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The deeper stages of sleep are critical for physical repair, emotional processing, and memory consolidation. When light sleepers wake up, it interrupts this cycle. As a result, they may miss out on getting sufficient amounts of the more restorative stages of sleep like REM.
Psychology Today reported that intelligent people are likely to be nocturnal beings, with those with a higher IQ going bed later on both weeknights and weekends.
Heavy sleepers may sleep a significantly shorter amount of time than light sleepers, but wake feeling better rested. This is because they spent enough time alternating through the deep sleep stages while the light sleeper did not.
Genetics, lifestyle choices, and undiagnosed sleep disorders may all play a role. In addition, some studies suggest that differences in brain wave activity during sleep may also make someone a light or heavy sleeper.
For some people, being a heavy sleeper may not cause any significant problems. However, for others, it can lead to issues such as difficulty getting to work or school on time, missing important appointments or events, and even being in danger if they sleep through important alarms or warnings.
It is very difficult to wake someone during stages 3 and 4, which together are called deep sleep. There is no eye movement or muscle activity. People awakened during deep sleep do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes after they wake up.
So does snoring mean deep sleep? No it doesn't. REM sleep becomes very fragmented and interrupted by snoring so snorers aren't able to reach deep sleep. Only frequent, prolonged and severe snores mean possibly obstructive sleep apnea.
“There's some evidence that, at times, sleep talking may be related to dreams, but this is not always the case,” Dr. Drerup explains. Most dreams happen when you're in the deep, rapid eye movement (REM) phase of sleep. But sleep talking can happen during any stage of sleep, including both REM and non-REM sleep.
Hypersomnia is a condition in which people have excessive daytime sleepiness. This means they feel tired during the day. Hypersomnia can also include situations in which a person needs to sleep a lot. This may be due to other medical conditions, but can also be due to a problem in the brain.
High IQ people usually score above 130 IQ points, depending on which test is used. The top 1% of intelligent people in the world, according to these tests, have an IQ of over 145. IQ tests gained popularity to figure out who has low intelligence because it is clinically important.
Get a good night's sleep
It's also worth noting that individual sleep needs vary, and some people may need more or less sleep than others to feel fully rested and alert. However, the average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep per night to function at their best.
Studies show that night owls and those who wake up later actually are smarter and more creative than their early rising counterparts. They also have higher IQs according to The Independent. Unfortunately, night owls have slightly lower academic scores than early risers (by about 8%).
What Is Deep Sleep? Deep sleep, also called slow-wave sleep, occurs in the third stage of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. During deep sleep, electrical activity in the brain appears in long, slow waves called delta waves. These waves have a frequency of 0.5 to 2 Hertz.
Light sleepers remember more dreams than heavy sleepers
In addition, those who recalled most dreams showed greater activity in the temporo-parietal junction: this area of the brain is associated with attention towards things happening in the external world. Together these two areas are very important in dream recall.
Adults need an average of 84-108 minutes of deep sleep each night. This makes up roughly 25% of total sleeping time in adults, though the percentage increases for babies and decreases for people over 65 years old. Failure to get adequate deep sleep can result in short and long-term health problems.
Hypersomnia is usually indicated by long sleep periods and excessive sleepiness or excessively deep sleep. It may be associated with difficulty in awakening – the person may feel confused or disoriented (sleep drunkenness).
Dreaming sleep is a deep stage of sleep with intense brain activity in the forebrain and midbrain. It is characterized by the ability of dreams to occur, along with the absence of motor function with the exception of the eye muscles and the diaphragm.
'Conventional' snores, unassociated with the cessation of breathing, are most likely to occur during stages 3 and 4 sleep. Stages 1 and 2 are next in vulnerability. Snoring of this nature tends not to occur in REM sleep when breathing as a rule is at its shallowest.
Distribution of snoring among the sleep stages differed for light and heavy snorers: light snorers snored uniformly throughout all sleep stages, whereas heavy snorers tended to snore more during slow-wave and REM sleep.
An estimated 45 percent of adults snore occasionally, while 25 percent snore regularly—often disturbing their bed partner's slumber and possibly their own, too. You're more likely to snore if you're overweight, are a middle-aged or older man, or are a postmenopausal woman. These night noises seem to worsen with age.
While deep sleeping is not the cause of bedwetting, children who sleep very soundly do find it particularly difficult to respond and wake-up to a full bladder and are therefore more likely to wet the bed.
Caffeine, benzodiazepines , and opioid pain medications can all affect deep sleep. Caffeine is a stimulant that can reduce deep sleep even hours after you consume it (for example, in a cup of coffee or tea). Benzodiazepines like Valium and opioid pain medications can also reduce deep sleep.