Sleep Cycles

Now that you have a better understand of sleep stages, the final piece of the puzzle is sleep cycles. Instead of progressively going through each stage and waking up after reaching stage 5, the body instead goes from stage 1 to 5 multiple times in a specific order. This is known as a complete sleep cycle. To grasp this concept clearly, I have provided a graph for ease of reference!

Wasn’t that simple? Now, the way we travel through our sleep stages is as follows:
1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM…
Do you see a pattern? It repeats every 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM!
Each cycle takes about 60 – 100 min for an average person.
As you study the graph, here are a few points you might have be interested in:

•    Notice how the 1st period of deep sleep is the longest, and it gets shorter and shorter as time goes on. Toward the end, deep sleep almost becomes non – existent.
•    The 1st period of REM sleep is the shortest, and it gets longer and longer as time goes on. Toward the end, it becomes the longest.
More importantly, the graph shows that sleep becomes lighter and lighter as the night progresses. Notice how we do not spend the same amount of time in each stage of sleep.

Now, you might be wondering to yourself, how does this all relate to insomnia and snoring? Well, you must first understand how you sleep, before you can correctly diagnose your problems. Moreover, much of the terminology has already been covered in this crash course on sleep. For the visual people, here is another useful picture for understanding your sleep cycles.