What if restless nights are normal instead of the exception?
Sleep deprivation isn't just bad for us, it's also bad for people around us: tens of thousands of traffic accidents are attributed to sleepy drivers every year.
What is sleep?
Sleep is made up of different stages. The ten-minute period of light sleep (drifting off from wakefulness) is called Stage One. Stage Two is deeper and lasts about 20 minutes. Stages Three and Four come after this, and are types of deep sleep.
Deep sleep is the part of sleep that our body and brain needs to recover from the day. It's sometimes called delta sleep, after the delta waves the brain generates. We don't dream during this time. After about 90 minutes of deep sleep, rapid eye movement sleep begins.
During a normal night, people usually cycle through the various stages several times. Problems arise when the pattern of cycles is broken.