

The average person has more than 100,000 dreams in a life time that breaks down to a couple dozen per night. No, seriously. You just remember very few of them. Most people remember one or two a night, but some people never remember a single dream and others remember up to 15 per night, says sleep specialist Dr Isabelle Arnulf, a professor of neurology at University Pierre-et-Marie-Curie in Paris.

Why so few? Science isn’t exactly sure, but it is known that during sleep, the brain slacks on monitoring your thoughts, which might have something to do with it, she says.

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Dreams can help you learn

Up to 86 per cent of what happens in your dreams has its roots in that days events, be they mundane or life-altering, says Arnulf. So if you happen to sit through a lecture or course, that night’s dreams could give you the opportunity to study up. In fact, in one Harvard study, when researchers had people try out a 3D maze and then give it another go after either napping or staying awake for 90 minutes, the dream-recalling nappers saw the biggest improvements.

Your cycle can screw with your dreams

One study published in the Journal of Sex Research found that women have more sex dreams during ovulation. You can probably blame your amped-up urge to procreate for that one.

Nightmares can be good omens

Are you a worry wart in your sleep? That might be a good thing. In Arnulfs newest study, published in Consciousness and Cognition, she found that students who dreamed of failure the night before a big exam actually performed better.

If you’re stressed and working hard to prepare for a big exam, interview, or presentation, your dreams are going to reflect that but Arnulf’s team believes the nightmare itself may also carry a cognitive benefit.

You can dream even in light sleep

You've probably heard that you only dream in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Researchers now know thats not so. Dreams occur all sleep long, she says. The contents of your dreams, however, do change with your sleep stage. They are more emotional, visual, complex, and aggressive in REM sleep (which occurs most frequently later into the night) than the boring, "did I seriously just dream about plucking my eyebrows?" dreams that occur in the lighter stages of sleep.

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Women have wet dreams, too

Truth: Men don't have a monopoly on everything sex-related. In fact, in both sexes, about four percent of sex dreams result in full-blown orgasms, according to research from the University of Montreal.

We remember the most out-there dreams

You might think you have really wacked-out dreams, but the truth of the matter is, those are probably just the ones you remember. The insertion of never or rarely experienced events, such as flying and being naked in public, are experienced by almost everybody," says Arnulf. "They're more vividly remembered, although they represent less than one percent of total dreams."

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Waking up helps you remember dreams

The more often you wake up during the night, the more likely you are to remember your dreams, says Arnulf. Ever heard someone say that eating a big meal before bed makes you dream more? It actually just makes you wake up more.

Dreams can be epically long

While an entire dream can just be seconds long, it can also approach the one-hour mark, including long scenarios and various scenes. Researchers call it "epic dreaming."

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