- It’s been proven that when we’re deprived of deep sleep, we experience our
greatest day-time impairments, such as drowsiness, nausea, headaches, muscle
aches, and trouble concentrating.
- When we’re deprived of sleep for any irregular amount of time, our body will
sacrifice all other stages of sleep to regain “deep sleep”. It’s believed this is why our
body tries to gain as much deep sleep as possible in the first 3-4 hours of our sleep.
- Because deep sleep is the first stage of sleep the body tries to get the most of, it’s
the stage least likely to be missed. As you may recall from the previous graph, the
periods of deep sleep were longest in the beginning.
- Our immune system also turns on during deep sleep to fight diseases. This is why
we sleep more when we’re ill.
How Important is REM Sleep?
Studies show that when we’re deprived of REM sleep, we exhibit certain day-time
difficulties as well, mainly trouble with concentrating, and sometimes drowsiness.
However, because the body tries to recover deep sleep first as a result of sleep
deprivation, we can assume that REM sleep isn’t as important to restoring our
physical functions. It’s not clearly known what purpose REM sleep serves; however,
scientists do have a theory that we absorb most of our daytime learnings during
REM sleep. This would explain why babies spend so much time sleeping, 50% of
that time in REM sleep.
So what is Quality Sleep?
As you may have already guessed, quality sleep consists of being able to sleep
deeply. For our minds to easily slide into the deep stages of sleep, and stay there for
the time needed. Easier said than done.
So I’ve got a question for you: What controls how long and how deep you sleep?
There’s an underlying mechanism in our bodies called our “body clock”. However, I
don’t like the name so I will simply refer to it as the sleep clock. Your sleep clock is
a system inside of you which controls how you sleep, how deep you sleep, when you
sleep, and how awake you feel during the day. Once you understand this system
you’ll be able to take control over your sleep and your energy!
The challenge in our society is that our sleep systems have been weakened by so
many outside stressors that we’re not even aware of, that our sleep clocks are totally
out of whack. This is why so many people can’t sleep deeply, why they may suffer
from insomnia, poor day-time energy levels, or find themselves waking up several
times in the middle of the night. Usually when you wake up in the middle of the night
it is at the end of a sleep cycle in Stage 2 or REM sleep when our brain waves are
highest and we’re most wakable. This happens because of a weakened sleep
system.
