Thread: A Question about Sleep Cycles

Well it actually depends on you, this is something that would vary a lot. It does depend on how long your awake yes but also on what you intend.

Everyone wake up at the end of one dream cycle. When you go back to sleep, the cycle repeats itself, with the REM time increasing in length each time. Thats why people remember more dreams in the later part of their sleep, or with longer periods of seep; the REM periods are longer in duration.

Originally Posted by The Subatomic Level

When you wake up in the middle of the night and go back to sleep, do you start a new sleep cycle or do you continue where you left off your last sleep cycle at? In other words, do you start back at stage 1 sleep or continue sleeping in the stage you were in?

Also, would it depend on how long you were awake? Would there be a difference between being awake for a few seconds as opposed to waking and walking around for 5 minutes?

I haven't really got a chance to find out for myself other than that my light sleep is one hour after falling asleep. I wake myself up during light sleep and when I go back to sleep I don't start dreaming so my guess is it restarts even when it gets interrupted. And it's shown that the body compensates the loss of REM sleep by having less non-REM sleep later in the night so if it continues where it left off why would it need to compensate?

IMJ

Originally Posted by imj

I haven't really got a chance to find out for myself other than that my light sleep is one hour after falling asleep. I wake myself up during light sleep and when I go back to sleep I don't start dreaming so my guess is it restarts even when it gets interrupted. And it's shown that the body compensates the loss of REM sleep by having less non-REM sleep later in the night so if it continues where it left off why would it need to compensate?

IMJ

Any idea what it is exactly, that causes the body to have less REM sleep in the first few sleep cycles and more in the later cycles?

You'll notice that REM and Waking are VERY close on the sleep cycle. In fact many people wake up during all thier REM periods in the night, only they forget this upon waking. Often it's more noticable if you are sharing a bed with someone new, or sleeping somewhere unfamiliar.

In general if you have woken up in the middle of the night, naturally and without disturbance, it will be during an REM period. So when you return to sleep you will either reenter REM or stage 1 sleep, depending on how long you had been in REM before waking.

If you've been woken for some other reason, i would imagine you'd fall back into that stage if you were only awake very briefly. Longer periods awake would, I am guessing, probably put you back to stage 1. That is only a guess, but It seems logical.

Originally Posted by The Subatomic Level

Any idea what it is exactly, that causes the body to have less REM sleep in the first few sleep cycles and more in the later cycles?

This is only a guess. But perhaps it because in the latter sleep cycles there are less stages to get through, so more time to be shared between the remaining stages?

Originally Posted by spaceexplorer

If you've been woken for some other reason, i would imagine you'd fall back into that stage if you were only awake very briefly. Longer periods awake would, I am guessing, probably put you back to stage 1. That is only a guess, but It seems logical.

I have been planning an experiment using this same logic. I'm thinking that if I purposefully wake myself up with an alarm after 20-30 minutes of going to sleep, then get up and move around for 5 minutes that when I go back to bed I will start the next cycle of sleep. Reducing early sleep cycles from 90 minutes to 20-30 minutes. I'm hoping that after repeating those steps 3 or 4 times I will be in the 4th of 5th sleep cycle which is mainly REM sleep.

I will then go to sleep for a normal 90 minute cycle hoping that I have vivid dream and can become lucid. I will also kind of be a WBTB strategy where I will be doing several reality checks during the 5 minute breaks in between falling asleep.

In theory, it sounds like it could work, but I'm really not sure. If it does work, one could have 3 or 4 sleep cycles in one night that mainly consist of REM sleep.

I am going to try this tonight if my hangover goes away, and see how much dreaming I can get done. With a little bit of luck, hopefully there will be some lucid dreaming involved.