Show Most people are aware of the two different types of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM. However, what many don’t know is that non-REM sleep actually has four different stages that you pass in and out of through the night. How much time you spend on each of these stages and the stage you wake from can have a big impact on how rested you feel and how much energy you have throughout the day. Here are the five stages of sleep and why they matter. Stages of SleepStage 1 of non-REM sleepWhen you first fall asleep, you enter stage 1 of non-REM sleep. This is characterized by the cessation of muscle movement and the slow movement of the eyes behind the eyelid. This is the “twilight” stage of sleep where you are probably still aware of some of the things going on around you. This is a light stage of sleep and you can usually be woken by noises or other disturbances. Stage 2 of non-REM sleepThis is the stage where you are actually fully asleep and not aware of your surroundings. During stage 2, the heart rate and breathing regulate, the body temperature goes down, the eye movements either slow or stop completely. Stage 3 of non-REM sleepBrain waves slow down in stage 3 with only a few bursts of activity. This is a deep sleep where muscles relax and breathing slows even more. This stage of sleep is difficult to awaken from and you may feel disoriented if an alarm or disturbance pulls you out of it. Stage 4 of non-REM sleepStage 4 is an even deeper sleep where the brain waves further slow and sleepers are very difficult to wake. It’s believed that tissue repair occurs during the stage of sleep and that hormones are also released to help with growth. Stage 5: REM sleepThe final stage of sleep is REM and this is the cycle where we dream. The eyes move rapidly behind the lids and breathing becomes shallow and rapid. Blood pressure and heart rate also increase during REM sleep and the arms and legs are paralyzed so that sleepers can’t act out their dreams. The purpose of this stage (and of dreams) is thought to stimulate the sections of the brain that are needed for memory and learning and a way for the brain to store and sort information. REM sleep occurs approximately 90 minutes into the sleep cycle. The length of each cycle changes throughout the night, but the typical sleeper will cycle through the stages several times before waking. For those with sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea, the deeper levels of sleep may not be reached as frequently as is normal because they are constantly being woken. This can lead to the body’s inability to repair damage, few dreams, and increased fatigue upon waking and throughout the day. If you have symptoms such as brain fog, inability to concentrate, the need for naps, irritability, or lack of focus, it could be due to lack of deep sleep. Think obstructive sleep apnea could be the culprit? Request a screening today to find out!
 Sleep apnea goes beyond loud snoring and breathing interruptions. In fact, it can evolve into a life-threatening condition with many complications. Read on to learn the dangers of sleep apnea.
The foods you eat play a significant role in your health and how you feel. Developing a well-balanced diet is crucial for living a comfortable life. Read on to learn more.
Your snoring can limit your partner’s or roommate’s sleep as well as your own. If you’re interested in a peaceful night for your entire household, laser treatment for snoring is an excellent solution.
