It seems so everyday-oriented to us that we don’t often stop to think about just how complex it is. Believe it or not, the in-depth study of sleep is still quite new — just a little more than two decades old.
Infant Insights
While a lot about sleep is still not understood, what is known is nothing short of fascinating, according to Dr. Bilal Saulat, medical director of the Reading Hospital’s Sleep Center in West Reading.
“When babies are born, close to 55 percent of their sleep is actually dream sleep,” Saulat says. “With adults, it’s less than 25 percent.”
Dream sleep is also called REM sleep, with rapid eye movement evident during dreaming. As an infant, you spend more time in REM sleep than at any other time in your life, he explains. As a newborn, you go through mostly two stages of sleep: dream sleep and non-dream sleep. Children, teenagers and adults have three stages of sleep—light, deep and dream sleep.
“As you grow up, your dream sleep decreases,” he notes.
Such a high concentration of dream sleep in infants exists because this is when skills like learning how to move and direct arms, legs, hands and feet — even lifting your head or crawling — are developing through the brain’s networks so that these abilities are possible during waking hours.
Evolving Everyday
“The brain is evolving every single day,” Saulat says. This is true for babies but also for all ages. “Sleep performs the most important rest, repair and consolidation processes in the body,” he says.
Deep sleep is when complex memories of the lessons in our experiences are built into neural connections.
Sleep More
“You need rest and repair time,” Saulat says. “If you are not getting it, it will eventually catch up with you. Your heart and other organs are under more stress at a micro- and macro-level if you aren’t getting enough sleep.”
Over time, this stress can lead to an increased risk of a heart attack.
The takeaway here is that prioritizing adequate sleep is critical.
Disorders
The disorder Saulat sees most often is sleep apnea. According to reported data, 5 to 15 percent of people suffer from it, Saulat says.
“That’s a huge spectrum,” he adds. “These people have multiple oxygen dips leading to oxygen deprivation to vital organs as they sleep. A lot of them don’t want treatment or don’t want to admit that they have a medical problem.”
Their sleep tends to be fragmented, causing daytime sleep issues, and they suffer memory, concentration, mood and functioning problems.
Yet those who do elect to get treatment often tell Saulat they feel like they were born again, as they see the benefits.
Electronics
Televisions, laptops, tablets and cell phones stir more stimulation than we realize, and they are impacting sleep in their very own epidemic. Saulat notes the need to cut the presence of these electronics out of bedrooms if we want better sleep.
And he references caveman days.
“You had to run all day to get food,” he says. “You were tired after you exercised all day while hunting or gathering food, and at the end of the day, you fell asleep in your cave. Our bodies were designed to wake up with the sun,” he says. “Maybe we don’t need the extra medications to put us to sleep and caffeine to alert us — if we instead just listen to our bodies.”
The Sleep Center at Reading Hospital
484.628.8749.
readinghealth.org/services/sleep-medicine
This Sleep Center is accredited through the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
