Understanding the sleep pattern for quality sleep.
For some people sleep comes easy, how often have we heard people say "I could sleep standing up" or "I could sleep on a clothes line". A surprisingly high number of people don't sleep well. We have a bedroom store and we have a lot of customers who have sleep problems asking for advice and will a new bed help?. A poor bed could be the cause or a contributing factor which we will touch on later.
A common statement is I sleep okay yet wake up feeling like I haven't been to sleep and are tired during the day. In brief, lack of quality sleep and the time spent asleep is crucial to health and well-being, We can understand better why you may be feeling like this if we look at the different stages and patterns of sleep.
How much sleep do we need?
These are guidelines and everyone is different. I could sleep for 6 hours and feel brilliant where as the next person may feel awful on this amount of sleep and need 7 hours. As Margaret Thatcher boasted she only ever had 4 hours sleep, I couldn't get by on that little. It's the same with children, my eldest had afternoon naps until he was four, my youngest stopped daytime naps when he was under two.
Newborns - 16 hours a day.
Six months to three years - 10 to 14 hours (this can include daytime sleep)
Ages 3 to 6: 10 and 12 hours of sleep
Ages 6 to 9: 10 hours of sleep
Over 9: 9 hours of sleep
Adults: 6 to 8 hours
Older adults: 7-8 hours with daytime sleep if needed
Stages of sleep
Sleep is triggered by an internal body clock, sensitive to light, time of day and other cues for sleep and waking. Your sleep goes through several stages throughout the night, moving back and forth between deep replenishing sleep and lighter stages and dreaming. As the night progresses, you spend more time in dream sleep and lighter sleep.
There are two main cycles of sleep, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, when you dream. Your eyes actually move rapidly up an down during this stage, which is why it is called REM sleep. Non-REM (NREM) sleep consists of four stages of deep sleep. Each sleep stage is important for overall quality sleep, but deep sleep and REM sleep are especially important.
Stages of Sleep explained
The first stage is drowsiness - Lasting only up to ten minutes. Eyes move slowly under the eyelids, muscle activity slows down, and you are easily awakened. If you have something playing on your mind this can affect this stage. You know when you are drifting off and then find you start thinking again and suddenly feel awake.
The second stage is light sleep - Body temperature decreases (this is why we need duvets), blood pressure lowers and the heart rates slows.
The third and fourth stages are deep sleep.
You are difficult to wake and if you do get woke up it takes you a while to adjust, you feel groggy and quite disoriented. Isn't it horrible when you get woke up by an alarm when you are in a deep sleep, you just want to press the snooze button and go back to sleep. The problem with this is you don't go back into a deep sleep and can make you feel worse. Easier said than done though, I'm very good at saying five more minutes.
Deep sleep allows the brain to "switch off" to restore the energy we have used during our waking hours. Blood flow decreases to the brain in this stage, and redirects itself towards the muscles, restoring physical energy. When you go to bed with aching, tired legs and wake up and they are back to normal, this is how it happens. Research also shows that immune functions increase during deep sleep. That's why when we are feeling ill the best thing to do is not work through the illness, sleep through the illness you will get better quicker.
REM sleep is also known as the dreaming stage – Between 70 and 90 minutes into your sleep cycle, you enter REM. You usually have three to five REM episodes per night. This stage is associated with processing emotions, creating memories and relieving stress and this is why we dream it's the braining sorting everything out. Some people say they don't dream, it's rather they don't remember them as everyone dreams.
REM or dreaming sleep, is essential to our minds for processing and consolidating emotions, memories and stress, a little like defragmenting your computer. Your computer will work faster after this, so will our minds after REM sleep. Dreaming is the brain process fragments of information from the daytime. If you are disturbed during REM sleep you can feel quite low or irritable the next day. Although previously I have recommended getting up at the same time everyday, we can break this rule if you do feel like this. Sleep half an hour longer and see if that helps your mood. This is because the REM stage is longer in the morning and if you do have sleep problems deep sleep will be restored before REM sleep.
If you don't get enough deep sleep it can affect you greatly during the daytime and if it is regular you can feel completely exhausted.
Deep sleep is often disturbed when you have someone who needs nighttime care such as a new baby or you are a carer for a relative who needs attention during the night. If this is you please do ask for help. If you a have a young baby ask your partner or a family member to help during the night on occasion. If you can't or don't want to do this follow the baby's pattern in the day, when they have a sleep you put your feet up and do the same. The housework can wait, you are more important and it can be done quicker when the baby is awake than if you are trying to fight exhaustion. Don't forget to unplug the phone and put a note on the front door so you don't get disturbed. The amount of times I'd be in a lovely sleep and the door or phone would go.
If you are a carer for a relative who is older or ill, please don't be worried to ask for help so that you can get some undisturbed sleep. When I was a student nurse I worked as a nighttime carer where I would get up in the night to care for the relative. This gave the carer a much needed undisturbed sleep. Carers work bloomin hard and give up so much of their "normal lives" and time to care for loved ones. I know easier said than done but please don't forget to care for yourself too.
