The " asleep you" can tell me everything I need to know to get you to a great night sleep every night. The " awake you"can tell me what you remember about your sleep but that’s about it. When you come to see us to help you sleep there are two people I need to meet, the " awake you" and the " asleep you". For our patients we start with a home sleep study or some prefer to go to a sleep center for their study. If you are having problems falling asleep, staying asleep all night, or falling asleep during the day you can be helped. For many of us that is not something we do every night. The only way to ensure you are not sleep deprived is to sleep and sleep properly so you go through all your stages. Hopefully you are still on the road after this happens. It puts you to deep sleep for a split second and then wakes you up. When this occurs the brain essentially shuts off and on very rapidly. The problem is when REM Flood occurs but you’re not at home to sleep safely in your bed. They are sleep deprived and make up for it with daily short naps between sleep. For some people that work really long hours or late at night they take very short but very restful “power naps”. Your brain is “flooding itself” with REM sleep. This allows your brain to make up for the lost REM sleep it needs. It’s when your brain puts you straight to sleep and you cycle very quickly through stages 1, 2, and 3, and stay in REM stage longer. I slept for about 10 hours! This is called REM Flood. I remember coming back to my apartment after the final and I crashed on the couch. For 2-3 days I went with maybe 4 hours of sleep. I can remember staying awake all night in dental school studying for neurology finals. When this happens you can fall asleep no matter what you’re doing. If you stay sleep deprived long enough your brain will eventually demand REM stage sleep. This means your brain did not get enough REM stage sleep. So if something is affecting your sleep all night you may not go through your sleep stages enough times. When something breaks your sleep cycle you start back at stage 1. But you don’t start back where you left off at stage three. You take a deep breath, roll over and fall right back asleep. You’re losing air while you’re snoring so your brain wakes you up for a split second. You’re just about to enter stage 3 when you start to snore. Snoring, sleep apnea, clenching/grinding, excess alcohol, and even certain anxiety drugs can cause breaks in your sleep cycle. The problem comes in when something breaks your sleep cycle. And if you do sleep through all your stages continually all night you will wake up feeling great and rested. The only way to get REM sleep is to continually sleep though all four stages over and over every night. There is no pill, diet or supplement to get REM sleep. About 20% of our sleep should be REM stage. Our brain must have a certain amount of REM stage sleep. You cannot skip any stages and you repeat the cycle all night. During sleep we cycle from stage 1 to 2 to 3 and then REM sleep over and over. We do most of our dreaming in this stage. This is the stage where we process data and memories in our brain. In this stage our muscles, skin, and hair grows, our hormones are regulated, our blood pressure is regulated, and we get deep restful sleep. This is the stage where our body “reboots” itself like a computer. It is also the stage where clench and grind our teeth the most. In stage 2 our heart rate and body temperature lower. Stage 2 is the transition stage between light sleep and deep sleep. If I said your name during this stage you would wake up. It should take you about 10-20 minutes to reach stage one when you lay down to sleep. When we sleep we go through four stages, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, and REM. REM Flood comes from being sleep deprived because you’re not getting proper sleep. REM Flood! Your brain put you to sleep at the worst possible time. And you could feel yourself wanting to fall asleep. Why does this happen? How can you go from awake to asleep in a split second? Well you were probably very tired to begin with. Scariest part is the 1-2 seconds after you wake back up your still going 75 mph and your disoriented!!! And for some it ends tragically with an auto accident. And almost without warning your heads falls down and pops back up because you just fell asleep! It’s happened to me too. It’s so scary when this happens! You’re driving down the interstate at 75mph or you’re in heavy traffic.
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