The Stages of Sleep – Sleep Cycles
If you are having a tough time getting to slumber understanding the mechanism behind sleeping and how it rejuvenates you could help you figure out the problem of what is keeping you awake. Understanding rest is not so simple because you are either conscious, asleep, or someplace in between. Your body engages in several processes once your head rests on the pillow and you close your eyes that determines how well you will sleep.
Feeling utterly dopey is the first phase of sleep and at this time your muscles will go limp, you will feel yourself get weary, and your eyes may be heavy enough to close on their own. This stage usually lasts only a few minutes somewhere around ten full minutes. The next stage is light stage often called stage two and at this point your respiratory system and body temperature fall considerably. Your heart rate should also slow down as well during this part of sleep.
Both stage three and stage four of the sleep cycles are classified as deep sleep and are where it should be hard to wake up. You may feel groggy and be unable to adjust quickly but this important sleep stage allows your brain to rest while the circulatory system slows, at which time the nutrient rich blood nourishes your body. There is also a heightened level of immune action during these two vital stages of your good night’s rest.
REM sleep is stage five and is known as the dream portion of the sleep cycle. Drifting in and out of stage five happens often so there may be several minutes or hours within the stage of REM sleep. This cycle is characterized by a number of physical responses where you may experience rapid breathing that is both irregular and shallow. You may also experience a rise in heart rate and blood pressure.
This important time in the sleep stage is designed to assist in the processing of emotions and to help relieve stress with each of the sleep cycles providing a benefit to the person sleeping. Light sleepers are stuck in the early sleep stages and hardly ever make it to phases three and four where they need to be in order to obtain the most rest possible. For those who have a hard time arousing from sleep probably hanging around too long in deep sleep and rise quickly upon waking rather than running through each stage.
Sleep stages can become random based upon the amount of each cycle you got the night before so if you spend a long time in deep sleep you might become trapped in a light sleep the next evening. Your body adjusts over time and you will spend about the same average over time in all of the sleep stages. This is one of the reasons why it is stated that it is impossible to get caught up on sleep but you can always get caught up on rest.
