Stages Of Sleep Report

Did you know that every time you sleep your body goes through stages? There are five main stages of sleep which are stage one,stage two, stage three, stage four, and stage five which is known as rapid eye movement, or REM. After all the sleep stages go through in one night, the cycle begins again and so on.

Stages one,two,three,four,and five all happen during the sleep process. Stage one is the first stage which is just a light sleep. Stage two is where around 50% of your time sleeping is spent. Stage three is the first stage of deep sleep. Stage four is the second stage of deep sleep which is similar to stage 3. Stage five is called REM which means rapid eye movement. Stage five is also the stage in which dreaming occurs.

During stage one you experience a drifting in and out of sleep. You can easily be woken up. Your eye movement and body movements slow down. You may also experience sudden jerky movement of your legs and other muscles. The sudden jerks your body gets are known as hypic myoclonia or myoclonic jerks. The jerks give you a feeling of falling which are caused by the motor areas of the brain being spontaneously. During stage two, eye movement and your brain waves become slower. Brain waves are a measure of activity level of the brain. There will also be brief bursts of brain activity called sleep spindles. During stage three the brain waves are a combination of slow waves known as delta waves, and faster waves. It can be very difficult to wake someone up. If you wake up during this stage, you may feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes. In stage four it is also very difficult to wake up. In this stage the brain is making the slow delta waves almost exclusively. Both stages of deep sleep are important for feeling refreshed in the morning. If stages three and four are too short, sleep will not feel satisfying. When you enter into REM sleep, your breathing becomes fast, irregular and shallow. Your eyes will move rapidly and your muscles become immobile. During stage five, heat rate and blood pressure increase. Men may develop erections. About 20% of sleep is REM for adults. REM is also the sleep phase of sleep in which you dream. This sleep phase begins about 70 to 90 minutes after you fall asleep. The first cycle has a shorter phase of REM sleep. Toward morning, the time spent in REM sleep increases and the deep sleep stages decrease. Researchers know REM is important in the creation of long-term memories. If a person's REM sleep is disrupted, the next sleep cycle does not follow the normal order, but often goes directly to REM sleep until the previous nights lost REM is made up. Stage five is probably the most important stage of all because it is where dreaming occurs. Some people may be able to know what stage someone is in by what they experience. For example, if someone gets woken up by a sudden jerk of there body, then they are most likely in stage one or two. If someone doesn't wake up very easily, then they are probably in stage three, four, or five.

It's estimated that at least 40 million people in the U.S. suffer from sleep disorders on a regular basis. Approximatively 20 million people suffer occasionally from sleep disorders. The loss of sleep due to sleep disorders affect many aspects of ones life. This sleep disorder is called somnipathy. A test commonly ordered for some sleep disorders is the polysomnogram.

In conclusion, there are five main stages of sleep that you go through every night. After the stages go through once, they go through again. It is very important to get sleep because if you don't rest your body at night then you can become very tired during the day and you will not feel your best. If you are tired often, then you can prevent it by going to bed earlier and if you can, wake up later. If you keep going to bed earlier, and waking up later then eventually you will not be so tired. If you go to bed later, and wake up earlier then that is probably the cause of your tiredness.