Random Disgusting And Creepy Things That Happen To Your Body While You're Sleeping (13 items)

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  (#9) You Flail Around

  When your body isn't kept paralyzed while you enter REM sleep, it sometimes likes to move around. And no, that's not just talking about sleep walking or sleep talking. Instead, many people experience periodic limb movement as they dream. This happens specifically when you're entering very deep sleep or dreaming about something particularly vivid. It results in sudden, uncontrollable flexing and retracting of your muscles, which makes you flail and kick.

  In the end, we're not actually certain what causes us to flail during our sleep, but we do know it has to do with our nervous system and can be linked to other disorders. Either way, you're bound to do a little wiggling during the night time. 
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  (#6) Your Body Ramps Up Your Immune System

  Sometimes, your body uses the opportunity of you being asleep to kick certain functions into overdrive. One thing it does this to is your immune system. As you sleep, the body turns up the dial on proteins that ward off various infections. These proteins are known as tumor necrosis factor, or TNF for short. They're great at, in particular, offing tumor cells and interacting with the way your body's cells reproduce. These proteins also help keep you sleepy, so you tend to sleep better when you have high levels of them going through your body. In other words, your body seems to use sleep as an opportunity to send out terminator cells to eliminate all potential threats.

  If we don't have enough of these proteins, we can get very sick, even with potentially fatal health issues. So, sleep well, get sick less. 
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  (#5) You Start To Shed Your Skin

  Every night, your body continues to generate new skin cells, and old skin cells simply fall off of you. This is done at a nearly microscopic level, as if you're just shaking off little bits of dust every time you shift while you're dozing. Every minute you sleep, you're losing tens of thousands of skin cells! Wearing makeup while you sleep can trap the dead skin cells on your face, and can lead to a zit-fest if you let it happen regularly.

  When you sleep, those shedded cells have to go somewhere, and they often go into your mattress and pillow. If you don't wash your sheets and pillows regularly, those skin cells can build up in a  pretty horrifying way. It's even been estimated that one third of your pillow's weight is made up entirely of your own dead skin cells.
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  (#3) Your Eyes Get Goopy

  You may notice when you wake up that there's some dry or even wet gunk at the corners of your eyes. It's easy enough to brush away, and doesn't really cause you any harm. However, what you're experiencing is just the tail end of a pretty gross process that happens every night while you sleep. 

  The average person's eyes have three layers over the surface of the eye, which include a mucus membrane, water based lubrication, and a layer over the other two called meibum. This layer is made up of oils and sebum, which is a fatty waxy substance that can lubricate and waterproof surfaces. At night, the meibum layer and the water layer mix gently together to keep the eye moist, and get rid of things that upset it, like dust and dirt. To do this, the meibum cools during the night and becomes thick, white, and gunky. This leads to a crust at the corner of the eye as that meibum is moved to the edges, made up of excess mucus, oil, and dust. By the time we wake up, it's usually dry and powdery.
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  (#4) Your Throat Gets Narrower

  This might sound like no big deal, but it can actually be a serious problem. When you sleep, your breathing slows and changes, and your throat gets more narrow in response as your muscles begin to relax. For certain people, the throat gets too narrow, and this is what causes heavy snoring. This is exacerbated by issues with the tonsils, sicknesses that gum up the throat, or clogged sinuses.

  But here's where it gets potentially dangerous. In some rare instances, the airway can get so narrow that it briefly closes altogether. This can cause sleep apnea, a condition where the airway briefly closes and breathing periodically starts and stops for periods of time. In some occasional and severe scenarios, sleep apnea can help lead to someone's demise.
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  (#10) Your Whole Body Slows Down

  When you sleep, some parts of your body decide it's time to go into overdrive, such as your immune system. The rest of you, however, more often likes to take it easy and slow the heck down. Your body temperature drops, your blood pressure lowers, and your breathing rate goes way down. Your brain waves slow down as well, with occasional sudden bursts, and your heart rate lowers to a slow steady pace.

  Even your kidneys slow down. This is particularly important, because it keeps you from having to pee in your sleep. Your organs that filter toxins out of your bloodstream and produce urine start doing less and act very slowly. This is why, in the morning, you usually have to pee and the urine you produce is so dark in color.

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