#Increase deep sleep how to#
#Increase deep sleep full#

So if you’re losing sleep, you’re also depriving yourself of testosterone production time.

Studies show that the highest levels of testosterone happen during REM sleep. Sleep is intimately related to the release of reproductive hormones like testosterone, and that a lack of deep sleep can impact hormone levels ( 5).

The Link Between Deep Sleep and Testosterone Insufficient deep sleep also has been shown to worsen chronic insomnia. Not getting enough deep sleep is associated with decreased memory retention, worsened pain perception, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease ( 4). Deep sleep is thought to play a role in language learning, motor skills, and brain development. Every day your brain evaluates new memories and keeps the most important ones. Deep sleep also plays an integral role in memory and cognitive function ( 3). Here’s why: During deep sleep your body weeds out and removes unnecessary neural connections and updates neural circuits. Some scientists hail it as the most restorative sleep stage. Why Is Deep Sleep Important?Īll stages of sleep are important, but deep sleep is especially critical for good health. These waves have a frequency of 0.5 to 2 Hertz. Waking out of deep sleep can make you feel mentally foggy.ĭuring deep sleep, activity in the brain appears in long, slow waves called delta waves. It is typically more difficult to wake someone from a deep sleep-which may be Mother Nature’s way of making sure you get the Zs you need. You experience increasingly shorter periods of deep sleep as the night wears on. What is Deep Sleep?ĭeep sleep or non-REM Stage 3 sleep occurs during the beginning of the night, typically within an hour of falling asleep. One hypothesis suggests that this is a time of memory consolidation during which important neural connections are restored and reorganized ( 2). While REM sleep accounts for less than a quarter of total sleep time, the function of REM is still an area of debate.

Most people get less REM sleep as they age. Most of your dreaming happens during REM sleep. Your breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure increase to levels similar to when you are awake. REM sleep is characterized by active dreaming and rapid eye movements (hence the name). Your heartbeat and brain waves are at their slowest during this stage Stage 3 NREM, which lasts about 70 to 80 minutes. Getting enough Stage 3 sleep is critical for feeling refreshed when you wake up. This stage accounts for around 10-20% of your sleep cycle, this is the point where you enter into the deeper stages of sleep. During this stage, your muscles continue to relax, your heartbeat and brain waves slow down more, and you start to transition to deeper sleep. Stage 2 NREM sleep typically accounts for the largest percentage (about 45-55%) of your total sleep. This stage typically accounts for 5-10% or less of the total sleep time in adults. If something wakes you, you might not even realize that you were asleep. During these few minutes of relatively light slumber, your brain waves, heartbeat, and breathing slow and your muscles relax. This stage is the transition from wakefulness to sleep. You cycle through all stages of non-REM and REM sleep several times during a typical night, with increasingly longer, deeper REM periods occurring toward morning. During a typical night, you cycle through each sleep stage several times. Each stage of sleep is linked to specific changes in brain waves and activity. There are two basic kinds of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep (which is dreamless and is divided into three stages).

#Increase deep sleep how to#

So how much deep sleep do you need-and are you getting enough? To answer that question you need to understand the whole sleep cycle, and how to optimize your night. Research shows that a chronic lack of sleep, especially a lack of deep sleep, increases your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, depression, erectile dysfunction, and low testosterone, among other problems. Your brain consolidates memories, makes new neural connections, and more. It’s during this phase that the magic happens. Your body moves in and out of deep sleep about every 90 minutes. But how much deep sleep do you need? And how do you know if you’re getting enough?ĭeep sleep begins about 30 minutes after you nod off, and lasts as much as an hour at a time. And experts say that one phase-deep sleep-is where the restorative powers of snoozing kick in. Sleep is a complicated system with different phases that your body cycles in and out of throughout the night. How can that be? Turns out, great sleep isn’t just about logging a certain number of hours.

#Increase deep sleep full#

You wake up, check your sleep tracker, and get confirmation of what your foggy head has already told you: despite clocking a full eight hours of shuteye, you feel lousy.