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The Importance of Deep Sleep and REM sleep1. The Importance of deep sleep and REM sleep2. Deep sleep 3. Physical reaction during deep sleep 4. Mental reaction during deep sleep 5. Consequences of a shortage of deep sleep 6. REM-sleep 7. What actually happens during this dream sleep? 8. Non-REM sleep phase 2, light sleep 9. External factors influencing poor sleep 1. The Importance of deep sleep and REM sleep In our Western social sleep, the most important sleep stages are the deep sleep that occurs in the first two cycles, and the REM sleep, that occurs more often as daybreak approaches. Furthermore, our sleep is filled with less utilitarian non-REM sleep, characterized by the absence of deep sleep stages. What exactly are these utilitarian sleep stages of deep sleep and REM sleep and why do we have to optimally utilize them? 
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2. Deep sleep  This stage takes 20% of the total sleep time. Deep sleep is the sleep that is deep, calming and restoring. A sleep stage that is of vital importance to both body and mind. In sleep labs, it has been found that the hypothalamus secretes hormones through the hypophysis; viz. dopamine that stimulates falling asleep and in a later stage serotonin that brings us to a deep sleep. For the body, the deep sleep has a purifying, restoring and energizing function. A somatroph hormonal flux spreads through our spinal column to our organs and cells. Our body has a good turnout
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3. Physical reaction during deep sleep Deep sleep is characterized by an increased body temperature; and as perspiration increases, our skin secretes more minerals. Our lungs also breathe out more carbon gas. Our intestines transport more excrements. Our kidneys actively filter the blood. Our organs detoxicate. Our skeleton muscles deacidify. Women menstruate more heavily…  At the same time, over 100,000 billion of cells restore themselves in their 7-year cycle. Growth hormones are released, cells are actively replaced and muscular tissue is built up through protein synthesis. Mineral losses are replenished. Wounds heal. Corticosteroid hormones build up our resistance to infections and tiredness. We become immune again to all kinds of diseases. White corpuscles surround and destroy bacteria. In the lymph glands and the spleen, they remove bacteria from the blood. Our batteries are recharged again. Released biotonin produces the vital hormonal energy that restores our aura. Intervertebral disks regenerate and dorsal vertebrae rearrange.
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4. Mental reaction during deep sleep For the mind, the deep sleep has a restoring and especially a memorizing function. What we experienced and learned during the daytime, is stored in this sleep stage. In this stage, we actually never dream. Therefore, for students and growing children, deep sleep is extremely important and the saying that sleep before midnight counts double is confirmed. So, we also cure ourselves during the deep sleep stage. It is notable that in men deep sleep decreases as from the age of thirty, while in women this decrease only occurs in their fifties. Is this the reason why women live longer than men?
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5. Consequences of a shortage of deep sleep  It is also obvious that a deficiency of deep sleep is inductive to tiredness, lethargy, apathy and depression, but also to crumbling of the immune system. Deep sleep deficiency has to be caught up with in the short term or one enters a negative vicious circle. Deep sleep is a stage from which we can hardly be wakened by external factors. During deep sleep, no skeleton muscle tensions are measured. When making large turning-overs during deep sleep, measured by pressure registration, we temporarily drift back into stages one and two of our sleep, to regain deep sleep afterwards.
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6. REM-sleep REM Sleep Beta waves – high frequency 50 hertz
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7. What actually happens during this dream sleep? When making a synthesis of amongst other things the psychodynamic theories of Sigmund Freud, research in the prominent sleep lab of Dr. William Dement at the Stanford University and the theories of professor Stanley Coren at the University of British Columbia, it can be concluded that dreaming in fact is making a selection or making place in the mind. According to Freud, dreams are the key to the obscure zones in the human mind.  But today Dement states that it will still take a long time before our ever increasing knowledge of the human brain finds an answer to the meaning of dreams and their relation to conscious life. Will our mental ego enter into a dialogue with our spiritual ego? Do we assess what we remember? Do we decide in our dreams what is valuable to us, which feelings we store? Do we ponder experiences? Can we get out or are we really at odds? Dream sleep is essential to our mental equilibrium and memory. Tests conducted in sleep labs prove that we get mentally exhausted when the REM sleep duration decreases.
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8. Non-REM Sleep phase 2, light sleep  Almost 50% of our sleep is a sleep that is not deep and during which we do not really dream. This transitional sleep is some kind of state of wakefulness, during which we are extremely susceptible to external stimuli. During this sleep, we can easily be wakened up. As we get older, our body becomes stiffer and the natural contact plane with the bed on which we rest thus becomes smaller. Our body weight is spread over a smaller contact plane with the mattress and the counter-pressure per square centimeter on our body increases. Therefore, the external pressure stimulus makes us turn over to take off the pressure. This turning-over stimulus happens subconsciously, but we easily wake up because of these movements. Especially after the first two cycles that are characterized by more deep sleep during which we react less to stimuli, we easily wake up as we grow older. This is also the case in persons who are particularly susceptible to pressure. In our Western social sleep, we sleep our 5 cycles without interruption and preferably we do not wake up in the middle of the night! Indeed, for a lot of people, it seems very hard to fall asleep again. Often, a large part of a cycle is lost and not caught up with.  Lab research has shown that the number of interruptions determines the quality of our sleep. Interruptions that occur during deep sleep undermine the quality of your sleep. Our biological clock regulates our wake and sleep durations. Our body and mind have set themselves to this habit. One can have the fixed sleep pattern of a morning or a night person. When the regularity is disturbed, a sleep deficiency is created and it is best to catch up with it the following night. Do embryo’s sleep? A baby sleeps almost around the clock; 50% of its sleep is deep sleep, while the other half is REM sleep. In newborn babies, sleep and wake stages constantly alternate and the overall sleep duration approximately takes 16 hours. Children have to learn and to grow more and therefore have much more deep sleep and REM sleep stages than adults. For adults, a healthy sleep duration is comprised between 7 and 8 hours. As people grow older, sleep duration decreases and in elderly people sleep and wake are alternated again.
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9. External factors influencing poor sleep With increasing age, all kinds of complaints and a poorer physical condition make that we sleep less well. Because of all kinds of external stimuli, such as e.g. a snoring partner or a cold feeling, or internal stimuli, such as e.g. pain, pressure stimuli or just pain when turning over, we frequently interrupt our sleep, even our deep sleep and REM sleep and thus accumulate a disastrous sleep deficiency. Healthy elderly people certainly sleep as long and as well as young people. Or does the quality of your sleep determine how young you stay
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During REM sleep, our eyes follow so to speak what we see in our dreams. If we are wakened up or awake in this stage, we can remember what we were dreaming. During dream sleep, the electro-encephalogram measures extremely high brain activity. The electro-myogram records a total muscular paralysis of the skeleton muscles.