Many of us spend around 30% of our entire lives asleep. It’s patently obvious that we get tired, and sleeping recharges our batteries so to speak. But even to this day, scientists are finding out more and more about what our bodies, and particularly our brains do when we sleep. Until the 1950s, scientists believed that during sleep, our brains as well as our bodies went into a dormant mode. However, since then we’ve discovered that the brain continues to work diligently while our body rests. During sleep, our brain cycles between REM sleep and non-REM sleep (rapid eye movement). Non-REM sleep comes first, and it’s in this time that our heart rate slows and our body temperature drops, before entering deep sleep. It’s in deep sleep that our body and mind recovers the most. About 90 minutes after falling asleep, we enter into REM sleep, which is the period related to dreaming. Our eyeballs move around very quickly behind our closed eyelids, and our brain waves become as active as they are when we are awake. This brainwave activity is the reason why we dream during this phase. Our breathing speeds up and our bodies become paralyzed to protect us while we dream. Dreaming is an essential part of sleep as well, as it’s widely believed that this helps us store memories and work through our subconscious thoughts. On a normal night, we tend to go through this whole sleep cycle five or six times. If your alarm clock wakes you up in the morning in the middle of a dream, it’s an indication that you didn’t get not a perfect night’s sleep. Ideally, we should cycle out of REM sleep before our bodies wake up. To that end, people who claim to sleep very well and wake up rested, often don’t remember much of their dreams at all!
