Our sleep goes through four stages (or three stages): falling asleep, shallow sleep and deep sleep (deep sleep and deep sleep can be combined into deep sleep stage). After falling asleep, the human body will sleep deeper and deeper, and after reaching the deep sleep stage, the sleep will go from deep to shallow. This change from shallow sleep to deep sleep and then from deep sleep to shallow sleep is called sleep cycle. Adults experience about 5-6 sleep cycles (7-8 hours of sleep) every night. This sleep cycle is called NREM or non-rapid eye movement sleep. REM sleep occurs between sleep cycles-REM sleep or dreamy sleep. Dreams occur during REM sleep. Let's look at the complete pattern of sleep: falling asleep-shallow sleep-deep sleep-shallow sleep -——REM sleep-deep sleep-shallow sleep ... and so on until we wake up. This shows that everyone has a dream!
The existence of REM sleep means that everyone dreams every night! NREM sleep and REM sleep alternate all night, and REM sleep is getting longer and longer, which is why people dream more in the morning. But sometimes we remember our dreams clearly, and sometimes we don't even remember them. Why? That's because if you wake up after REM sleep (wake up after a dream or wake up soon after a dream), your memory of the dream will be very clear; If you wake up after a light sleep-a deep sleep after rapid eye movement sleep-the memory of your dreams will become blurred or even forgotten.
Psychologists and medical scientists have found an interesting study: depriving people of REM sleep will produce REM rebound effect, which means that people are not allowed to dream at night, and people will dream more the next night! The longer the dream is deprived continuously, the more people there are, and the longer the dream will be! People need dreams! Deprivation of dreams can cause anxiety, irritability and inattention to varying degrees. This can well explain why those who are addicted to alcohol and sleeping pills will have more serious sleep disorders after abstinence and detoxification, because alcohol and sleeping pills can put people in deep NREM sleep stage, thus inhibiting REM sleep. Once they stop using these things, too strong REM rebound effect will hinder their sleep, causing them to be afraid of sleeping and start drinking and taking drugs again.
? Sleep knowledge can be used to promote high-quality sleep. It is often difficult for people to wake up in deep sleep, even if they are woken up, they will feel tired; Wake up after a light sleep 15 minutes (equivalent to natural awakening) and be more energetic; Sometimes I feel particularly tired after sleeping for a long time, because the sleep structure is unreasonable: the shallow sleep time is long and the deep sleep time is too short. During shallow sleep, the autonomic nerves of human body are still in a state of tension, and muscles and nerves are still tense. If you are in this state most of the night, it is strange that people are not tired after waking up! If you want to have a good sleep quality, you have to ensure a deep sleep time. Unfortunately, some people can't go into deep sleep at all. If you want to wake up and be energetic immediately, you should wake up in a shallow sleep or naturally, instead of being awakened or awakened in a deep sleep; If you want to remember dreams, you should wake up after REM sleep. If you want to wake up happily and don't remember your dreams, you have to go through a light sleep-a light sleep after REM sleep. Sleep quality has an important relationship with our health and happiness! If we can understand some simple sleep principles, it will be helpful to improve our quality of life!