Typically, an average person will spend around 3000 hours a year sleeping and unfortunately, some people have a lot of trouble sleeping and continuously seek out the best sleep aids available to help them. However, you may often ask, “what is sleep and why do we need it”?

So tell me, what is sleep? Sleep patterns follow a set cycle every night we try to go to sleep; that of REM (rapid eye movement) that is when most dreaming occurs and non-rapid REM. This cycle will repeat several times a night. Although an infant spends around half their sleep time in REM, the average adult will only spend about twenty percent in a REM sleep pattern.

Research has suggested that non-REM sleep consists of four stages prior to reaching REM sleep. During Stage one, we may feel half awake as well as half asleep but this is the time our muscles begin to relax. Stage one lasts for around ten minutes and is then followed by Stage two for a further twenty minutes. It is during this time when we are fully asleep that our heart rate and breathing will slow down. While Stage two lasts the longest, we then enter Stage three and our deep sleep pattern changes our heart rate and breathing levels to their lowest. Finally, we reach the final Stage where if any one attempts to wake us they would be met with a somewhat grumpy reception! The stages of non-REM sleep will typically last for around 90 minutes prior to REM sleep beginning.

During REM sleep and although we are not aware, our brain is particularly active and our eyes are exceptionally so (hence the term, rapid eye movement). Although your body is resting when you are asleep, your brain is certainly not. Scientists are now able to record brain activity through the use of expensive equipment, and resulting sleep studies show that different areas of the brain are certainly very active. The time when we may dream and sleepwalk is when we are in REM sleep. This is also the time our breathing rate and blood pressure begins to rise although the body will not respond to this. It is often suggested that this could be nature’s way of protecting us from harming ourselves when we dream.

As we are all individuals, the amount of sleep we require to function properly differs. As a rule of thumb, if you don’t feel sleepy during the day you are probably getting sufficient sleep. Sadly, many of us either do not get the opportunity for enough sleep or, when the opportunity arises we find we can’t sleep anyway and continuously look for how to get a good nights sleep!

Hopefully this quick what is sleep overview will have been of help to you. If you feel you body has become ‘out of sync’ with your normal sleep patterns, try some of the all natural sleep aids that are available today.