The Hormone Solution: Stay Younger Longer with Natural Hormone and Nutrition Therapies by Thierry Dr Hertoghe

Author:Thierry Dr Hertoghe [Hertoghe, Thierry Dr]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction: Health
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

GOOD NIGHT

Fortunately, there is a better way. For most people, correcting hormonal deficiencies can restore the days of sound, refreshing sleep. This chapter covers them all. But first, let’s look more closely at just what goes on during a single night’s sleep. The process of falling asleep and the different phases that make up sleep are variously affected by hormones.

Sleep is a five-stage cycle repeated three to five times a night. Each cycle lasts one and a half to two hours, and there are a few minutes of downtime between each cycle.

When you go to bed, as soon as you close your eyes, brain waves in the characteristic low-and-short beta pattern change into alpha waves, which are higher and longer. You remain awake, but your muscles relax. Progressively, sleep sets in. You slip, at first, into light sleep, now with larger, irregular theta waves. This is stage one.

You doze off, overwhelmed by an agreeable sleepiness and exhibiting different large, irregular brain waves called single-complex K waves. After brief states of consciousness during light sleep, your heart begins to beat more slowly and your blood pressure and temperature drop (stage two).

The duration of stages one and two lengthens over time. When you are forty-five, they take about forty minutes combined. By the time you are sixty-five, they average seventy-three minutes.

Next, you gently enter into deep sleep. This heavier sleep features large, slow delta brain waves, which induce a pleasant state of well-being (stages three and four). Stage four features slower wavelengths on the electroencephalogram (EEG) than stage three. These stages together last close to three and a half hours a night in young adults, declining to less than two hours in people over sixty-five.

You now enter into the REM (rapid eye movement) phase, or dream sleep (stage five). Short and fast waves cross the brain, a sign of intense activity. This is sometimes called paradoxical sleep because it brings together a state of deep sleep in which almost all the muscles relax and the limbs go soft with a state of hyperactivity in the brain and the eyes. This dream phase, repeated many times during the night, is very important. It lets you recover from exertion and assimilate the day’s happenings into your memory. The longer your REM phase, the better your memory will be. At twenty, it will last almost three hours a night, but that is gradually reduced over time to little more than an hour and a half in people over sixty-five.

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