REM Sleep

[GillyG12]

How much deep/REM sleep should you ideally be getting each night? Does this effect how tired you feel the next day?

[lisaartis]

Hi Gilly
Thanks for your message.
When we sleep, we sleep in cycles and each cycle lasts around 90mins. In each cycle we experience four stages of sleep:
Non-REM Stage 1
Non-REM Stage 2
Non-REM Stage 3
REM

Stage 3 is our deep or slow wave sleep and it accounts for around 25% of our sleep. It is vital for memory, forgetting, learning and growth.

REM sleep is our dream sleep and also accounts for around 20-25% of our sleep. It is where we dream, have emotional memories and have low muscle tone so we don't act out our dreams.

We need Stage 3 deep sleep as it's the most restorative sleep we have - so we wake feeling refreshed and that we've had a good night's sleep.