Gettin’ your 40 winks every night? How many sheep are you counting before you finally fall asleep? Waking up several times a night to take a leak? Feel like you just got to sleep right as the alarm goes off?

The answers to these questions are often not very encouraging. Many guys out there struggle with some form of sleep issue or insomnia. Its pretty likely that all of us will experience a sleep issue at some point in life. Fortunately, many of these sleep problems are situational, short-lived and only last a few days to, at most, a couple weeks. However, its estimated that 1 out of every 3 people in the United States deal with insomnia on a regular basis.

Fun fact, the longest recorded time without sleep is said to be 11 days. Congrats to Mr. Randy Gardner. I think he won a new Sleep Number bed. Now, before you go trying to set the new world insomnia record, consider these facts. Symptoms of sleep deprivation start as quickly as 24 hours with no sleep. I can personally attest to that fact from my EMS days working 24 hour shifts (and we’ll let that be the excuse for any typos you find in my blogs). Around the 24 hour mark, cognitive decline occurs, fatigue, brain fog, irritability and decreased mental and physical reaction times are evident. After 48 hours, most people become extremely irritable, angry, and experience an altered sense of reality. After 72 hours, things really start to go badly with a further alteration of reality to the point of experiencing illusions and delusions. Basically, if you ever want to experience a LSD trip without the LSD, just stay up for 72 hours!

But the problem isn’t so much that you start thinking you’re Captain Kirk on the USS Enterprise rabidly barking orders at your incompetent crew while listening to Pink Floyd and watching an Earth Wind & Fire video. The issue is the effect lack of sleep has on your health and physiology over time. Now, given, most people with insomnia do get some sleep and are not awake for 24-72 hours straight. It’s the compounding effect that lacking quality sleep night after night can start to have, causing some of the same results as pulling an all-nighter several nights in a row.

So, what is quality sleep? Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines sleep as…totally kidding. Sleep is a cycled event, meaning there are a series of sleep stages that one must experience in sufficient quantities in order to achieve a quality night’s rest. Wow…that sounds very technical and impressive, right? Long/short - you need all the key stages of sleep to wake up feeling great.

Sleep latency, how long it takes to fall asleep, or how many of those sheep you count, is the first stage. You should be able to fall asleep within 15 min of your head hitting the pillow.

Deep sleep is where the physical body recovers and tissues are repaired and rejuvenated, heart rate and breathing slow and blood pressure drops. Deep sleep happens in the beginning of the sleep cycle and should account for about 20-25% of your total sleep.

REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is where the brain gets a chance to organize and process memories thus getting refreshed so it can take on more the next day. Its important for critical thinking and creativity. REM is when we typically experience dreams. If you have one of those days where your brain just doesn’t work like it usually does, you can almost bet your REM sleep was interrupted and cut short the night before. REM sleep should also make up around 20-25% of total sleep and occurs in the latter part of the sleep cycle. REM percentage tends to be higher the younger we are and declines with age, largely why we don’t seem to dream as much as we used to as we get older.

Light sleep makes up the remainder and is important as well but not to the extent of deep and REM sleep and not really worth another whole paragraph here.

Feeling tired yet? Did you actually just fall asleep while reading my blog?? Another fun fact while you laugh at my expense: falling asleep while doing quiet, sedentary activities like reading is a common sign of a sleep problem. You’re welcome for the free diagnosis simply from reading (or sleeping) through this article.

Since insomnia is such an important topic and often left in the mystical realm of psychology and medicine, I decided to break this article up and to give you something to look forward to and maybe help you sleep! Stay tuned for Part 2 where we’ll discuss more signs and symptoms and get to the good stuff, treatment!

Get some rest. Keep Ascending!