A Complete Guide To Sleep Cycles

If sleep does not come simple for you it’s critical that understanding rest mechanism and what makes up a healthy night of rest could help you discern the problem of what is keeping you from it. Understanding rest is not so easy because you aren’t necessarily up or asleep. There are umpteen rest processes that take place once your head rests on the pillow and you shut your eyes that determines how well you will sleep.

Drowsiness is the first stage of sleeping as your feel yourself let go, your muscles fall into a limp state, and you can no longer keep your eyes open. This stage usually lasts only a few minutes usually between five and ten. Stage two of sleep is a very faint sleep and in this stage both breathing rate plus temperature drop. Your heart rate should also lag at this point in the sleep process.

Stages three and four are easily considered “deep sleep” and are certainly where normally you should have a problem being woken up. You might feel a bit dopey and unable to come awake promptly but this vital stage in sleep allows the brain to truly “turn off” as your circulation slows, at which time the nutrient rich blood nourishes your body. There is also a heightened level of immune action during these two important stages of rest.

Stage five is considered REM sleep and is generally thought of as the dreaming phase of a good night’s rest. Drifting in and out of stage five happens often so there may be several minutes or hours within the REM. This cycle is characterized by a number of physical responses where you may experience rapid breathing that is of the shallow sort, deep or even irregular. You could also show signs of a quickening of the pulse and blood pressure.

This exact moment in the sleep cycle is designed to assist in the processing of emotions and to help relieve stress with each of the sleep cycles providing a benefit to the person sleeping. Light sleepers are stuck in the early sleep stages and hardly ever make it to phases three and four where they need to be in order to obtain the most rest possible. People who have difficulty waking up likely are stuck in the deeper parts of sleep and rise quickly upon waking rather than running through each stage.

Sleep can be put off kilter based on the time you have spent in each sleep stage through the previous week, so if you spend too much time in a heavy sleep one night the next night you may spend more time in REM or light sleep. It really balances out over time and you spend the same about of time on average in each part of sleep, hopefully resulting in good sleep patterns. That is why it is more accurate to say that you cannot make up on sleep but you can always get caught up on rest.