The Sleep Cycle – Things You Did Not Know About Sleep Part 5
Forming part of a series of posts for your information if you have problems in sleeping, can’t sleep, sleeplessness, being awake during the night, difficulty in getting to sleep, awaking too early, having a busy mind, insomnia - for whatever the many myriad of reasons for sleep dysfunction.
The Sleep Cycle
Sleep cycles: it has been found that legal mood altering substances such as coffee and alcohol when consumed before bedtime affect the quality and duration of sleep.
The Sleep Laboratory at the University of Surrey, held experiments at their Sleeplab.
In the programme/experiment one person drank 3 cups of coffee and one person drank 3 glasses of wine. ECG electrodes were connected to each person to monitor and record the brain waves during sleep. The wine drinking person felt quite sleepy. The coffee drinking person felt quite awake. In the experiment they tested what type of sleep they experienced.
Normally it takes 10-15 minutes before you get into the first stage of sleep, to feel drowsy.
2nd stage is light sleep,
3rd and 4th stages is the deep sleep and
5th stage is REM, the dream based sleep.
In a healthy night’s sleep one goes through 4 – 5 cycles of these 5 stages.
Disruptive sleep causes mood swings, our ability to concentrate and is a danger to long term health.
Coffee affects the sleep cycle in that it’s more difficult to get to sleep. By spending more time in stage 2 the lighter phase and less in the deeper stages thereby creating a restless sleep cycle.
Alcohol creates the effect of frequent moments of wakefulness so not feeling refreshed upon waking up in the morning. One may fall asleep quickly and into the deep sleep stage but by the second half of the cycle one experiences more wakefulness. For healthy sleep well being we need to go through all the 5 stages of the sleep cycle.
Advice: Best to avoid coffee and alcohol within 4 hours of sleeptime.
Tip: buy your Sleep Well Eye Pillow Kit to improve your nap times, to soothe your eyes and mind. Available exclusively from the www.feelgoodzone.com site
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Source: Linzi Martin notes taken from the BBC1 programme, 10 Things You Did Not Know About Sleep, aired 2 September 2010, presenter Kate Silverton (plus Linzi’s own thoughts).
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