Although we spend around 3000 hours a year sleeping, you may ask, “what is sleep and what is its purpose”?

Sleep itself follows a set cycle every night; that of REM (rapid eye movement) when most dreaming occurs and non-rapid REM and we will repeat the cycle several times a night. An infant spends roughly half their sleep pattern in REM and the other half non-REM. Alternatively an average adult will spend only 20% of their sleeptime in REM sleep.

Research has shown that non-REM sleep consists of four stages before we reach REM sleep. Stage one is the time when we feel half awake and half asleep but our muscles begin to relax. After about ten minutes we reach Stage two and that lasts for around twenty minutes. This is the time we are fully asleep and our heart rate and breathing slows. While Stage two lasts the longest, we then go to Stage three and our deep sleep pattern where our heart and breathing is at their lowest begins. Finally, we reach Stage four where it is more difficult to be awakened and if we are, we are often rather grumpy! All these stages typically last up to 90 minutes before REM sleep.

REM sleep is a bit strange to describe as although we are not aware, our brain is particularly active and our eyes are exceptionally so (hence the term, rapid eye movement). You may not be aware, but apart from your body resting, your brain is far from inactive when you are asleep. Scientists can now record through the use of expensive equipment and sleep studies that different areas of the brain are certainly very active. During REM, the time when we dream and may sleepwalk, our breathing and blood pressure will begin to increase although our bodies don’t respond to this. It is suggested this is nature’s way of stopping us acting on our dreams and perhaps harming ourselves.

How much sleep we require differs between individuals, but if you don’t feel sleepy during the day, then you are probably getting enough. Sadly, many of us either do not get the opportunity for enough sleep or, when the opportunity is there we find we can’t sleep anyway!

Hopefully this quick overview about What Is Sleep will have been of help to you. If you feel you body has become ‘out of sync’, try some of the natural sleep aids reviewed on these pages.

Get the FREE Sleep Report: Worst Mistakes Most Insomniacs Make

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The NightWave All Natural Sleep Aid Assistant has achieved a 5 star rating on Amazon by at least 25 people so it is considered to be worth a note here. What follows is one of those reviews, the first one. You can read the rest by following the link here.

Last year, I started having a lot of trouble sleeping. When my head hit the pillow, my mind would start reviewing the to-do list that got longer every day. After too many sleepless nights, it began to feel like I was just too tired to fall sleep.

Nothing helped. A therapist/friend told me about the NightWave, and I gave it a try even though I didn’t have much hope left.

When I turned on the NightWave that first night, I watched its soft, blue light reflecting on my ceiling. As the light grew larger and smaller, I felt my breathing start to calm down and my eyes getting sleepy. I dozed off – but woke up again after a few minutes. It didn’t seem to be working for me, but I gave it one more try. I turned it on again – and again watched the calming blue light grow large and small and felt my breathing fall into the same easy rhythm. Next thing I knew; it was morning! I’d had my first good night’s sleep in months.

After three weeks of peaceful nights, it felt like my body’s rhythms were reset.

When my granddaughter came to visit us, she was nervous that first night and had trouble settling down. I turned on my soft, blue light for her, and we both relaxed and fell asleep.

Now that I’m sleeping again, I’ve had enough energy left over to pursue a lifelong dream. I’ve writen a series of books for other grandparents to read to their grandchildren. Someday (soon) I hope to have those books here on Amazon.com too.

NightWave helped me to have sweet dreams – day and night.

Mary Ehly

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Melatonin is a natural hormone believed to play a role in anti aging, as well as helping with jet lag and chronic insomnia. But caution is well advised with using melatonin as a supplement given its powerful effects.

One of the problems with melatonin is that most of the studies were done on animals and not humans. Animal studies are used by the scientific community to indicate whether a substance has promise, and can yield valuable results even though they are ethically questionable.

One such study was done at the University of Texas Health Science Center where scientists were able to establish not only that walnuts contained melatonin, but that it was able to be absorbed – at least by rats. But they believe humans would also be able to absorb melatonin from walnuts. Unfortunately, they don’t know just how many walnuts you’d have to eat to get any benefits. It might require a sackful for a good night’s sleep! But using food as a source of melatonin is a good option given that it is much safer, particularly if suffering from any serious illnesses.

People who should not take melatonin supplements include children, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, those with serious allergies and HIV and cancer patients.

Melatonin is a very powerful substance and only small doses are needed to create improvements. For example, dosages as small as 2 to 3 mg only can help people suffering from insomnia. One such sleep aid is Melatrol if you fancy giving it a go.

Overall, melatonin is very promising, and may well help people with serious illnesses like cancer and multiple sclerosis. In the meantime, increasing our dietary intake of foods like walnuts that potentially supply us with this wonderful nutrient, may have a host of protective health benefits as well as slowing down the aging process and help insomniacs.

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