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Sleep, what we all need as growing young people and as adults.  

Remember the old joke about wanting to sleep for 10 hours like you did when you were 3 years old.  It still rings true today for most of us and like so many issues of our time, there has been lots of research done on the topic of sleep deprivation, why it occurs and some tips on things to try to improve your sleep habits.

 

What are the sleep stages? 

The first three stages are non- REM sleep.  Different phases of taking you from being awake, to relaxing your breathing, your heartrate, your blood pressure and your muscles.  

When you get to REM sleep about 90 minutes after falling asleep, you go into overdrive.  REM stands for “Rapid Eye Movement”.  

Your eyes are moving back and forth behind your eyelids, your breathing, heartrate and blood pressure increase almost to awake levels.  

This is when you may have a sleep disorder, waking up, restless leg syndrome, and other things. 

Interestingly, when your sleep mode is working the right way, you dream in REM stage, but your muscles are paralyzed to keep you from acting out your dreams (remember falling off the cliff?  You can’t jump).

 

Some of the sleep disorders include; Irregular sleep wake rhythms, insomnia, narcolepsy, nightmares, sleep apnea an restless leg syndrome.  These different disorders have many causes, and everyone reacts to them differently.  

One person who is sleep deprived may sleep like a log when the opportunity comes to sleep, while others can’t fall asleep while exhausted.  

 

There are treatments, medications and even surgery for different kinds of sleep disorders and as always, this article is meant to make you aware of some symptoms and tips on improving your habits.  Please visit your doctor for treatments and medications.  One tip seems to come up in research and that is seeing a neurologist for sleep issues has been recommended. 

 

Tips for improvement will seem obvious and you may already be doing some of these.  Every little effort you can make within your lifestyle of working, raising kids, running your household, etc., will benefit you.

Spend time in the sunshine
Exercise 30 minutes a day
Eat meals at consistent times
Avoid heavy foods, alcohol and nicotine two hours before bed
Napping before 3pm and not more than 30-45 minutes (otherwise you may make it harder to fall asleep at night)
 

Sleep deprivation can slow you down, cause depression and one study showed for every 1 hour a night college student average under the 7-9 hours per night of sleep, their GPA went down .07 on a 4.0 scale,

 

Enjoy your life and get as much sleep as you can.