Sleep is such a peaceful thing, where you get to rest and relax after a hard day. However, while you might be sleeping, your body is up to some pretty weird stuff. What happens to your body during sleep is nothing short of a carnival of confusing and distressing horrors. How the body regenerates during sleep is definitely miraculous and fascinating, but that doesn’t make it any less weird and gross.
We all generally known that what sleep does to your body is helpful and beneficial to your waking self. But sleeping itself is a rather tumultuous process. Your skin begins to fall off, your mouth fills with bacteria, and you even become paralyzed. And these are only the normal things that can happen, the abnormal stuff is positively cringe-worthy! This all might sound impossible, but it happens to you every night, as soon as you begin to drift off to dream land.
What happens when you fall asleep is generally not harmful – and better than the alternative, sleep deprivation – but is still pretty nasty when you take the time to think about it.
Your Mouth Fills With Bacteria
Let’s face it, our mouths are pretty gross, even when we’re awake. Saliva goes through your mouth in order to redistribute and cleanse bacteria that’s in there. Your saliva has antibacterial compounds that really can flush out your mouth well, but at night time, that’s when things really get nuts all up in your cakehole.
Your swallowing helps regulate levels of saliva in your mouth, but unfortunately, your swallowing reflex isn’t exactly active while you sleep. It’s so relaxed, in fact, that sometimes your saliva builds up so much that it spills out of your mouth and you drool in your sleep. However, much of the time the mouth also gets very dry, which means that your saliva isn’t flushing out the bacteria in there. Instead, bacteria is free to grow and thrive, so each night, you have a literal bacteria party on your teeth, tongue, gums, and even lips. This is what often causes morning breath, or that weird coat of film on your tongue.
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