snoozester, Author at The Sleep Blog

Sleep Deprivation

We live in a society where everyone has something to prove and success is somehow confused efficiency, and in turn less sleep. There are people who go to sleep at midnight and who wake up at 4:00 a.m., and they are the examples of this society. Following their model, there are many more who want to become successful; therefore, a new culture has been formed in this society, which is the culture of sleep deprivation. Additionally, besides those who deliberately sleep less hours per night, there are also those who can’t get a good night’s sleep, waking up more tired than when they went to sleep. In both cases, there is a single problem, which is called sleep deprivation.

Even if there are some people who believe that they can function properly without much sleep, this is a wrong belief because sleep is actually needed to regenerate certain parts of the body, among which the most important is the brain.

Causes of Sleep Deprivation

One of the most popular causes of sleep deprivation is lack of time, mainly because people feel that they don’t have enough time in order to complete their everyday tasks. On the other hand, there are people who go to sleep at proper hours, yet they don’t get a good night’s sleep. In most of the cases, they don’t even know what is actually disturbing their sleep. One of the causes is the fact that many people wake up in the night without realizing it. Even though some of these wake-ups are normal, the majority will leave you exhausted.

Among other causes, there are pets in bed, alcohol, or medication. Additionally, any mild pain is able to cause serious sleep disorders; therefore, you should treat yourself as soon as possible.

Dangers of Sleep Deprivation

One of the most recurring effects of sleep deprivation is decreased performance during everyday tasks. Additionally, memory will also suffer, while stress will become even more present. Therefore, most people who suffer from sleep deprivation will feel these negative effects. However, the real dangers are diseases, such as heart attack, obesity, stroke, psychiatric problems, etc. Even if these risks don’t feel quite real, with time, they can happen; therefore, they should be avoided. If you feel that you are tired because you are not sleeping well, you should definitely consult a doctor.

Cures for Sleep Deprivation

One way of making sure that you have a good night’s sleep is to sleep in complete darkness. Nowadays, there are too many light sources that induce wrong signals to the brain. Therefore, you should cover your windows and any other light source that might disturb your sleep. There are many people who keep their phones right next to their bed. This is a bad habit since the electrical devices may interrupt the sleep process. The final step is to reserve your bed for sleeping, making sure that it’s the only activity that occurs in bed.

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Important:
The Sleep Blog does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Instead, this website provides general information for educational purposes only. Always seek the advice of a qualified health care provider if you have questions or concerns regarding any medical condition or treatment.

The Stages of Sleep

What is Sleep?

According to The Free Dictionary:

Sleep is “a natural periodic state of rest for the mind and body, in which the eyes usually close and consciousness is completely or partially lost, so that there is a decrease in bodily movement and responsiveness to external stimuli. During sleep, the brain in humans and other mammals undergoes a characteristic cycle of brain-wave activity that includes intervals of dreaming.”

What Are the Stages of Sleep?

There are four or possibly five stages of sleep:

Stage one, ofcourse, is the start of the sleeping cycle. It is a light sleep and slowly carries the person from wakefulness into the cycles of sleep as the body relaxes.
Stage two occurs when the brain waves slow and eye movement stops.
Stage three is a deeper sleep with delta waves, or very slow brain waves, interspersed with smaller but faster waves.
Stage four. In stage four, along with stage three, the person is in a deep sleep, one where the person is very hard to wake. The mind and body are so relaxed that some children are susceptible to sleepwalking, nightmares, or wetting the bed.
NOTE: In 2008, the US sleep profession did away with using stage four and combined it with stage three, which it is so called.
REM sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep, does not have a stage number and simply includes the initials REM. REM sleep occurs during the latter half of the total sleep cycle, and older adults experience it less frequently than younger people. The rapid eye movement is detected during a sleep study by attaching sensors around the facial muscles controlling eye movement.

Sleep stages are cyclical and happen repeatedly during the night. The time spent in REM sleep lengthens during the night and is the cycle a person is in when they awake.

Sleep Disorders

If the sleep rhythms of a person are upset or disturbed, a person may suffer from sleeping disorders, including sleep apnea, where you stop breathing for more than a few seconds; insomnia, the inability to fall asleep; restless leg syndrome, the irresistible urge to move the legs; or narcolepsy, where sufferers experience sleepiness during the day and may actually fall asleep. These are just a few of the over eighty sleep disorders. If you feel that you do not get sufficient or restful sleep, wake often during the night, or find yourself gasping for breath, it may be time for you to call your local sleep center and ask about a sleep analysis.

A Problem with Your Bedroom Could Be Making You Fat

What is the problem? Too much light!

A new study, The Relationship Between Obesity and Exposure to Light at Night: Cross-Sectional Analyses of Over 100,000 Women in the Breakthrough Generations Study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology on May 29, 2014 suggests that there may a link between your exposure to light at night (LAN) and your body mass index (BMI).

The authors of the study were not able to prove a definitive link, but the results are still surprising:

We found a significant association between LAN exposure and obesity which was not explained by potential confounders we could measure.

A BBC article about the same study further explains that:

A team at the Institute of Cancer Research in London found women had larger waistlines if their bedroom was “light enough to see across” at night.

Their answers were compared to several measures of obesity. Body Mass Index, waist-to-hip ratio and waist circumference were all higher in women with lighter rooms.

One possible explanation is that the light is disrupting the body clock, which stems from our evolutionary past when we were active when it was light in the day and resting when it was dark at night.