We’ve all been told repeatedly how important sleep is, especially getting enough of it – 8 hours of sleep each night is the standard answer when we ask how much sleep we should be getting. But do you have any idea why those 8 hours are so important? It all has to do with your sleep cycle, which I will break down for you here.
There are 5 phases of sleep that we travel through each night: Stage 1,2,3,4, and our REM cycle, which stands for “Rapid Eye Movement.”
- Stage 1 – This is a very light sleep, from which we can be awakened quite easily. This is also the stage where you experience those strange muscle contractions that make you jump, sometimes while simultaneously having the feeling of falling.
- Stage 2 – Once we enter this stage, our brain activity starts to slow down, and the eye movements stop.
- Stage 3 – Delta waves appear at this stage, extremely slow brain waves that with shorter, smaller waves appearing sporadically.
- Stage 4 – During this stage, the brain’s waves are almost exclusively delta waves, and waking someone up at this point is very difficult. Stages 3 and 4 are generally referred to as deep sleep. When some one attempts to wake you during these stages in your sleep, you generally have that lingering feeling of grogginess, and it’s difficult to wake up.
- REM Sleep – While in a REM sleep stage, which typically lasts from 90 – 110 minutes, our extremities are temporarily paralyzed. Our eyes also move around in erratic, jerky movements, which is where the name “Rapid Eye Movement” comes from. We spend about 20% of our sleep time in our REM cycle.
In general, it’s recommended that the average adult get around 8 hours of sleep. The reason that this is important is because if you don’t get enough, you create a sleep debt, that leads to decreased function. Even if you try and make up the missed sleep afterwards, studies have shown that it takes quite a while for function to be restored to 100%, even after the subjects didn’t feel sleepy anymore.
The bottom line is, getting enough sleep and not interrupting your sleep cycle is incredibly important to maintaining your peak level of performing. So don’t scrimp on the Z’s!
-Olivia
