FAQ: Nature of Sleep

7 facts about one of the most important processes in human life to 60th anniversary of the discovery quickly, or REM sleep, the period in which we have dreams.

• 1.Opening of REM sleep

With the discovery of REM sleep, which occurred in 1953, and began the scientific study of sleep and dreams. Prior to this, all attempts were largely pre-scientific character, because there was no objective method of recording the state of sleep and distinguish it from other states: wakefulness, abnormal sleep, narcotic sleep, coma and so on. Over the past 60 years has accumulated a huge material and each year bring research in this area of stunning new discoveries and completely overturn all our ideas about what is a dream and waking, and what they need.

October 18, 2013 in the journal "Science" published another sensational article, which is now translated worldwide. This article is about the fact that a group of scientists working in the United States, found quite unusual phenomenon associated with sleep and with previously unknown drainage system of the brain, which, as it turns out, is opened during a long sleep and helps wash away harmful products accumulate until we cheerful .

With the discovery of REM sleep, all the idea of sleep and wakefulness are overturned, it became clear that the dream of man - it is not monotonic condition was thought to this, and a very complex process, in which a strict cyclical and each cycle has a phase - this phase REM sleep and slow, and slow wave sleep stage and there are stages. All of these concepts (cycles, phases and stages) - the three pillars on which the building is constructed somnology.

• 2.The structure of night sleep

In humans, cycles last one and a half hours, that is, when we fall asleep at night, we are immersed in a particular world that exists within us, and is dictated by our genes. We can not do anything to change it, we have arranged, and this dictates a certain state - specific, very strict sequence of events. This sequence is the same for all people in the world regardless of age, sex, nationality, race and individual characteristics.

Night sleep is very rigidly structured. When we fall asleep, we are immersed in the hour and a half cycles. Most people are less than five cycles, it is 7.5 hours, the proverbial 8-hour sleep. However, not all alike. Some people need a sixth cycle, and 8.5 hours of sleep to them a little, and there are even those that fit into a smaller number of hours and time to three or four cycles to pass the necessary processes. But most people need five cycles, this is due to genetic structure, and not a habit or laziness, as previously thought.

• 3.Why do we need sleep

Sleep is essential for normal operation in the waking state. If you think you can save time and day longer to work - it is an illusion, because if you save a part of the dream, you can only dig or spud beds because such work can be done in half asleep, not having slept, but no intellectual the work you perform can not. You are just going to sleep with my eyes open, thinking that you are cheerful, and no problem is resolved.

So that’s why we advice to buy Phenibut, Afobazol.

As we have seen in recent decades, very dangerous situation when the people sitting behind the monitor and perform a very important job, do not get enough sleep or work the night shift. All men are divided by their genetic characteristics of those who can easily stand vigil, and those who are hard to tolerate them. People of the second type in any case can not be brought to a night job as transportation management, they should not work operators of airports, nuclear power plants and so on. It is difficult to carry, and night appear spontaneous periods of sleep, and often it happens unconsciously. It seems that people vigorous, but in fact he falls asleep, and his attention is turned off. A related set of industrial and transportation accidents that have taken place in recent years in particular, the infamous Chernobyl accident. All these disasters have occurred at a time when the operator was the maximum drowsiness, - about an hour of the night, one of the peaks of sleepiness, drowsiness second peak occurs about five o'clock in the morning.

• 4.Sleep deprivation as a way to treat

Modern Somnology turned the presentation, which was a zealous supporter of Pavlov, that dream in all cases is healing, healing factor. As it turned out, in many cases, healing abnormalities may be just the sleep deprivation. Who is such a widespread phenomenon as depression, which affects a large percentage of the urban population, especially female, is very clearly associated with sleep disorders and sleep deprivation in this case is a tool for non-medicamental treatment: as long as a person does not sleep, he does not feel depressed. But enough for even a short period of sleep, as the depressed mood returns.

During REM sleep the brain is working as intensively as in the wake of the most active when we are sharp and strong emotions. And in this state, we saturated dream dreams, and there are strong disruption of the heart and respiration, which can be dangerous for the elderly and patients with lung and cardiovascular diseases. No wonder one of the morning peak of mortality from strokes and heart attacks close to the early pre-dawn hours, when the maximum is presented REM sleep.

• 5.The role of sleep in the evolution

It makes a complete overhaul of sleep mechanisms and the need for it. And if in respect of a slow, normal sleep, dreamless sleep some ideas looming, they are all connected with the rest of the brain. But the rest of the nervous system is not like the rest of the musculoskeletal system. When we relax the muscles, we can just lie down, and when our brain is resting, we must completely shut down our sensory system, disconnect from the outside world, to withdraw into himself, does not accept, go to the state, which is dangerous for life in the wild . If this state is maintained evolution in all mammals and birds, which means that it provided an advantage for survival.

What is this advantage, it is not clear, but in relation to conventional or orthodox, non-REM sleep has a number of synonyms in the Russian language, which explains the term. They are all related in some degree with relaxation, with utilization of degradation products in the brain, with their excretion. In addition, there is an interesting hypothesis of Pigar¸v Ivan, who showed experimentally that in this state, the switches of the brain with the perception of the external information on the perception of the interior. Inside information, information of our internal organs, begins to arrive in those parts of the brain that, when we are cheerful, associated with the perception of visual stimuli, auditory, and so on.
Now the idea of this completely different in connection with the discovery of the drainage system of the brain, which opens when we fall asleep, and closes when we are cheerful.

• 6.The processes occurring in the body during sleep

There are other hypotheses. Ivan Pigar¸v believes that during REM sleep the nerve cells of sensory systems in the cerebral cortex like "turning into the organism" and begin not to analyze the information that comes from the senses, as in the waking state, and the one that comes from the internal organs (from the intestine, heart), their work is reduced. With this, he believes, it is linked a number of disorders that arise when a person is deprived of sleep, crossing time zones and changing the rhythm of life. In particular, disorders of the gastrointestinal system, which is very characteristic for such situations may be related to the fact that the brain is disrupted control all peripheral organs and systems.

Regarding REM sleep there is only a hypothesis, and despite the huge amount of work in relation to this point, yet the real facts on which to base the theory on functions of this state.

• 7.Activation of the brain during sleep

In humans, sleep is organized so that the first half of the night we sleep mostly slow sleep, and the other half - fast. This purely human phenomenon associated with certain social, civilizational factors. Therefore, the two halves of the night is very important and, saving the expense of the morning hours, getting up early in the morning, we deprive ourselves of sleep is very important periods.
What exactly is this need, we do not fully understand. But it is known that at this time there is an exceptionally high brain activation. This discovery, which happened six decades ago, it was striking precisely because no one imagined that during sleep we regularly, every half hour, firstly, have dreams, and secondly, these dreams are associated with extremely high activation of the brain . At the same time the muscular system is completely switched off, ie the person is paralyzed, he was sprawled on the bed, and the brain at the same time extremely rapidly running, the subject is experiencing something, and these experiences are reflected in the dreams that we see.

This condition is likely, it is vital because of sleep deprivation experimental efforts suggest that the animals do not survive this experiment; sleep deprivation affects the behavior breaks during waking hours and in the end leads to death of the animals.

What is the need for this condition remains unknown. But it has been preserved in mammals and birds, although, as is known, they have evolved in different ways and received thermoregulation independently. Nevertheless, the emergence of thermoregulation in these evolutionary branches was accompanied by the appearance of two phases of sleep. In cold-blooded animals sleep is monotonic, the person has a certain analogy with the cold-blooded against the slow sleep stage, but that is due to the rapid evolution, it remains unclear phase.