Jean Galea

Sleep is one of the most important things we need to take care of in order to live a healthy life and have enough energy to do all the activities we want to do on a daily basis.

When discussing sleep, the first thing we need to learn is that the idea that sleep is just one long state that we enter every night is a false one. Our sleep time is actually broken down into what are called sleep cycles.

Each sleep cycle is around 90 minutes long. There is some variation here between 70 and 110 minutes, but 90 minutes is a good figure to keep in mind as a start.

During the night, sleeping follows a predictable pattern, moving back and forth between two different types of sleep.

These two main types of sleep are referred to as non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. On an electroencephalogram (EEG), REM sleep, often called “active sleep,” is identifiable by its characteristic low-amplitude (small), high-frequency (fast) waves and alpha rhythm, as well as the eye movements for which it is named.

Many sleep experts think that these eye movements are in some way related to dreams. REM sleep comprises about 20 to 25 percent of total sleep in typical healthy adults. The average length of the first NREM-REM sleep cycle is between 70 and 100 minutes; the average length of the second and later cycles is about 90 to 120 minutes.

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I recently came across a service that is awesome for getting great discounts on travel, provided you are flexible with your travel plans.

Sparefare allows you to buy non-refundable flights, hotel reservations etc from other travelers.

Here’s how it works:

There are lots of pre-paid, non-refundable flights, hotel rooms and package holidays that go unused. This is where you resourceful traveler come in! You can buy someone else’s reservations for half price! Sellers know they can’t ask for full price, otherwise you are just going to buy from the airline or hotel directly. And if they do not sell the reservation, all of their money is wasted! If you buy their travel at a 50% discount is a win-win for everybody.

Flights are trickiest. To resell a flight, a purchaser has to change the name associated with a ticket to a different name — this is how a flight is transferred from one passenger to another. This means that the airline needs to allow name changes. You can check out this useful list of airlines that allow name changes. If the airline allows name changes, it will also charge a name change fee. Everything is done through the traveler’s online account and is 100% legal and allowed. Lots of airlines allow name changes and their number increases all the time — it is a service that passengers want and the airline industry is responding accordingly.

Transferring a hotel reservation is much simpler. The seller just needs to call the hotel and change the name of the main guest under the reservation. Hotels allow that and usually, there are no name change fees to pay for the service.

Whether a packaged holiday (this is where you buy travel and accommodation together) can be sold on to another person depends on the terms & conditions of the travel agent selling the holiday. Most travel agents allow name changes for a fee. If they are based in Europe, they are obliged to offer this service by law!

I haven’t used SpareFare yet but I’m looking forward to grabbing a cheap trip sometime soon.