The Several Stages of Sleep That Define Brain Health Functions
The various sleep stages, when studied well, give you answer too many questions about how the body reacts during sleep, why you get sleep disturbances and so on.
Sleep is not just that simple a thing where you shut your eyes, go to an unconscious state, and then wake up after a session of entire body and mind rest. Sleep is much more than that. Many brain functions actually start when you are into a deep state of slumber. The body tissues, neurons etc. develop only when you are asleep.
And the quality of sleep matters highly in this. The higher the quality of sleep, the better will be your health, body and mind coordination and control on self.
Some of the benefits of good sleep
When you get a good sleep then you enjoy the following benefits:
- Healthy body and mind
- Good muscle development
- Healthy neuron development
- Proper growth in the growing up years
- Immunity boosting and better able to heal
- Faster tissue and wound repair
- Better mind and body coordination
- Improved performance in physical activities a d mental work
- Better mood
There are several stages in sleep
Sleep of any human falls under four stages and consists of two types of sleep recurring in a cyclic pattern within the stages. The two types of sleep are REM and non-REM sleep. REM sleep is all about Rapid Eye Movement sleep, which happens because of a much active state of mind, and non-REM sleep is when the sleep is much deep, and the body movements and eyeball movements are minimum or not there. The four stages of sleep areas discussed here.
Stage one of sleep
This is a short-lived stage. The body goes in and out of sleep a few times to finally fall into sleep. This stage involves gradually resting the muscles while the body temperature slowly goes down. The stage lasts for 13 to 17 minutes in general and covers 10% of the sleep.
But with a disturbed sleeping and someone calling you several times you may recurrently go through this stage 1.
Stage two of sleep
This is a transition stage when one gets from stage 1 to stage 3, and the sleep gradually deepens. This stage may last for 10 minutes. The muscles further relax. Yet it’s possible to wake up the person in this stage of the sleep. As many times your sleep beaks, you return to stage 2, and hence it’s repeated several times in sleep.
Stage three of sleep
This is the deepest stage of sleep, where the body goes quiet, and still, the eye movements stop, and the brain produces the slowest waves which are called delta waves. Muscles stay totally relaxed, and the heartbeat and breathing totally slow down at this stage. One may reach this stage within 30 minutes of sleep.
Stage four of sleep
In this stage, stage 3 extends while the deep sleep gets shallower. The brain waves stay longer and slower normally in this stage. One gets into REM sleep at this stage, and the brain gets busies when the person is going through sleep disturbances.
Finally
That is how the sleep stages are defined, and this can give one a clear idea of how the human mind gets through cycles of rest and wakefulness in sleep.
Profound rest decreases your rest drive and gives the most helpful rest of all the rest stages. This is the reason in the event that you take a short snooze amid the day, you’re as yet ready to nod off during the evening. Be that as it may, in the event that you sleep sufficiently long to fall into profound rest, you have more trouble nodding off during the evening since you diminished your requirement for rest.
Moderate wave rest comes generally in the primary portion of the night, REM in the second half. REM rest commonly starts around an hour and a half after you first nod off, with the principal REM cycle enduring around 10 minutes. Each progressive REM cycle last more, with the last REM, arrange to endure up to 60 minutes. The vast majority encounter three to five interims of REM rest every night.
Waking may happen after REM. On the off chance that the waking period is sufficiently long, the individual may recall it the following morning. Short arousals may vanish with amnesia.
