What Happens When We Sleep?

Sleep is a requirement for healthy living. It’s an obligatory biological activity. What happens when we sleep? There are 2 major types of sleep; Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM). At first, our entire body systems relax and there’s low mental activity. Also, the muscles relax, there’s reduced breathing rate, heart rate, blood pressure, and other cardiovascular functions. The basal metabolic rate is reduced as well. All these happen at the initial stage of sleep, in NREM, where there’s no rapid eyes movement and mental activity. In the second part of sleep, the body switches from NREM to REM when there are many activities. The muscular activity increases, breathing and heart rate increase and there’s increase in mental activity. That’s the reason why we have dreams in REM and not NREM, because dreaming is a mental activity. There’s sometimes increase in sweats and basal metabolic rate. Happy Weekend!