#Deep vs light vs rem sleep how to#

So, assuming you’ve done this already, and just woken up after a night’s sleep, you should head over to your Health app on your iPhone, then tap Browse then Sleep where you can see the quality of sleep you’re getting.

#Deep vs light vs rem sleep how to#

Here's how to set up and use the Sleep app in Apple Watch: everything you need to know to get started is there. Setting Apple Watch up for sleep tracking does require fiddling about in some menus, but luckily for you we’ve already produced a guide to doing it. If you’re working from home, like most of Apple seem to do, then charge it after you’ve finished your work hours. Anybody who has an Apple Watch knows that a single charge only lasts about a day, so you’re going to have to create a new schedule for your life that means you charge your Apple Watch before bed - we’d suggest putting it straight on its magnetic charger the moment you get home from work, or wake up. Wearing your Apple Watch at night might be a strange concept to many of us who, rightly, use that time to charge the device after we’ve gone to bed. What this means is you’ll have to wear your Apple Watch to bed, then pick up your iPhone in the morning to judge the quality of sleep you got. Alcohol and quality sleep do not mix well.The Apple Watch and the iPhone - together they can work wonders. REM sleep is also very susceptible to the negative effects of alcohol, just like deep sleep.This is ideal just before your alarm goes off. It stimulates the central nervous system, preparing us to wake up. REM sleep is no longer assumed to be just restorative it is also preparatory.If you wake briefly several times a night but fall back to sleep, you have not missed any of the good stuff. REM is often followed by brief periods of wakefulness, which are normal in a sleep cycle.

It is incredibly creative in the connections it attempts beyond what our daytime thinking is capable of.

REM also helps us make connections our brain wouldn’t even dare try during the day.

REM sleep assists memory differently than deep sleep, focusing on social-emotional memories and even salvaging forgotten memories.It strengthens memories the night after you learn something new, like clicking “Save” for a new document. However, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing quicken, and our eyes dart beneath our eyelids, thus named rapid-eye-movement sleep, regardless of whether we are dreaming.Dreams commonly occur during REM sleep, but muscles lose all tone, which prevents (most of) us from acting out our dreams.REM usually occurs later in a 90-minute sleep cycle and commonly just before waking.REM brain waves are shorter than delta waves and are not synchronized like deep wave sleep.It is called paradoxical sleep for this reason. REM Sleep is quite different from the other stages because the brain appears awake, but the body stays immobile.Source: bruniewska/Shutterstock REM Sleep Things that zap deep sleep include alcohol, benzodiazepines, opioid medications, lack of activity, and oversleeping ( sleeping past your regular wake-up time).The research is clear: we need deep wave sleep to be well. When we lack deep wave sleep, our risk for almost every disease goes up.Growth hormone production occurs in deep sleep and both decrease with age.(Thank goodness because it is difficult to wake from deep sleep, and if someone or something dares do this, you may feel disoriented and irritable). Deep sleep tends to disappear in the last cycles of the night when REM increases.The brain seems to prioritize it, dipping down into deep sleep about an hour after you nod off and then a few more times throughout the night. Deep sleep is more prevalent in the first half of the night.This “neural resonance” may help the lymphatic system cleanse our brains by flushing them of beta-amyloid plaques and misshapen proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease.It is synchronized with other brain waves, unlike the disharmony of wave patterns during REM sleep. Deep sleep is generated from the frontal lobe and displays the brain at its most coordinated.Deep sleep occurs after shallow sleep (Stages 1 and 2) within a 90-minute sleep cycle.Slow delta brain waves oscillate at about two to four waves per second and make up less than 25 percent of our nightly slumber.I like to think of it as when our sleep sleeps. Deep sleep is one type, the deepest type of non-REM sleep.

It goes by many names, including delta wave sleep (its predominant brain wave), Stage 3-4, Stage 3 or Stage 4 Sleep.