I don't need to explain that we need sleep in order to function properly, of course. To feel good, sleeping well is also one of the important things. But what is good sleep really? To find out this, we first need to look at the different sleep phases.

Sleep is necessary.

After a day with all kinds of impressions, our body and mind have to gain a while, but also process a lot of things. To do this, we need sleep. We have to equip, as it were, from what we have experienced, process and clean up as much as possible and start again with a clean slate to go back into it the next day. We do this by putting our body in a state of rest, where a lot of activities in the body are less burdened. Our breathing slows down, our heart rate decreases, our body temperature drops, our brain activity changes, and so on, for example, reducing stress. However, there are also things that function better during sleep, for example, growth hormone increases.

During our sleep, we go through a number of phases that together form a sleep cycle and that we go through about 4 to 5 times a night.

Sleep is necessary to regain energy

The different phases.

The first phase is called the shutter phase. It's the phase between being awake and sleeping. You get tired, you feel that your eyes are closing due to slower eye movements and you surrender to sleep. Your brain activity is decreasing right now.

In the second phase or light sleep, you no longer wake up from ambient sounds but you can still be awakened by a touch, you are still aware that you had fallen asleep.