Restorative sleep can help restore energy and create the space for new adventures to take place in your day, leaving you refreshed and prepared to face challenges ahead. But what exactly is restorative sleep, and how can you achieve it?

Sleep deprivation can result in memory loss, poor cognitive function and physical aches and pains. Many factors can contribute to non-restorative sleep such as health issues or lifestyle choices that lead to non-restorative restorative slumber.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Sleep is essential to feeling your best throughout each day, including making sure that enough time is spent in deep NREM sleep and REM sleep stages, which have proven their restorative powers. Sleep can also improve cognitive function and memory retention by helping process new information while creating lasting memories from short-term memories.

Goal of sleep should be between 7-9 hours every night. A healthy adult should spend approximately 40 percent of time sleeping in N3 delta and REM stages of their architecture cycle.

Sleep is essential to recovery after concussion or brain injury; its importance lies in protein production and tissue growth as well as important hormone release and immune system renewal. Dreams also play an essential part, and new information and memories are consolidated for easy access during wakeful life. For optimal recovery after concussion or brain injury recovery, restorative sleep must occur regularly on a consistent basis. If you have trouble sleeping well on a consistent basis consult with a sleep specialist; keeping track of your sleep patterns for one or two weeks beforehand can provide more details regarding individual needs than before your consultation appointment can give more insights.

Getting Started

Sleep is essential to health, but restorative sleep is equally crucial. Restorative sleep rejuvenates both body and brain, leaving you feeling refreshed throughout the day, focused on tasks at hand, with improved muscle repair, consolidation of memories and emotional regulation all taking place at once.

Acquiring restful sleep requires optimizing the amount of deep (slow wave) and REM sleep each night, according to your circadian rhythm – which is driven by natural 24-hour cycles of daylight and darkness.

If you find that despite getting enough restorative sleep, you still feel fatigued, it could be an indication that something needs to change with your restorative sleeping patterns. Stress, poor diet or underlying medical conditions may prevent deep, restorative rest cycles needed by your body for rejuvenation and restoration.

Nutrient deficiencies like iron deficiency may put you at greater risk for neurological conditions like restless leg syndrome, which causes unpleasant urges to move during the night and interrupt sleep. A functional medicine approach to sleep disorders and issues can help uncover any underlying contributing factors and devise a management plan to increase restful slumber.

Deep Sleep Stages

As we’ve all heard, 7-9 hours of sleep per night is ideal, but to feel truly rejuvenated it’s more than that: To experience deep restful slumber it is key that our bodies move through four sleep stages in harmony – each playing its own part in helping the mind and body stay relaxed for optimal wakeup.

Stage 3 (NREM 3): Deep Sleep

This stage, also referred to as slow-wave or delta sleep, is the most restorative stage of non-rapid eye movement sleep. Your brain’s electrical activity changes into a pattern of long and slow waves called delta waves during this stage and your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing all decrease – as does muscle tone – but should you awaken during this phase, you could feel disoriented for several minutes after awakening from this deep state.

At this stage of sleep, the brain may show small bursts of activity known as spindles which may help suppress external stimuli and allow for an easier transition into deeper sleep. If you are not sleeping well due to stress or medications like sedatives or painkillers, these may disrupt this sleep stage and interfere with its progression into deeper stages.

REM Sleep Stages

As you sleep, your body goes through various stages. We typically divide sleep into two categories: non-REM (there are three types) and REM.

Non-REM sleep provides numerous health benefits, from tissue growth and repair, strengthening bones and muscles, improving immunity, to maintaining a healthy metabolism and helping process memories.

Light sleep is often difficult to wake from, yet only accounts for a portion of overall rest cycles.

NREM 2 sleep is a deeper stage that occurs during which your heart rate and blood pressure decrease, muscle activity ceases, and eye movement ceases. Usually lasting five to ten minutes during its first cycle and increasing with subsequent cycles, this stage typically lasts about one hour in duration before becoming increasingly longer over time.

At this stage, brain waves become slow and are known as delta waves, making it hard to wake from this stage and often leading to brief periods of confusion upon awakening. Adults spend 25-30% of their total sleep time here as it prunes synapses between brain cells that communicate between one another; improve learning and memory skills while simultaneously managing mood.

Getting to Sleep

If you find yourself frequently feeling exhausted despite getting the six to eight hours of restorative sleep you need each night, your sleeping cycle may not be restorative enough. Non-restorative sleep has been linked to fatigue and chronic inflammation as well as muscle damage, hormone imbalances and even nutritional deficiency such as iron deficiency anemia.

There are ways to optimize your sleep cycle so you wake up feeling rested and rejuvenated every morning. Improving your bedtime routine, adapting your environment and managing stress are all strategies to improve quality sleep. By prioritizing these factors, you can encourage deep and REM sleep cycles essential for physical recovery and brain health. Functional medicine’s approach to treating sleep disorders takes into account all interconnections among body systems by investigating root causes of any disturbances as well as creating comprehensive management plans designed to promote restful slumber so you feel fully refreshed each morning!