A Good Night’s Sleep is Essential to Better Health and Quality of Life
Eating. Drinking. Breathing. All are essential human needs. And so is sleeping. Most people take sleep for granted. They lay their head on their pillow and wake up 8 hours later, refreshed and ready to start the day. But for others, getting a good night’s sleep can be a challenge. Even if they sleep for 8 hours, they still wake up feeling groggy and tired.
The reason: The quantity of sleep you get is not as important as the quality of sleep. You may sleep for a long time—but it may be a disturbed sleep, where you wake up on and off throughout the night.
Robert Miller, a registered sleep technologist and vice president at Apria, says, “For you to perform your best during the day, you need long periods of uninterrupted sleep during the night.”
What Happens When You Don’t Get Enough Quality Sleep?
Not getting enough sleep can negatively affect your health in many ways. Short-term consequences include:
- Feeling sleepy during the day
- Having difficulty remembering things
- Not being alert or able to concentrate
- Becoming moody, leading to conflicts with others
- Having a greater chance to get into a car accident
A lack of sleep can also lead to serious health consequences, such as:
- High blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Heart attack
- Stroke
- Obesity
- Depression
So how can you improve your sleep quality? The first step is to understand sleep cycles and the 4 stages of sleep.
Your Sleep Consists of Multiple Cycles
Your sleep is made up of multiple rounds of sleep cycle stages, which consist of 4 separate sleep stages. On an average night, most people go through 4 to 6 sleep cycles. The first is usually the shortest, 70 to 100 minutes, while later cycles last 90 to 120 minutes.
Sleep cycles are different for everyone and can vary from night to night. Apria’s Robert Miller adds, “There are also many factors that affect the sleep cycle. These include age, diet, travel, recent irregular or insufficient sleep patterns, alcohol, and especially sleep disorders such as sleep apnea.”
The Stages of Sleep
A single session of sleep is typically separated into four to five cycles, each made up of four stages. The four stages of sleep consist of one stage of rapid eye-movement sleep, or REM, and three of non-rapid eye-movement sleep, known as N1, N2, and N3. Each cycle of four stages takes approximately 70 to 100 minutes to complete.
N1, sometimes termed “active sleep,” is the transition stage between wakefulness and being fully asleep. N1 may also occur between other stages of sleep, such as the slow-wave sleep of N3 and REM sleep.
N2, is slightly deeper, and involves additional physiological changes such as loss of environmental awareness and the appearance on EEG of certain types of brain waves called sleep spindles and K complexes.
N3, is slow wave and is considered the deepest and most restorative phase of sleep. The words slow wave refers to the distinct, synchronized pattern of brain waves recorded during the stage on EEG.
REM sleep happens about 90 minutes after you fall asleep. Even though your eyes are closed, they move around quickly (hence the name: rapid eye movement stage). This is the stage where you can have intense dreams. That’s because your brain activity, blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate all increase. REM sleep is thought to be critical for cognitive functions such as learning, being creative, and memory.
The first REM period usually lasts about 10 minutes. But as the night wears on, REM stages get longer. The final one can last up to an hour!
How Sleep Apnea Disrupts Your Sleep Cycle—and How to Treat It
Sleep apnea happens when a person’s breathing stops or is interrupted during sleep, sometimes hundreds of times throughout the night. Your brain awakes and you enter or remain in an earlier, lighter sleep stage—which prevents the deepest, most restful stages of sleep. Even though sleep apnea can occur during any stage, studies suggest it happens more often during REM sleep.
Over time, by disrupting your sleep cycle, sleep apnea increases your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.
The good news: there is a popular and proven effective treatment for sleep apnea: CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure).
Robert Miller from Apria explains: “You wear a mask over your nose or mouth while you sleep. It is connected to a machine that delivers a constant flow of air to keep your airways open so you can breathe—and sleep—normally.”
How to Improve Your Sleep Quality
Good sleep practices can help improve the quantity and quality of your sleep.
- Keep a regular sleep schedule. Go to bed and get up at the same time each day.
- Keep your bedroom comfy—dark and quiet.
- Don’t drink coffee or alcohol before bedtime. The caffeine will keep you up.
- Don’t take drugs, except those prescribed by your doctor. Sleep aids can cause daytime drowsiness.
- Exercise regularly.
- If you have sleep apnea, consider getting a CPAP machine.
- Don’t go to bed until you are tired.
As always, if you are having trouble sleeping or suspect you may have sleep apnea, be sure to talk to your doctor. Together, you can make a plan that will help improve your quantity and quality of sleep!
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