If you are having a tough time getting to sleep it’s essential that comprehending sleep mechanics and what makes up a healthy night of rest may be instrumental in comprehending why you have a sleep complaint. Rest is not as easy as you believe because you are not necessarily conscious or asleep. There are a number of things that occur as soon as you start to drift off to slumber that defines how well you will rest.

Drowsiness is the first stage of sleeping as your feel yourself let go, your muscles fall into a limp state, and your eyes will drift closed on their own. This stage usually lasts only a few minutes somewhere around ten full minutes. The next stage is light stage often called stage two and in this stage both breathing rate plus temperature retreat. Your pulse will also become slower at this point in the sleep process.

You can say stage three and four are determined to be deep sleep and are where normally you should have a problem being woken up. You will possibly feel very dazed and incoherent but this important sleep stage allows your brain to rest while the circulatory system slows, at which point it begins to rejuvenate the body. There is also a heightened level of immune work that occurs during these two vital stages of your good night’s rest.

Stage five is considered REM sleep and is generally considered the dreaming period of the REM sleep cycle. Moving in and out of the REM cycle occurs often so you might have anywhere from three to five 70-90 minute long sessions within the REM. This cycle is characterized by some physical breathing conditions both irregular and shallow. There may also be your heart quickening as a rise in blood pressure.

This important time in the sleep stage is designed to assist in the processing of emotions and to help relieve stress with each of the sleep cycles providing a benefit to the person sleeping. Light sleepers are trapped in stage two and cannot seem to get to stages three and four where sleep does the best for us. People who have difficulty waking up likely are stuck in the deeper parts of sleep and rise suddenly when they wake up rather than travel through each stage on the way to waking up.

The stages of sleep also change based on how much time you spent in each cycle the evenings before, so if you spend more time in deep sleep one night the next night you may spend more time in REM or light sleep. Ultimately however it balances out and you will spend about the same average over time in all of the sleep stages. This is one of the reasons why it is stated that you won’t catch up on sleep but you can always make up on lost rest.