What keeps sleep problems going?
To understand what keeps a sleep problem going, it is useful to know more about what happens when we sleep:
Sleep is made up of 5 stages. When you first fall asleep, you go quickly through Stage 1 sleep. This is very light sleep.
As you go into Stage 2 and Stage 3, your sleep gets deeper. You spend most of the night in this type of sleep.
By Stage 4, you are in a very deep sleep. Your body is very relaxed at this stage.
The final stage is called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. This is when most of our dreams occur. We are not sure if dreams mean anything. One view is that dreams help us make sense of the world and help us better cope with stresses we meet. Another view is that they have no meaning and no use. You can make up your own mind.
You will only remember your dreams if you wake up during this stage. Even so, we only recall about 1% of our dreams.
We are more or less paralysed in REM sleep. This may be to stop us acting out our dreams. This ends as soon as we leave the REM stage.
Once REM sleep is over, you go back to Stage 1 sleep. You go through this cycle about 4 or 5 times each night. Each cycle takes about 90 minutes.
As you get older, you seem to need less deep sleep. So as you get older, you spend less time in Stage 4 sleep.
A lack of REM and Deep sleep can badly affect you during the day.
Daytime effects of poor sleep
You need to sleep to recharge your batteries - both body and mind. If you don't do this then you will drag yourself through the day. You will feel like a half-shut knife.
You may feel:
- tired
- lethargic
- irritable
- less vigilant
- take longer to react
- make more mistakes
- you have poorer concentration and poor memory
- you just don't feel 'with it'
If your sleep is poor for some time, you will find it much harder to learn new skills. Poor sleep can have serious effects. Far more deaths on the road are caused by sleepiness than drink and drugs combined.
You may have a vicious circle - stress may cause you to sleep poorly, poor sleep causes more stress and so on....
