As I'm sure many of you love to sleep, I'm also sure that you don't really understand about sleep eventhough you spent one third of your life just to sleep. Well, read this one carefully as you may need it to tell your kids one day. First of all, look at the picture below.
You see, it is a cycle. Starting with stage 1,2,3,4 and then REM or Rapid Eye Movement stage. This is the basic cycle of our everyday sleep but there may be some differences and variations depending on the individual itself. Stage 1 until 4 is called NREM stage where at these stage, the brain only signaling the body to prepare for REM stage.
Stage 1.
In stage 1, the body is considered to be "half awake" well maybe because the person can still hear what others are talking and yet can't process the information. It's easy to recognize stage 1. If you see your friend sleeping in class, wake him/her up and look at the response. They'll tell you that they aren't asleep but you see with your own eyes that they were sleeping!
Other useful indicators is the hypnic myoclonia, or a sudden movement of your body, usually presence with the sensation of falling. During this period you may notice you or yourself, will suddenly wake up. And then goes back to sleep as the falling is just a "dream". This stage usually last for about 5 to 10 minutes.
Stage 2.
In stage 2, the heart rate will decrease, your body temperature will drop and in polysomnograph, you will see a period of muscle tone and muscle relaxation. Basically, this stage is just to help and prepare your body for deep sleep stage which is stage 3 and stage 4.
Stage 3 and 4.
These two stages are referred to as deep sleep stage. Well, i forgot which year they started combined these two stages. The reason was these two stages are hard to differentiate between each other, yet we can see the difference between these two stages with other stages. I'm gonna use the deep sleep stage term here.
During the early part of this stage, you will see a period of delta waves in the polysomnograph but as the time moves on, the delta waves become prominent. Deep sleep stage will occur for about 30 to 45 minutes. Bed wetting and sleepwalking may occur at the end of this stage.
If you wake your friends who is in this stage, the person may be slightly disoriented. Probably going rampage. Well, i think rampage is appropriate. I don't want anybody to disturb my sleep either. But as for my experience observing all my roommates, they tend to go back to sleep if you wake them up in this stage. I don't know whether it's the habit or the stage caused them to do so. Anyhow, the body is now ready to enter REM stage.
REM Stage.
Well, as i mentioned earlier, REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. This is the obvious characteristic of this stage where the eyes move rapidly (i forgot either up down or left right). Dreams are most likely to occur in this stage. During this stage, your brain will become actives and yet, your body is not. This is why REM stage is also referred to as paradoxical sleep.
REM stage is most important for babies as they need the REM stage to process the information that they gather during the day. It is also important for us to get enough REM sleep as we need to have a high functioning brain to do our work. The stage is believe to start about 70 - 90 minutes after you fall asleep and the stage occurs 3 to 5 times if you sleep 8 hours a day.
By understanding sleep cycle, i think you'll know how to organize your time better. It is important as we need two things in the morning, a good night sleep and an awesome dream to tell our friends. For these things, we need to have enough sleep and enters the REM stage as many as possible. Maybe next time i'll tell you guys about dream and problems that can occur while you sleep. But for now, enjoy!
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