Nutrition counseling helps you recognize what’s healthy (and not so healthy) to put in your body. Find out here about the extensive benefits of learning about nutrition. Read on to learn more. In a nutshell, our brains transition through four different stages of sleep several times throughout the night, says Michelle Drerup, PsyD, a psychologist and director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the Cleveland Clinic. So while your loved ones may describe you as a lump on a log when you’re passed out in bed, there’s a lot going on underneath your eye mask. There are four unique sleep stages — three that are classified as non-REM (NREM) sleep, followed by the fourth stage, REM sleep. Dr. Drerup adds a big caveat right off the bat that there’s still a lot that researchers don’t know about what happens in our brains during sleep. A lot of the work in the field has to do with theorizing what may be happening when we’re resting, based on studying sleep patterns and brain waves in patients in a sleep lab. Here’s what researchers know so far about the four stages of sleep: Stage 1 Non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement) SleepStage 1 kicks off the sleep cycle, as we transition from wakefulness to a light sleep. This first stage is when you’re just drifting off to slumber. Your heartbeat, eye movements, and breathing slow down; your muscles relax; and your brain activity begins to taper off. “We’re just starting to doze off in this stage. If someone wakes up, they may not even feel like they were asleep,” Drerup says. Though it’s easy to stir people awake while they’re in stage 1, they’ll quickly move into stage 2 if they aren’t interrupted. In a typical sleep cycle, particularly early in the night, stage 1 sleep only lasts for about 5 to 10 minutes, at most. Stage 2 Non-REM SleepDuring stage 2 non-REM sleep, your heart rate and breathing slow even more as you shift into a slightly deeper state of sleep. This stage is all about preparing for the deep sleep and REM sleep to come. Overall, your body temperature drops, your muscles fully relax, and your brain waves slow to little bursts of electrical activity, according to Eric Landsness, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology and sleep medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Landsness says that electroencephalograms that monitor brain activity while patients sleep reveal how interesting brain wave activity looks during this stage. Sleep spindles (patterns of brain waves) fire, indicating that NREM sleep is occurring. As the sensory nervous system (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch) turns off for the day, sleep spindle activity indicates that memory processing of the day’s events is happening in the brain.“There’s something very beautiful about it. They look like little spindles on a sewing machine — these are neurons sending messages from your short-term memory to your long-term memory,” Landsness says. That messaging process is thought to be how your brain turns short-term memories into long-term ones, he explains. Drerup says we spend the most time in stage 2 sleep — about 50 percent of the night, for about 20 to 60 minutes per cycle. Stage 3 Non-REM SleepThis final stage of non-REM sleep is categorized as the deep sleep our bodies rely on to feel refreshed in the morning. In this stage, you’re most disconnected from your waking life, according to Dr. Cline. Your heartbeat and breathing slow down the most in stage 3, as your body and muscles fully relax, and it’s hardest to be awakened during this time. It’s all about restorative sleep, physical recovery, and bolstering the immune system during this crucial stage. Deep sleep also refreshes the brain for encoding new memories the next day, Cline says. Brain activity in this stage is by marked by what’s called delta waves, or slow-wave sleep. Because it’s hardest to wake you in this stage of deep sleep, if you are stirred awake, you might feel groggier than you would if awakened during the other sleep stages, Drerup says. While memory consolidation happens during most stages of sleep, research suggests that it’s in this stage that your brain consolidates memories, such as general knowledge, like facts or statistics. “Slow-wave sleep is important for consolidating long-term memories — facts, events, geography, and spatial sense,” says Hussam Al-Sharif, MD, a pulmonologist and sleep medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We spend about 20 to 40 minutes in stage 3 deep sleep per sleep cycle. Stage 4 REM SleepThe hallmark of REM sleep is in its name — rapid eye movement. In this fourth sleep stage, your brain activity revs up so much that it looks like it’s awake on brain scans. Your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing pick up again too. While your eyes dart back and forth, your muscles and body are paralyzed, Drerup says. Memory consolidation also happens during REM sleep. While during deep sleep the brain is thought to be working through new facts, locations, or formulas (say, from a textbook), in REM sleep the brain is thought to be processing abstract thinking and emotional content. As the brain replays the day’s events, it will look for emotional meanings, Landsness says. Researchers suspect that dreaming occurs in all stages of sleep, but that our most vivid, storylike dreams occur during REM sleep because this emotional processing is going on. And we tend to remember these dreams because we often wake up in the morning during this stage of sleep. REM sleep is also responsible for processing new motor skills from the day, filing them in memory while also deciding which ones to delete. “It seems REM sleep is a way for our brains to deal with events that happened in wake time, absorb new information we learned, and process certain memories,” Dr. Al-Sharif says. At the start of the night, REM sleep may last for just a few minutes, but from the second half of the evening until dawn it can extend for up to an hour (more on that below). Overall, REM sleep accounts for about 25 percent of sleep in adults. |
How long is a typical sleep cycle in which a sleeper progresses through some or all of the sleep stages group of answer choices?
Postagens relacionadas
direito autoral © 2024 estudarpara Inc.
