Oh, sleep… It's an activity most of us love—and one of the most important processes for our survival.
As a child we resisted it, as an adult, we can’t seem to get enough of it. Most first-year students name sleep as one of their non-negotiables—one of the things they will not sacrifice no matter how difficult medical school gets for them.
Yet when the going gets tough, sleep tends to be one of the first things to suffer. Sometimes minutes or hours are shaved off our slumber time, while other times disturbances in sleep occur. Any change to your sleep cycle or patterns can have huge consequences to your overall health and well-being. This month, I would like to share some sleep research and tips to help you create healthy sleeping habits.
Most folks have heard about the cycles of sleep, but just in case, let's do a quick refresher. There are four stages of sleep that we experience each night. Three stages are referred to as non-rapid eye movement sleep. The fourth is REM, or the rapid-eye movement stage of sleep.
Stages one through three are important for our bodies and brains, but we are really here to focus on REM sleep. Its considered to be the most important stage for mental processes such as learning and memorization. You read that right: you need REM sleep to retain information. Here is the real 'tea' on REM sleep…
On a typical night, a person should have approximately four to six sleep cycles. Earlier sleep cycles tend to be shorter than later sleep cycles. The amount of time you spend in each stage changes as the night goes on. As sleep progressives, REM sleep will lengthen, giving you more time to process information, emotions, and improve other essential cognitive functions.
If you are someone who gets by on a couple of hours of sleep, you may be missing out on valuable REM sleep, which helps your brain solidify the important information you're taking in during the day. Naps may be able to get you through the day, but finding that slow-wave sleep sweet spot is tricky.
It might be better to aim for a full seven to eight hours to ensure you get enough REM stages to fully process all of the amazing things you are learning these days. Otherwise, you are really cutting yourself short.
