What Is Sleep? – Keeping It Very Simple
Typically, an average person will spend around 3000 hours a year sleeping and unfortunately, some people have a lot of trouble sleeping and continuously seek out the best sleep aids available to help them. However, you may often ask, “what is sleep and why do we need it”?
So tell me, what is sleep? Our sleep patterns tend to follow a set cycle every time we try to go to sleep; that of REM (rapid eye movement) that is when most dreaming occurs and non-rapid REM. This cycle will repeat several times a night. Although an infant spends around half their sleep time in REM, the average adult will only spend about twenty percent in a REM sleep pattern.
Current research has shown that non-REM sleep will typically consist of four stages before reaching REM sleep. During Stage one, we may feel half awake as well as half asleep but this is the time our muscles begin to relax. After about ten minutes, we reach Stage two that lasts for around twenty minutes. During this time, we are fully asleep and our heart rate and breathing slows down. While Stage two will last the longest, during Stage three our deep sleep pattern will begin to alter our heart rate and breathing levels to their lowest. Finally, we reach the final Stage where if any one attempts to wake us they would be met with a somewhat grumpy reception! The stages of non-REM sleep will typically last for around 90 minutes prior to REM sleep beginning.
During REM sleep and although we are not aware, our brain is particularly active and our eyes are exceptionally so (hence the term, rapid eye movement). Apart from your body resting, your brain is far from inactive when you are asleep. Scientists are now able to record brain activity through the use of expensive equipment, and resulting sleep studies show that different areas of the brain are certainly very active. The time when we may dream and sleepwalk is when we are in REM sleep. This is also the time our breathing rate and blood pressure begins to rise although the body will not respond to this. It is often suggested that this could be nature's way of generic cialis canadian protecting us from harming ourselves when we dream.
How much sleep we require differs between individuals, but if you don’t feel sleepy during the day, then you are probably getting enough. Sadly, many of us either do not get the opportunity for enough sleep or, when the opportunity arises we find we can’t sleep anyway and continuously look for how to get a good nights sleep!
It is hoped that this quick overview about what is sleep, will have been of benefit to you. If you feel you body has become ‘out of sync’ with your normal sleep patterns, try some of the all natural sleep aids that are available today.
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