REM Cycle Question

I have a little question. I know that when you go to sleep at night, it takes you about 90 minutes to get to the first REM stage which lasts 10 minutes. Through the night the N-REM decreases and the REM increases. It can reach 45 minutes. Now, what happens after I wake up? Is the N-REM continuing to decrease and REM to increase? It stays the same? If it stays the same then why do we have another 90 minutes of N-REM when we go again to sleep in the evening? :bored:

No one?

I’m not really sure… I guess it might have to do with the levels of serotonin and melatonin. During the night, as you sleep, one decreases and the other increases. Then during the day they go backwards. That’s just a guess though :content:

Is double posting allowed in this forum?

Anyways, your body resets your sleep cycle everytime you wake up… Well thats what I think =/

Thats why WBTB doesnt affect your sleep cycle I think.

It is about needs. There is a use for N-REM sleep which seems to have to do with the body. During deep sleep we restore our physical body. As this restoration or refreshing is nearing completion the closer we are to morning, the less deep sleep we need. When we don’t need much deep sleep, REM sleep gets to dominate. We seem to have a need for that as well, but it is less understood what it does. As we use our body during the day, it is natural for us to take care of the physical restoration first, before focusing on the REM sleep. Some scientists contend that REM sleep is not that important, and have found that people who are deprived of it with chemicals, are not impaired, while other studies show such severe effects as hallucinations, if REM sleep is interrupted. And if you are deprived of REM sleep for a time, you get REM rebound once you are no longer deprived. Similarly, if you have worked hard, physically, during the day you tend to have more deep sleep. This speaks for a needs-based distribution of REM vs. deep sleep.
So the answer to your question may be that the N-REM sleep does not continue to decrease, because you build up a need for deep sleep by being active during the day.

I’m not following you :meh:

If you use WBTB, your sleep will probably be lighter, thus you should get more REM seleep and less NREM one, but no one has studied thsi particolar situation, so i guess no one can say for sure how waking up in the night affects our sleep cycle (normally it would be connected to sleep disorders, thus studied for a completely different reason and with results that are uninformative for normal dreamers)

For the NREM nap, you need to get a habit of it. With time (and regular practice), the nap decreases naturally in duration (down to 20-30 mins) and becomes almost pure REM sleep, thus its usefulness for LD.