Things that Happen While We Sleep

Thesis: Sleep plays an essential part in a person’s health and well-being; the way we feel while awake is dependent upon what happens to your body while asleep.

While experiencing good sleep, I will unconsciously pass through five stages: 1, 2, 3, 4 and REM sleep (citation). According to the PL100 text, these stages progress cyclically from 1 through REM then begin again with stage 1, and usually,

The average human spends about 25 years of their life sleeping. That is equal to one-third of a person’s life. So if sleep is vital and common among every single human, what do you know about it? What happens when we sleep (Attention Grabber)? Before the 1950s, scientists believed that the brain would just “shut off” when we would go to sleep. It wasn’t until the discovery of the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) state that scientists really looked into what happens in the brain while we are asleep. Studies have found that we go through a cycle of stages during sleep, and it is important for our health (Orientation to Topic). Today, I am going to inform you about what really happens when we sleep, and some issues that are found among it (Specific Purpose). In order to really understand this worldwide commonality, you need to know some background on sleep, the stages in the cycle, and some common disorders (Central Idea). I have taken a year long psychology course that went into depth on sleep psychology, and I have done extensive research on the topic to better grasp it (Statement of Credibility). I want to inform you on sleep so you can understand what happens when you close your eyes every night, and so you can detect any irregularities in your sleep pattern (Statement of Goodwill). First, I will give a background of why and how we know to sleep, then I will explain the stages in the sleep cycle, and finally I will tell you about some common disorders (Preview).

Sleep is undoubtedly one of the most essential requirements for the human body to function properly. It plays a very important role in ensuring the wellness of the human body both physically as well as mentally. In fact, the importance of sleep is clear from the fact that it helps you in maintaining a good lifestyle throughout our entire lifetime. Not only does it help maintain our physical and mental health; rather it also helps in maintaining a decent and healthy lifestyle along with ensuring safety from a number of fatal diseases. It is usually said that the mood in which you wake up is largely dependent on the type of sleep you have been in. This in itself is a big proof of the importance of sleep in our lives. While sleeping, our body finally gets its share of rest and it also gets ample time in rejuvenating from all the wear and tear that it went through during the entire day. Not only this, the body is in its own working condition when we are sleeping as this is the time when it supports the healthy functioning of the brain as well as physical attributes of our body.

In these stages, we are in our deepest realm of sleep. While we are in these stages we become even more out of contact with the outside world and we become unaware of anything going on. Our heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure drop to its lowest levels. Stage three and four are made up of delta waves with a frequency of around 0.5-4 Hz ( “What Happens When You Sleep?” 2016) . There is also some sleep spindles that occur during this time but they are a less prominent here in stage these two stages than it is in stage two . While we are at this stage if something were to come about and wake us up since we are our deepest sleep it takes the body and the brain some time to be reaccumulated with the outside world; we tend to be really groggy and “ill” once we awaken as well. One very interesting thing that comes out of this stage is as children we tend to have many of our occurrences of bedwetting, sleepwalking, and sleep, terrors. ( “What Happens When You Sleep?”

Sleep is composed of five different cycles, each cycle lasts for about 90 minutes. It is consists of two main broad stages, the first four cycles is known as non- rapid eye movement (NREM) and the last stage of the cycle is denoted by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

Sleep is vital to give the cerebral cortex (the brain's "thinking" part) a rest. When we’re in a deep sleep, rapid eye movement (REM) occurs when your eyes move rapidly up for 30 minutes at a time, it continues every 90 minutes. Most of our dreaming happens during REM and our eyes moving forcefully, our bodies are very relaxed and that’s what make us continue to sleep. “One of the most recent and compelling explanations for why we sleep is based on findings that sleep is correlated to changes in the structure and organization of the brain. this phenomenon, known as brain plasticity, is not connection to sleep has several plays a critical implications. it is becoming clear, that sleep plays a critical role in brain development in infants and

There are 5 stages of sleep that a person passes through each night, supposing that the person actually goes to sleep. Stage 1 of sleep is very light and lasts for about 10 to 15 minutes. Brain activity lowers to around 50% or more. This slowly leads us into a deeper sleep and it is not uncommon to experience myoclonic jerks and hypnagogic imagery while thus stage progresses. During stage 2 of sleep our brain activity lowers even more and the

Throughout the night most people do not even notice all the different stages of sleep that they go into without even thinking about it. In an entire night of sleep a person goes through four different stages of sleep. When a person first lies down before their body even reaches the first level of sleep they lay there in a relaxed state slowing all of their natural body activities In the first actual

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 two kinds of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM), and non-REM (NREM) sleep. Within NREM sleep there are four stages: NREM stage 1, 2, 3, and 4. While in REM sleep the brain is incredibly active, doing all of the things that it normally does during the day, such as eating and walking, as it interprets and sorts through information from the day, but the body is in a state of paralysis because the pons is suppressing the signals that the motor cortex is sending to the voluntary muscles. In an alert person the brain is producing beta waves. These waves are short and fast. When a person is still awake, but relaxed the brain slows down to alpha waves, which are still recognizable as being awake, but significantly slower than beta waves. The next stage of sleep is non-REM 1. In NREM 1 the relaxed-but-awake alpha waves are gradually replaced by theta waves. If awoken while in NREM 1

So how does the sleep cycle work? Well it starts with you closing your eyes of course and then you start to count sheep. 1 sheep, 2 sheep, 3 sheep… and so on and so forth. There is several stages you go through when you fall asleep. Some of these stages are called non rem and rem. REM meaning rapid eye moment. The first stage of your sleep is usually the lightest as to where you can be woken really easily. You’re not in this stage very long 5-10 minutes is all. This is what they call NON REM sleep or NREM. You’ll go through several stages of sleep and a lot of the stages of sleep is NREM. The second stage which is still consider NREM, is where your body begins to slow down. Your heart rate slows down and the temperature of your body will begin to decrease. This is still light sleep at this stage. The third stage of the sleep cycle would be deep sleep of the NREM stage. During this stage of your sleep your body begins to repair its self. It strengthens your immune system, repairs bones and muscles. Now after

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

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

Sleep is an important part of the everyday life of a human being. There are multiple sleep cycles but in the process one of the most important stages is known as REM Sleep. REM also known as rapid eye movement is the very unique phase of sleep where the eyes begin to randomly move, and the extremities of the body become paralyzed while vivid dreaming begins to occur. This stage is the the most important for the consolidation of different memories and also in facial recognition and other mental processes. There are many studies that have been done about sleep and why it is important, but there are also many more studies to be conducted in the future because it is still pretty unsure to psychologists and doctors why sleep is actually so