Health Hotline Magazine | November 2024

By Lindsay Wilson STRUGGLE WITH SLEEP? CHECK OUT THESE Sleep Healthy Solutions!

For some people, slipping into bed at night can be the best part of a long day, but for anyone who struggles with chronic sleep issues, it can be, well, a nightmare. Sleep is something that can’t be forced—as anyone who has ever found them selves wide awake in the middle of the night knows—but there are things you can do to support your body’s natural circadian rhythm and a normal sleep cycle, finding that sound sleep you crave.

Before we dive into the solutions, let’s recap what a normal sleep cycle looks like. Sleep occurs in two major phases— non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and REM sleep. NREM is divided into stages 1-3, from falling asleep to light sleep to “slow-wave sleep,” or deep sleep, followed by REM (“dream”) sleep. Over the course of night, we cycle through these phases multiple times, from NREM to REM sleep, with deep sleep predominating in the early part of the night and bouts of REM sleep getting longer in the latter part of the night. REM sleep is when our brains process and store relevant events of the day, while deep sleep is when tissues are repaired and built, immunity is strengthened, and metabolic waste, like protein plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease, is cleared from our brains.

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