Is waking yourself up in REM detrimental?

A lot of methods for getting lucid dreams or remembering dreams seem to involved waking yourself up during REM sleep, since you're dreaming then (for example, setting your alarm clock at three intervals in the night). I've just recently joined this site and so far I've just been trying to remember my dreams when I naturally wake up.

But in my Psych class at school, we have been learning about sleeping and dreaming lately, and one of the topics is theories about WHY we dream and what the importance of REM sleep is. My teacher mentioned a study in which subjects would sleep for the night at the lab, and their brain waves would be monitored by an EEG. Every time the scientists saw that the subject went into REM sleep, they would wake him up. They did this for consecutive nights (I'm not sure exactly how long). They found that the subject's memory was worse the next day, and also once they finally let the subject sleep uninterrupted for a whole night, the percentage of REM sleep out of the total sleep for that night was MUCH higher than normal. So his body needed REM sleep.

I'm just wondering if people find that when they wake themselves up all the time in REM, their sleep isn't as fulfilling. I want to eventually lucid dream, but I have to say I am concerned about cutting up my sleep, which isn't anything abundant in the first place.

What do people think?

I started lucid dreaming without getting myself up. And my recall seems not to be much affected by when I get up (although it helps if I write my dream down just after I wake from it). The early dreams of the night are still usually hard for me to remember, even if I wake myself up early in the night; the late dreams tend to be memorable even if I don't try to get up from them.

I would advise against trying too hard to induce lucid dreams and getting so excited that you wake yourself up or keep yourself from going to sleep. That has made my own sleep less fulfilling. If you do want to try WILDs and WBTBs, maybe try them only when you feel you an afford not to sleep that night.

If you often have to get up to pee, though, getting up briefly at least once in the middle of the night probably won't make your sleep any worse, unless you prevent yourself from falling asleep by trying too hard to maintain your consciousness while sleeping.

LDers allso need REM sleep! REM - is time when we can become lucid, so REM derprevation is not an option. When you setting alarm clock to get up and recall your dream your target is the wery end of the REM phase.
As for myself - i'm allways waking up 2-4 times a night when my REM-sleep ends. So all trik is to recall and wright down my dream in DJ each time.