Sleep

Lack of sleep can have grave consequences and also it affects the health. How much sleep is considered adequate? It is determined that seven hours of sleep is optimal for maintaining one's health. There is a saying `Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise'. Having adequate sleep will lead to a healthy life, however wisdom and wealth do not really equate to sleep regime let alone the lack of it.

Each night we go through three distinct stages of sleep ranging from light sleep to deep sleep and finally to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. A complete cycle consists of REM and non REM cycles. REM sleep helps in mental consolidation while non REM helps in cell growth, physical repair and rebuilding.

The earlier part of sleep is mostly non REM. The latter part of sleep is more and more REM type. To be mentally alert during the day, the latter part of sleep is more important.

Something for sharing.