So I have this theory – you are born with ‘sleep cells’.

They are like fat cells, only they store sleep. The human body only has so many of them however. Now they can be recharged but once they are truly burnt out – unlike fat cels – they are gone. This explains why in our teens, and twenties, we can go, go, go, forever, without sleep – and not really notice. We crash, eventually, recharge and get up and go again. What we don’t know is that when we are doing this, some of the sleep cells have been totally burned out to maintain the sleepless activity. Then, suddenly, in our thirties, we can no longer stay up all night, all weekend, and still function during the week. We keep needing more sleep to function as well as we did only a few years before. This is because the number of sleep storing cells have been radically reduced. And if you’re a parent …. Forget about it!

There are many stages of sleep, but generally they have broken it down to four parts. The ‘just drifting off to sleep’, the ‘in sleep starting to rest’, the ‘deep sleep’, and the most well known REM stage. Now everyone thinks REM is the most important. For a while, it was believed if you didn’t get REM you would go crazy! This isn’t true though, REM is not the most important, nor will not getting it drive you crazy.

Don’t get me wrong – REM sleep is important and it can really effect you life… but we will get back to that.

The most important stage of sleep, actually, is probably the ‘deep sleep’, or the delta sleep. This is when your body and mind are, essentially, shut down. This is the sleep that is hardest to wake someone from and, if you manage it, the sleeper will wake groggy and take time to ‘activate’ – essentially because they were, in fact, shut down and are rebooting the system.

Scientist have discovered that delta sleep is when hormones related to growth are released in children and young adults. It has to do with proteins being broken down during that stage of sleep, and that protein, is what builds and heals the body. So during this time is when you also deal with damage from stress and ultraviolet rays and well, life. Now here is a scary quote from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke web site,

“Activity in parts of the brain that control emotions, decision-making processes, and social interactions is drastically reduced during deep sleep, suggesting that this type of sleep may help people maintain optimal emotional and social functioning while they are awake.”

So if you don’t get enough delta or ‘deep’ sleep, your ability to have healthy emotional and social function decrease.

Now I’m going to let you guess what kind of sleep I don’t get enough of…

I wake often from REM during the night, I can sleep for 7 or 10 hrs a night, and I still wake exhausted. I don’t ever get that ‘rise feeling rested and content’ crap that others go on about. When people say ‘I had the weirdest dream the other night’ or ‘ my dream felt so real’ sometime I just want to back hand them through a wall.

I ALWAYS have ‘weird’ dreams. There are no other type of night for me but one filled with emotionally wrought, twisted, highly tactile, stress filled, negative, often dangerous, ‘adventures’. Trust me, it isn’t something you want… in fact, when describing them to people, I’m often told that what is considered a nightmare.

So here we are back to REM sleep – see told you. So yeah, REM is important. If your sleep is falling down on it’s job to ‘repair’ you body from stress by not getting enough delta sleep, and then pounds you with stressful REM sleep. The thought of going to bed is not always a pleasant one – often, because you know it will only lead to having to wake up, numerous times, from a hell your own brain cooked up for you.

Now here’s a fun fact – Seroquel, one of the medications I’m on to help stay somewhat sane, is known to cause more vivid, warped, dream states….yay.

About two years ago I had a good dream – first I could remember. I woke from this pleasant, soft bunny kisses, and hugging flowers dream.

First thing I did was curse. WHY? Because of two reasons: One, I now knew what everyone else was getting that I never did, Two, I knew the next nights horrors would only be worse because of the comparison.

Sometimes I think I should just stop calling it sleep, and refer to it as ‘Wes World’