Sleep Basics

Sleep is a very important component of health. It is important for immune purposes, for cell repair and so much more. What we need to know- Sleep 101: the importance between sleep and awake timing, light exposure, meals, exercise and how all of these lay the foundation for a good night’s rest. Sleep has two basic sleep stages,  REM or rapid eye movement and non-REM or non-rapid eye movement.

Sleep Basics

Non-REM Sleep

Non-REM sleep has four stages, sleep stage ONE is light sleep when you’re going between that awake state to that sleep state. Everything is starting to relax and slowing down, your heartbeat, your breathing, your eye movement. 

Stage TWO is still a lighter sleep but a little deeper than stage one, again everything’s slowing down, your heartbeat, your breathing, your eye movement, your brain activity, your muscle movements and you drop your body temperature. Between stage one and two use, you spend about 60 percent of your sleep in these two stages. 

Non-REM stage THREE and FOUR, they’re considered your deeper sleep and these are the ones that are really, really important for you to be able to wake up energized the next day. During these stages your brain waves slow down or you’re in a mix between faster and slower brain waves. Stages three and four account for about 20 percent of your total sleep. 

REM Sleep

Then we get to REM sleep or the rapid eye movement sleep and it’s exactly what it sounds like, it’s when your eyes are moving side to side when you sleep. This is the stage where it’s considered to be the deepest sleep and this is where you want to get to every night. This is where your vital signs, your breathing and your brain activity increases closest to the waking level but your arms and legs experience temporary paralysis.

This is where you’re dreaming. REM sleep should account for about 20 percent of your total sleep. The deep sleep stages are critical for brain healing, memory storage, hormone regulation, growth and detoxifying. During these stages, an increase of human growth hormone is released to aid your muscles and your immune regulation. 

The full sleep cycles go from the non-REM sleep to the REM sleep, it takes anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes depending on the individual. Any disturbance on any of the cycles but especially the deep sleep cycles will result in an increase in fatigue, memory problems, brain fogginess, weight gain, being irritable and so many other symptoms. 

There’s also a whole bunch of sleep disorders that can interfere with your sleep, many or most of these are things that you should really address with your primary care doctor. They’re not something that we can resolve on our own. 

Sleep Onset Insomnia

There are tools that can help you increase your sleep and help you sleep better but they’re not going to resolve any issues like Sleep Onset insomnia. Sleep Onset Insomnia is where you can’t fall asleep and it’s basically related to stress, relationship issues, conflicts, worrying about finances, anything that will keep you thinking while you’re trying to go to sleep or rest. This may seem easy to resolve, just decrease stress but for some people it’s not as easy as it sounds. Again talk to your primary care physician. 

Sleep Maintenance Insomnia

Sleep maintenance insomnia, this is more of a chronic disease, this is the result of chronic condition.  This is where you actually can fall asleep but then you start waking up during the night and wake up several times during the night.  You’re not able to get to that deep sleep that we talked about and things like caffeine overuse, having high blood sugars, toxic overloading, chronic stress, will make it even worse. 

Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is intermittent periods where you’re not getting adequate sleep and adequate oxygen during your sleep. It can be from a few seconds to several seconds, most people are familiar with this because of the noisy CPAP masks that are given to these patients in order to be able to get the oxygen to their brain and get better sleep. The diagnosis for sleep apnea is a sleep study, they measure your oxygen and how often or the frequency of inadequate oxygen events. 

Mild Sleep Apnea

Mild sleep apnea is when you have 5 to 14 apnea events during an hour.

Moderate Sleep Apnea

Moderate is when you have 15 to 29 events in an hour.

Severe Apnea

Severe has 30 or more events in an hour or sleep apnea is either a result of physical obstruction. Things like your tongue gets in the way or you don’t have adequate tone or muscle structure to keep breathing at night. 

Central sleep apnea that’s where the messages from your brain are not getting to your body to keep a regular breathing cycle. For all of these you need to go through a doctor to get it resolved. 

Upper Air Syndrome

Another one is called upper air syndrome, it’s closely related to sleep apnea, the soft tissue of the throat relaxes too much and interferes with your breathing. It can slow your breathing or even stop it.  It’s just not as frequent or severe as you would get with the sleep apnea but it can still cause disturbances like lack of energy and sleep quality. Those are other reasons to talk to your doctor about your symptoms so they can actually diagnose you correctly.

Mouth Breathing

Mouth breathing, this is when you’re exclusively breathing through your mouth during the time that you’re asleep and the major issue is obstruction of your nasal passages. You want to make sure that you are breathing through your nose during the night. 

The best way to do this is to plug one nostril and take a breath in using the other nostril. If it’s effortless and silent then you’re probably not a mouth breather. If you have very noisy or a hard time breathing through that nostril then you probably are breathing through your mouth when you’re asleep and because you are breathing through your mouth this can cause health problems. 

Especially dental problems, mouth breathing is associated with increased cavities, dry mouth, gum disease. It can affect blood carbon dioxide and oxygen levels causing your pH levels to decrease and become slightly acidic. As a result of over breathing you can actually start hyperventilating. 

All of these can impact your overall health, again for some of these things you want to talk to your doctor. If you’re not able to resolve them on your own, if you have problem breathing through your nose, it might be something that you can talk to your primary care doctor and take steps to improve your sleep.

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