Do You Know The Incredible Different Stages Of Sleep?

Sleep is a physiological process. The body needs this regularly to recover. During the day, the body’s resources become exhausted. Because the body performs a lot of internal functions that ensure that it works the right way. But during the night, the body goes through different phases and stages of sleep.

In order for those sleeping periods to run smoothly, there should be no distractions or interruptions of any kind. Here are some factors that disrupt sleep:

• The use of tobacco
• Drinking too much coffee
• Alcohol consumption
• Worrying and Anxiety
• stress

In this article, we want to take a closer look at the different stages of sleep.  With this knowledge you can ensure that you enjoy a good sleep.

While your eyes are closed, one can clearly see that there is electrical vibration. These vibrations can be seen by means of an electroencephalogram (EEG). They have an alpha rhythm of eight to thirteen per second.

As the minutes go by, you can mark the changes on the EEG. Each stage of sleep has a different shape and this depends on the activity of the brain.

In this way, scientists have discovered and described how sleep proceeds. So today we have a good understanding of the different stages of sleep.

Stage 1

• This is the stage where you sleep the lightest. During this brief sleep phase, the brain enters and exits a dream state. You can also wake up very easily during this phase.
• During the first stage of sleep, you experience what we call REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep. At this stage, the eyes move very quickly. At the same time, the muscles of the body slow down.
• During that period you are able to perceive auditory and sensory stimuli. This stage is not very restorative. For it is only the minimum level at which the body rests.

• Sometimes you will also feel sudden muscle contractions during this phase. This is what people sometimes describe as feeling like they are falling. What you actually observe is the transition from the first to the second stage of sleep.

Stage 2

• In the second phase of sleep, a pattern develops in which the rapid movement of the eyes stops. The dynamic brain waves also slow down. What then remains is a single activity of fast brain waves.

• On the EEG we see a pattern that is known as sleep coils.
• We don’t just see the slow brain waves. But this is also the time when body temperature and heart rate drop. In addition, breathing begins to slow down.
• At this point, the nervous system blocks the sensory stimuli. Then it is almost impossible to receive information from outside.
• That’s why this can be a very restorative part of sleep, although it only occurs in limited stages.

Stage 3

• During the third of the stages of sleep, brain activity becomes much slower than in the previous stage. In this case we speak of delta waves. They alternate with faster but smaller waves.

• A person will usually not make any eye movements for two to three minutes during this phase. It can also be very difficult to awaken at this stage.
• The sensory stimuli are completely blocked here. When a person wakes up during this phase, they may feel disoriented and confused.
• At this stage, there are no dream images either. Blood pressure decreases and growth hormone production increases.

Stage 4

• This phase is almost exclusively determined by delta waves. At this stage, you are in a state of deep and intense sleep. It is therefore much more difficult to wake up then.

• There is no eye activity or muscle movement. Usually, children in this sleep state will go through bedwetting, sleepwalking, or nightmares.
• Dreams do not occur during this stage of deep sleep. This phase usually lasts about twenty minutes.
• Yet it is this phase that lets you know whether you slept well or whether the sleep was insufficiently restorative.

Usually, people alternate between the stages of sleep of rapid eye movement or non-rapid eye movement. This takes place within a time period ranging from seventy to one hundred minutes.

The sleep characterized by rapid eye movement typically lasts between five and twenty minutes. The rest of the time is characterized by a non-rapid eye movement.

Both cycles usually repeat every hour and a half during the night. You will normally go through between four and six sleep cycles characterized by rapid eye movements.