As important is work for our efficiency, sleep is equally important. You must have heard about many articles and expert speaking about the importance of sleep in a day. Everyone recommends that a person must take rest for atleast 7-9 hours in a day. However no one talks about the quality of sleep a person takes. If you are not having a goodnights sleep, then no matter for how many hours you sleep, you body would not be able to relax and improve its efficiency. Today we will know about importance of deep sleep. This is related to quality of sleep a person needs to have, let us check out different conditions that affect this sleep.
What is Deep Sleep?
We spoke to Dr. Sumeet Nigam, General Physician from Sahara Hospital, Lucknow to understand the concept of deep sleep. Deep sleep is basically a concept in which you tend to have good quality sleep for atleast 7 hours in a day. Not just the timing of sleep is also important to give rest to the body. Deep sleep is not the actual time or period of sleep the body takes, in fact it is the period of time where the brain function also slows down and most of the functions in the body take rest. Also if you are in deep sleep, then it is hard to wake up that person and thus determines the stage of deep sleep cycle.
Different Stages of Deep Sleep
There are different stages in which deep sleep is categorised into. It mostly depends in the brief period of time spent by the person to know about their deep sleep cycle.
It is briefly divided into 2 categories REM and non REM sleep.
Non-REM sleep
This is the period of time that lasts for just several minutes after you sleep. Stage 1 of deep sleep is limited to few minutes of deep sleep amongst total hours of sleep.
During Stage 1
In this stage some of the body functions start working slower than usual. These functions constitute of heartbeat, respiration and eye movements.
- Your muscles also becomes relaxed during this stage of occasional twitches
- Your brain waves actually start flowing to the level where the processing becomes slow in the wakeful state.
During stage 2
Stage 2 of deep sleep is actually more prevalent and can account for almost 50% of the total sleep cycle. In this stage there are also chances of falling into other categories or stages of deep sleep. In the second stage, here are the following-
- Body functions in different system becomes slow for quite a while
- The core temperature of the body drops
- Eye movement stops
- The brain function and waves present in the body also begin to get slower and becomes more relaxed. This may happen except for short time of activity which might be important for the brain.
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During combined stage 3 and stage 4
During these combined stages of deep sleep, the muscles start to become relaxed and more functions become slow. Both these stages of deep sleep last for around 45-90 minutes among the total number of sleep cycle you take. In stage 3 and 4, following things tend to happen-
- Your heartbeat starts to feel relaxed and slows down
- Muscle functions also becomes slower
- Waves of the brain during this stage can become slowest in the stage while you are asleep
- It becomes difficult to wake that person even by creating loud noises.
REM sleep
This is the other type of sleep which falls under deep sleep. In this stage the deep sleep occurs for almost 90 minutes in total and can cause problems during non-REM stages. During this stage following things can happen-
- Eye movement actually start moving from side to side
- You may experience dreams and the brain activity increases into a wakeful state
- The heart rate of the person increases over time
- Breathing of the limbs become faster and irregular at times
- Limb function may tend to become paralysed or abnormal
What are the Benefits of having Deep Sleep?
There are number of benefits that you can have because of getting deep sleep. One of the most important benefits of deep sleep is that it actually increases the glucose metabolism which creates a positive impact on your brain. Your brain starts working more efficiently because of deep sleep and can be more beneficial in long term benefits. It could possibly be beneficial for pituitary gland secretion and hormones related to it.
Other benefits of having deep sleep include-
- Restoration of energy in the body
- Cell regeneration
- Increase blood supply to the muscles
- Promoting growth and repair of the muscles tissues and bones
- Strengthening the immune system
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Risk Factors of not getting enough deep sleep
There may be certain condition that could possibly lead you to diseases and problems because of not getting enough deep sleep. This can include-
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Heart disease
- Stroke
- Diabetes
- Sleepwalking
- Night terrors
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