Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is one of the four major stages of sleep and is essential for brain health and emotional recovery. It is distinct from the other stages of sleep (light and deep sleep), which fall into the category of “non-REM sleep.”
We tend to think of sleep as a passive process. But rapid eye movement, also known as “ambivalent sleep,” makes the body and mind very similar to waking life.
When experiencing non-REM sleep, blood pressure lowers and brain activity decreases, but REM sleep increases both. In fact, the brain is so active during REM sleep that the body engages in self-paralysis to protect our dreaming actions.
You can expect to get 1-1.5 hours of REM sleep each night, with cycles occurring roughly every 90 minutes, with each cycle getting longer as the night progresses.
Although scientists have yet to determine the exact purpose of REM sleep, researchers have flagged it as particularly important for emotional health and learning.
How to increase REM sleep？
In general, most sleep adjustments will improve REM, because more sleep equals more REM opportunities. But if you want to keep trying to improve, there are a few simple things you can do to try and figure out what works best for you.
1. Take a magnesium supplement
The neurotransmitter GABA regulates REM sleep. If you don’t have enough GABA to make you dream and help you adjust those bad emotions, then you may be lacking in magnesium.
You can try taking some magnesium supplements. In a study of elderly people with insomnia, magnesium supplements promoted better sleep, helped achieve deep and restful sleep, and thus prolonged the total duration of insomnia at night, which was closely related to the duration of REM sleep.
2. Get daylight during the day and avoid light at night
Research published in the Journal of Sleep found that both later first light and later light at night negatively affect REM sleep patterns.
We have low light sensitivity in the morning, so this means we need to see a lot of bright light in the morning for our body clock to be healthy. Retinal sensitivity increases as the night progresses, meaning that receiving just a fraction of the light in the evening can alter and disrupt our brain and body’s internal clock.
So exposing ourselves to direct sunlight in the morning is the best way to do it. And importantly, the more light you can observe with your eyes during the day, the more you can reduce the negative effects of nighttime light at night.
3. Have your last cup of coffee by 10 a.m
A two-week sleep study involving 18 healthy men showed that caffeine near bedtime reversed normal sleep cycles.
There have also been other studies showing that afternoon coffee consumption has no effect on REM itself, but that average sleep time is reduced by a full hour.
Just can’t give up coffee? Well, try to have your last cup of coffee 14 hours before bedtime. Caffeine has a six-hour half-life, which means that even 12 hours after you’ve had your last cup of coffee, there’s still a lot of “stimulant” in your system.
So if you normally go to bed at 12pm, have your last cup of coffee before 10am.
4 Make sure your room is cool
The body’s temperature decreases as deep sleep progresses and increases during REM. This means that if you wake up feeling hot, you probably woke up while you were in the middle of a dream.
So if you can keep your room cool, maybe you can make sure that you don’t get so hot during REM sleep that you wake up and interrupt your sleep.
5. Get enough sleep
Most REM happens during the last few hours of sleep. Even though you may be able to get most of your functional recovery on 5-6 hours of sleep, doing this over a long period of time means you’re allowing yourself to skip the REM portion of sleep and miss out on a lot of incredible sleep benefits.
So aim for 7-8 hours a night and make sure you get that much sleep as a habit as well.
Enjoy your sleep.