Hoosiers, like most of the country, just moved our clocks forward one hour. Many of us (including your favorite local news team) are struggling to adjust to time change. Ironically, the second week of March is also Sleep Awareness Week.
The body needs to move through four stages of sleep several times a night. During the first and second stages, our bodies start to decrease their rhythms. Doing so prepares us for the third stage — a deep, slow-wave sleep where the body is restoring itself on a cellular level, fixing damage from the day's wear and tear and consolidating memories into long-term storage.
Rapid eye movement sleep, also called REM sleep, is the final stage. Studies have shown that missing REM sleep, which is also when we dream, may lead to memory deficit and poor cognitive outcomes, as well as heart and other chronic diseases and early death.
On the flip side, years of researchhas found sleep — and especially the deepest, most healing kind — boosts immune response.
Most adults need seven to eight hours of relatively uninterrupted slumber to achieve restorative sleep, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sleeping six or fewer hours a night — which many people do, especially during a busy work week — can cause a host of health problems.
