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Do you Need to Change your Sleep Schedule?


First off, what is sleep? Sleep is a natural state of mind where there is an altered consciousness. There are four stages of sleep, three of which are NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement). The other is called REM (Rapid Eye Movement). During NREM stage one, you and your brain are still partially awake and the brain waves begin to slow down to 4-7 HZ (Hertz- a cycle per second.). In the first stage, you lose muscle tone and most conscious awareness. During NREM stage two, the sleeper becomes hard to wake up and sleep spindles (a burst of repeating brain activity) range from 11 to 16 Hz. Conscious awareness completely disappears during NREM Stage Two. Then, there is NREM Stage Three, also known as “deep sleep.” During NREM Stage 3, in which the delta waves range from 0-4 Hz. Lastly, there is the REM stage, when most of the bodies muscles are paralyzed and all the vital signs slow down or drop, dreams are also possible.

So, how much sleep do we really need? This can vary on health, previous amounts of sleep, and how you feel (attitude). In other words, it is not exact to each person and depends on the individual. In ages six to thirteen, most children need about seven to twelve hours of sleep every night. In ages fourteen to seventeen, most need about seven to eleven hours of sleep. The only way to find your perfect amount of sleep is testing, do you feel energetic all day, do you feel good? Another thing that matters is the quality of sleep, the most important stage of sleep is REM, if you are not getting REM sleep, you will feel as if you never get enough sleep, no matter how many combined hours you sleep. “You may be sleep deprived if you… need an alarm clock in order to wake up on time, rely on the snooze button, have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, feel sluggish in the afternoon, get sleepy in meetings, lectures, or warm rooms, get drowsy after heavy meals or when driving, need to nap to get through the day, fall asleep while watching TV or relaxing in the evening, feel the need to sleep in on weekends, or fall asleep within five minutes of going to bed.” You can only change your sleep schedule slowly, you may go to sleep 10 minutes early each night until you get to the amount of time you need.

(https://www.helpguide.org/articles/sleep/how-much-sleep-do-you-need.htm#hours).

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