Sleep Cycle : How Your Body And Mind Rests, And Restores Its Energy Levels?

Sleep proceeds in cycles of Rapid Eye Movements (REM) and non-REM (NREM) sleep, cycling through the first for stages in intervals

Have you ever not gotten enough sleep, or cut your sleep short for a class? Show of hands? Alright, well today I will be speaking with you about a subject that is near and dear to all of our hearts. Today I will be talking about sleep, specifically about REM sleep. First off does anyone know what the initials REM even stand for? REM stands for rapid eye movement, and it is the stage of sleep in which most dreams occur. It gets its name from the way your eyes move back and forth in this stage. Though those movements are slower than how your eye would move when you are awake. During a typical night, you cycle between REM and non-REM sleep, but spend the majority of your time asleep in non-REM.

Sufficient sleep is a biological necessity for the normal functioning of humans, it allows the body to rest and to replenish itself so that it is able to serve its function of living. In addition, mental and physical health depend on the amount of sleep we get. Most adults and students value work and college much more than sleep, this is due to the academic, career, and materialistic demands. Researchers have noted a positive correlation between lack of sleep and decreased physical health, mental health, and academic performance. Sleep consists of two cycles: non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM), which are sleep patterns that alternate throughout the night. Firstly, sleep begins with non-REM sleep lasting about 90 minutes followed by REM sleep lasting 10-30 minutes, then the cycle repeats itself. REM sleep is the most important phase of sleep because the body is internally awake, with waking-like brain activity, yet asleep and externally calm. Thus, an uninterrupted REM phase of sleep is necessary for integrating previously learned material, and giving the individual a feeling of being well rested and refreshed. Many individuals will put sleep off so that more work hours, and school work can be fit into the day in order to get a better outcome such as job promotions or better academic grades, but I believe that sleep deprived people show a low performance in daily tasks due to suffering from mental, and physical health disorders.

Everyone has a different amount of sleep that they try and get every night. Some can pass off three hours, nevertheless others try and get up to 16 hours. The amount of sleep recommended is seven to eight hours a night, and infants should have 14 to 16 hours of sleep. Scientists are trying to determine what triggers sleep and if the brain can contain information while the body is sleeping, until the body is awakened to recall that same information. Our body needs sleep to function properly, and it could possibly lead to diseases if there is not great deal of sleep.

Fifth Stage REM Rapid-Eye-Movement Sleep, while in REM breathing rates, brain activity increases and decreases, and brain waves are faster and smaller. Paradoxical sleep or active sleep refer to REM the reason for this is because brain, body become heightened and muscle movements are restrained but can twitch this is so dreams are not acted out. REM can last for up to fifteen min. From stage one NREM to REM sleep has taken about ninety min. For the rest of the night’s sleep cycle, it bounces between NREM and REM.

Are you feeling a little nervous lately? Maybe you're sleep deprived. Adults need up to nine hours of sleep per night; moreover, babies require up to 14 hours to assist in their rapid growth.

This stage is believed to help people enter deeper stages of sleep (4). Stage 3 sleep consists of 20-50 percent delta activity and stage 4 sleep of more than 50 percents delta activity (4). Stages 3 and 4 are characterized as being slow wave sleep in addition to being the deepest levels of sleep. Approximately 90 minutes after being asleep, people enter rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep (4). REM sleep consists of rapid eye movements, a desynchronized EEG, sensitivity to external stimulation, muscle paralysis and dreaming (4).

The different stages are 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. The cycle goes in order during the night, from 1 to REM. After the cycle is done with the REM stage, it repeats and starts over at stage 1. Half of our time sleeping is spent in stage 2, one-fifth is spent in REM sleep, and the rest of the time is allocated to the other stages. However, for babies, half of the time is spent in REM sleep. This changes as as we age.

