Question
Hello! I'm a twenty-one year old with a question about my sleep paterns. First, like a lot of people, especially my age, I do go in streches where I'm mildly sleep deprived, but it's not a usual routine and there are a lot of times I do get the required amount. but that's just a little background, I'll descibe in detail what I'm curious about:
Beginning about three years ago, most of the time I've laid down for a nap and actually fallen asleep, I begin having dreams almost immediatly. To clarify, I can remember looking at the clock and going to edge of conciousness, then I begin dreaming. It is usual only one or two dreams, after which I wake right up. Usually No more than fifteen minutes have passed and sometimes it's as little as five. The dreams have the usual characteristics (hazy looking,small details out-of-place,no obvious meaning) and I wake up after fifteen or so minutes feeling quite refreshed! I know that REM sleep in the more important part of the sleep state,but I'm wondering why I fall into it so quickly.Everything I've ever read suggest it takes quite a while longer to enter REM sleep.This happens almost always during the day, not when I sleep at night, and I almost always feel my myself waking after the conclusion of the dream. I don't understand how I can nap, dream and wake within a period of 5-to-15 minutes, wake up feeling much better(usually not groggy at all) and be unable to fall back asleep (I nearly always try and it never happens) I would appreciate your thought on this phenomina and anything you could tell me about what causes or exaberate's it. Thanks for your time and looking forward to a response!
Answer
The answer to your question isn't something we know yet, but I'll tell you the things that are starting to be clear.
Yes, normally, REM sleep begins about 90 minutes after we fall asleep, but this would be for a sleep cycle occurring at your normal bedtime, and would assume you sleep normally. People with sleep disorders- a term coined because these types of health problems cause disorder in the sleep cycle -may enter REM sleep quite quickly. It seems as if there are two types of sleep deprivation which may occur: 1) generalized or 2) REM. If you simply aren't getting enough sleep because you are keeping a schedule that prevents it, you will lose all stages of the sleep cycle in their normal proportions. THat's generalized deprivation. If you have a sleep disorder disrupting your sleep, or if you always lose early morning sleep - the time when most REM sleep occurs - you will specifically tend to lose certain stages of sleep. Usually REM sleep is the part of the cycle that is lost over the others, and that gives "REM deprivation." If you are REM deprived, the body seems to make this a priority, and when you do fall asleep, the cycle goes very quickly to the REM stage, as if to try to get as much REM as possible. Thus people with sleep disorders often go into REM sleep within a few minutes of falling asleep.
Is this happening for you? My guess is you are like others your age, and you stay up late and get up early...with the early rising not by choice. My suspicion is that you are in need of REM sleep, but for normal reasons, not because you have a sleep disorder. Growth of the brain and learning seem to require a certain amount of REM sleep, so you need to meed the requirements, and when you nap, it appears to catch you up. Since you are still growing slightly in terms of your brain, and you are hopefully learning a lot - both of which require REM sleep to occur - you have another reason to be relatively REM deprived. I would say your naps allow you to get all the REM sleep you need and would urge you to continue to keep taking them when you need them. Not feeling tired is the best guage of getting good sleep, and it seems these naps do the trick for you. Whether you have a sleep disorder affecting your sleep cycle isn't something I can answer from the limited history here, but it sounds unlikely. If you have other questions, let me know.
