Improving the Quality of Sleep
Okay, so we’ve seen that your sleep progresses in cycles and each cycle consists of different stages of sleep. What is the significance of this, why is this so important? Research has shown that it’s the lack of deep sleep that negatively impacts daytime functioning. When we are deprived of deep sleep, we are most likely to feel drowsy and have trouble staying focused during the day. Other uncomfortable effects of deep sleep deprivation are nausea, headaches, and aching muscles. In other words, the more deep sleep we obtain the better our performance and energy levels the next day. Therefore, deep sleep restores your physical energy because during deep sleep blood flows to your muscles rather than to your brain, thereby rejuvenating your physical energy.
Our body’s natural behavior gives us other clues to the importance of deep sleep. For example if for any reason you don’t get enough sleep one night your brain will compensate for this by increasing the percentage of deep sleep obtained the next night. Remember also that most deep sleep occurs during the early sleep cycles, which may be a clue of the relative importance of this stage: it occurs in the period that is least likely to be missed. What is the one most important thing we can we learn from all this? Since deep sleep is what replenishes your physical energy (and since our focus is on maximizing energy), then deep sleep is equal to quality sleep. Deep sleep is the most rejuvenating stage of sleep, and you get most of your deep sleep in the early sleep cycles. Your sleep then becomes gradually lighter as the night progresses, which means that the quality of your sleep diminishes. Your ability to control and maximize deep sleep rests upon your ability to control your underlying natural sleep clock. This is your built-in sleep system that governs your sleep.
Chances are you are doing many things that are systematically making a mess of your natural sleep rhythm. Most people in the western world engage in a plethora of activities that suppress the deep sleep stage, keeping you in lighter, less physically restorative stages. We will examine these factors later on, but first I will give you an understanding of how this inner sleep system works.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:01 am
I have had a terrible time trying to sleep for about 3 years on and off.
I get nervous and then I can’t sleep and then I get more nervous and pretty soon it is midnight and I have to rollout at 4 AM.What can you suggest for me.
Thank you
Loren Snesrud