Rapid-eye movement sleep is distinguished from non-REM sleep in a number of ways.  Almost all the muscles of the body fall into a paralysis upon the onset of REM sleep.  The eyes, while still closed, dart up and down, or left and right, in patterns distinguishable from other sleep stages.  The brain becomes more active as indicated by EEG patterns, with waveforms similar to those while awake.  While body temperature slowly declines following sleep onset, in stage REM sleep, the body reaches its lowest core temperature.  Pulse and respiratory rate slowdown in non-REM sleep.  Blood pressure increases and this is the stage in which most dreaming occurs.(Kaye Sellman, 2016)  Sleep cycles last approximately 90 to 100 minutes and may repeat four to five times a night. If sleep patterns are interrupted too many times, a person will awaken feeling tired. A person's level of alertness depends on the stage of sleep he was in when awakened. In Stage 1 or 2, the person is more likely to wake up feeling alert and refreshed. If he is roused during REM, they can remember their dreams better. But if he is awakened from Stage 3 or 4, he may experience sleep inertia, a state of confusion, and diminished performance experienced on waking suddenly from a deep sleep or a

According to (Carpenter & Huffman, 2012, p. 121), there are four stages of sleep; the first four are called non-REM state then the last and final state is called REM )Rapid Eye Movement). When the sleep cycle starts it lasts an average of 1-2 hours; the first sleep cycle has relatively short REM sleep followed by a long period of deep sleep. Later in the sleep cycle REM period lengthen and deep sleep time decreases. Even though cats tend to sleep longer than human its shows that they have slept similar patterns as humans, including sleep phases of REM stage. When human enter REM stage, breathing becomes more rapid, irregular and shallow; the eyes start to move rapidly back and forth. In this stage, the limb muscles become temporarily paralyzed.

In order to understand why sleep is important, one needs to understand the fundamentals of what sleep is. From a basic biology course, one learns sleep is naturally occurring in all humans. A person is asleep when his or her nervous system is inactive, eyes are closed and body is in its most relaxed state. There are different stages of sleep non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM). Within NREM, there are three stages. Stage one is when one is between being awake and asleep. Stage two is when someone is in a light sleep and is still aware of their surroundings. Stage three is when someone is in a deep sleep, their breathing and heart rate slows down. Finally, during REM, the brain is active and the eyes move around. This is when a person is dreaming.

When we receive proper amounts of sleep, we wake up feeling refreshed and ready for the day’s challenges. Sleep can also affect how we feel and perform the day’s tasks as well as how we look. Sleep was once known as a passive state but is now known to be a highly active process during which the day’s events are processed and energy is restored. The sleep cycle involves two distinct phases that alternate cyclically from light sleep to deep then deeper and deepest sleep throughout the sleep period. There are two main phases of sleep: non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, during which dreaming occurs.

 There are five stages of sleep, REM and NREM stages 1, 2, 3, & 4.

Stage four of the sleep cycle is when dreaming occurs. It is the deepest sleep stage the body enters right before dreaming. During this stage, the bodies brain movement increases, as well as the body’s respirations. This stage is also known as the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage. The body’s brain activity, temperature, respiration, and eyes move in a rapid movement for about 90 minutes.

A typical night’s sleep is much more complicated than just closing your eyes and waking in the morning. As humans, we live our life on a circadian rhythm. This means that changes occur roughly based upon a 24-hour basis. This circadian rhythm plays a major role in when we get tired and decide it’s time to sleep. This rhythm is theorized to have helped us stay safe thousands of years ago. We would fall asleep during the time that their seemed to be threats roaming around in the dark. to Once we finally get to sleep, our brains and bodies are doing much more than laying in complete stillness. There are five distinct stages of sleep that we experience as we sleep. Each is uniquely different and serves a purpose throughout the night. The first stage of sleep is a very light sleep that lasts for 5 to 10 minutes. During this stage of sleep, you may not even realize that you’re sleeping. While in this stage of sleep our brains power down by 50 percent and produce theta waves four to seven times per second. We proceed to stage two after this. During stage two, our brains power down