Have you ever wondered what happens to your body when you sleep?
Posted on: 03/Jan/2017 9:50:07 AM
Your sleep cycle is made of REMs, or Rapid eye movement, and NREMs, or Non-rapid eye movement, and this cycle repeats itself every 90 minutes. While NREM is the deeper part of the sleep, REM is the more active part. When you start to fall asleep, the sleep architecture starts with NREM, which is also said to constitute 75 per cent of the night. It is also the time when you are in deep sleep.
During the first stage of NREM, there is light sleep, and you can be easily awakened, while being disengaging from your surroundings. You will have regular breathing and heart rate and there will be a drop in body temperature. During the second stage, you enter deepest and restorative sleep with slower breathing. There is a drop in blood pressure and your muscles relax. Eye movement stops and there is an increase in blood supply to muscles. At this stage, there is also tissue growth and repair. In the third stage, there is restoration of energy. Now, important hormones are released.
REM occurs after NREM. As the night proceeds, duration of REM gets longer. When you are in the REM cycle of the night, energy is provided to the brain as well as the body. The brain gets active and you start dreaming. There is eye movement but your muscles are turned off.
Say experts, When you sleep, your brain rests. When the brain rests, your heart rate comes down. Moreover, your memory gets reinforced during sleep. So if you don`t sleep well, your brain isn`t rested and it makes it difficult for you to concentrate or even stay awake at daytime. It also impacts your memory, in turn affecting every aspect of your waking up hours. While both REMs and DREMs are extremely important to complete your sleep cycle, if you have a sleep disorder, it impacts your REM greatly. Melatonin is important to maintain a sleep-wake cycle. However, if you are working odd hours and not sleeping on time, it confuses the sleep-wake cycle, leading to disrupted sleep. Normal sleep ensures normal hormones. Melatonin levels get altered if the sleep gets disturbed. This leads to depression and irritability. Improper and disturbed sleep also causes certain hormones to be produced which may cause weight gain.
So how do you know if you have a sleep disorder? According to the experts, if you feel groggy despite having a full night sleep, it could be a sleep disorder that you are ignoring. Obstructive sleep apnea disorder is one of the most under diagnosed sleep issues. If you are feeling sleepy at 11 am or snoring at night, this could be a tell tale sign of sleep apnea. Not many know that it is actually a treatable condition. Most of us need 8 hours of sleep to get adequately rested but there are people who function fine even on 4 - 6 hours of sleep. Excessive daytime sleepiness could be because of poor quality of sleep at night. Some people despite snoozing for 8 hours don`t enter the deep sleep stage. They snore, have abnormal movement in sleep, suffer from insomnia or narcolepsy. The latter is body`s decreased ability to regulate sleep-wake cycles.
