Stages of sleep - do you know what happens to our body during them?

Sleep, some love it and can't wait to get into bed at night, for others it's just a waste of time. How many hours should we sleep a day? What stages do we experience during sleep? What happens in our body during them? And at what stage are we more prone to waking up, sleepwalking or talking from our sleep? This article will answer all your questions.

The cycle of sleep stages

One sleep cycle can be divided into a total of 5 phases, with 4 phases falling under NREM and 1 phase under REM. We should go through 4-5 sleep cycles during sleep.

NREM stage of sleep

NREM or NON REM phase means calm eye movement (Non Rapid Eye Movement) and is thus the opposite of the REM phase. It makes up 75-80% of the total sleep time and we can divide it into 4 stages.

NREM 1 (5-10 minutes): Falling asleep, i.e. the transition between wakefulness and sleep. The muscles relax, the brain sends out slow theta waves. Some people experience body twitches (feeling like they are "falling") and slight eye movement.

NREM 2 (20 minutes): The so-called light sleep comes, during which the body is motionless, eye movement disappears, body temperature drops and brain activity slows down even more. The brain creates waves called "sleep spindles", these prevent the transmission of sound to the auditory center . This is protection against awakening.

NREM 3 (10 minutes): This is the transition from light sleep to deep sleep. During this phase, some people experience sleepwalking, sleep talking or night terrors. During this stage of sleep, it is very difficult to wake up a sleeping person. The brain emits slow delta waves, which is why we sometimes talk about so-called delta sleep.

NREM 4 (30 minutes): Deep sleep is the deepest, strongest and longest of all stages. In addition, it is also the most important because during it tissue regeneration occurs, growth hormone is secreted, necessary energy is replenished and information is moved from short-term to long-term memory.

REM sleep phase

The REM stage of sleep means rapid eye movement (Rapid Eye Movement) and follows as the 5th stage after all 4 stages of the NREM stage of sleep have taken place. In total, it occupies 20-25% of the total sleep.

There is rapid eye movement and rapid breathing. Sometimes it is referred to as so-called paradoxical sleep, because even when we are asleep, our body shows some values ​​as in a state of wakefulness.

It is during the REM phase that dreams seem very vivid or interesting and even crazy. As we have already mentioned, the sleep cycle repeats 4x-5x and the REM phase repeats with it. It is initially short and lengthens with each completed cycle, which is why it is the longest before the actual awakening, when it can last up to 60 minutes .

How many hours of sleep is enough?

Ideally, your sleep cycle should alternate 5 times. One cycle has an average of 90 minutes, and if we multiply it by five, we get 7.5 hours. However, the REM phase becomes longer with each repetition of the cycle, so we'll round it up to 8 hours. Which is also the answer to our question. An ideal sleep that provides the body with the necessary energy, regenerates it and supplies it with enough growth hormone should last 8 hours.

Sleep hack
As you already know, each of the stages of sleep has a major effect on the organism. For this reason, we created the product Mindflow - Sleep , which helps you fall asleep and helps you increase the amount of rem and non-rem phases of sleep by improving the quality of your sleep.

Time to hack sleep.