The Different Stages of Sleep and How They Impact Health

There are four stages of sleep. A lot of people boast about having loads of hours of REM sleep, however, this is actually a person’s most awake state during the sleep cycle. It’s a myth that REM sleep is the one to go for. 

The reason lots of cellphone or watch companies track your REM sleep is not because it’s the deepest form but it’s the one where your body jerks and twitches most, making it easier for the gadget to decipher. That’s just an interesting fact and may lead to you becoming interested in the different stages of sleep and how they impact health.  This article aims to carefully outline each stage and give you insight into what bodily and heart movements happen.

How Does Sleep Work?

The circadian rhythms control sleep. Melatonin is like the starter to tell your body to sleep, meaning that it’s the initiator hormone that gets your body to sleep. When you fall asleep, you want to be in as comfortable a position as possible, to encourage falling through the four stages of sleep in a cycle. This is usually in a large, comfortable bed with a heavenly pillow to support your head and neck for those hours. 

How Much Sleep is Long Enough?

Honestly, it varies from individual to individual. It’s often influenced by lifestyle factors but to give you a rough idea, young adults need 7-9 hours typically per day but this does decrease with age. 

Sleep Composition: The Four Stages of Sleep

There are four big stages, You first fall into N1, then you move into N2, N3 and then REM. Thereafter, this cycle repeats itself four or five times a night.

Here are the four stages that a human goes through:

• N1: Your sleep is deeper, more restful and the body is free to move around. The brain wave activity slows down, some dreaming, hypnic jerks and theta waves increase.
• N2: This is a deeper sleep where temp drops, HR slows down and breathing is shallow and irregular. The brain waves slow down, sleep spindles, which are bouts of electric charge special to N2 (transfer of memories from short term to long term) and there are mostly theta waves.
• N3: This is the slowest and deepest brain wave. This is your true deep sleep and is characterized by SWS (slow wave sleep). Your body is at its lowest level of functioning and there are mostly delta waves.
• REM (rapid eye movement): This is actually your active type of sleep, most of your dreaming is done in this stage and voluntary muscles are inhibited. Body temperature increases, the eyes move rapidly, HR increases and brain waves are mostly beta (usually signal for wakefulness but still asleep). As mentioned above, you dream a lot and here you have your most vivid, detailed, longer, emotional dreams; therefore, you find deactivated muscle movement, so you don’t do the things you’re doing in your dream. It’s also a way of memory consolidation. 

How Sleep Stages Work

This is how sleep stages work in your nighttime routine, given that you don’t have any sleep abnormalities.

• Cyclic nature of these stages is called the sleep cycle. N1 -> N2 -> N3 -> REM and this repeated 4 to 5 cycles per night.
• Waking during the night is usually after REM.
• At the start, SWS is most and REM is less and as the night goes on, REM increases and SWS decreases.

Why Do People Sleep

Well, firstly, it feels amazing. But there is something deeper to it, there is a big purpose for it actually. Through sleep, there is restoration of the body and the brain. This is a vital time for memory consolidation and emotion regulation. This means that if you are not getting enough hours in a day to sleep, your body and brain struggle to recover from one day to the next. People who don’t sleep a lot might notice that they’re more forgetful and this is because the memory chain is linked and embedded during sleep, making it the 7 – 9 most important hours of your day. 

Image by Anna Nekrashevich from Pexels

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