sleeping woman surrounded by roses We need sleep to keep us happy, healthy and alert. While you sleep, your body and brain work together to prepare you for a new day. That is why it is so important to give yourself time to sleep. Sleep is when the body enters series of stages affecting the brain function, cognition, immune system and metabolism. Each stage lasts up to 90 minutes.

Stage one: Active brain state (Beta waves)
Stage two: Muscular relaxation, beginning to fall sleep (Alpha wave)
Stage three: Deep sleep, breathing and heart rates slows down, body is still (theta waves)
Stage four: Deeper sleep state, activation of body's healing, growth and repair mechanism (delta wave)
Stage five: Activation of REM sleep (rapid eye movement), Brain becomes active and you start to dream. This stage is important in developing memory, emotional stability and enhancing cognition.

We continue these 90 minutes cycles for 4-5 times every night.

Deep sleep occurs mainly in the first third of the night, representing around 13 per cent of our sleep, while dream sleep dominates the last third of the night.

sleeping man and woman The time we spend sleeping every day falls from an average of 16 hours in babies to 8 hours by the age of 12, around 7 hours in adults and later just 6 hours among the elderly, accompanied by more nocturnal arousals and increases in deep sleep (as a proportion of sleep time, NREM Stage 1 increases from 5-15 per cent in old age).

Going without adequate sleep could be playing with danger and can boost the risk of developing various diseases, according to university of Chicago researchers.

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