 Re: erratic sleeping?
what are the differnces between light sleeping, erratic sleeping and broken sleeping?
When you're sleeping lightly, you're not in a deep sleep - you don't dream, and any minor noise in the room might easily wake you up.
I'm not familiar with the term "broken sleep," but erratic sleep refers to someone who sleeps for perhaps an hour, then wakes up and doesn't fall back to sleep for another 30 minutes. The pattern repeats throughout the night.
Also, can you help me to understand the following sentences?
1. Although drugs are often the first thing patients reach for when they can't sleep, they have a bad track record when it comes to long-term results.
Drugs (sleeping pills) can help a person who normally has no trouble sleeping, but for some reason once in a great while has a night where they just can't seem to fall asleep. A sedative will relax them and help them to sleep soundly. However, if a person begins taking a sleeping pill every single night, eventually he will get to the point where he is unable to sleep without them. He will also build up a tolerance to them, meaning eventually he'll need two pills to sleep, then later three, etc. It is better to find out what the actual medical reason for his lack of sleep is, rather than to just prescribe pills and not investigate any further.
2. REM sleep rests the mind, allowing it to sort through the day's activities and experiences in order to 'file' them for future reference.Deprivation of either of these will have different effects ...
(also, what either of these indicate????)
REM sleep means "Rapid Eye Movement sleep." There is a point during a person's sleep when his eyes move very rapidly back and forth, up and down, while his eyelids are still closed. (The movements are so pronounced, however, you can see the lids twitching and moving.) This is the "deep sleep" mode; the person's brain is unwinding, sort of like a computer dumping its files. The neurons in your brain are almost as active as when you are awake. There are two separate parts of your brain involved in memory: one that creates new memories, and one that stores them so that you remember them. During REM sleep, those new images/activities that your experienced during the day are sorted out by the brain and filed away. While all this is going on, it often causes you to dream, sometimes very vividly. Luckily, during REM sleep the brain also shuts down the neurotransmitters to your muscles, so that you're not physically moving around in bed, reacting to your dreams. (People who walk in their sleep suffer from a slight malfunction in this part of the REM sleep process.)
The brain and body require a certain amount of REM sleep in order to regenerate and re-energize. Folks that suffer from sleep apnea will feel drowsy during the day, their minds will feel dull and fuzzy, and their reflexes and reactions might be slower than normal.
3. But people often underestemiate the amount of sleep they get, simply because the minutes spent lying awake, trying to get to sleep, appear to go slowly.
Many people will complain to their doctor "I hardly sleep at night...I probably don't get more than four hours of sleep..." But then, when an actual sleep study is performed, it is revealed that the person is getting seven or eight hours of actual sleep. The problem is, while they're lying in bed awake, waiting to fall asleep, every minute seems like an hour. They keep looking at the clock, thinking "I've got to fall asleep! Why can't I fall asleep?" After they do fall asleep, when they wake up in the morning, all they remember is that long, agonizing time they spent watching the clock the night before.  | 
Linear Mode
