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Think of sleep as your body's alone time. Just as it's important to carve out a portion of your day to focus on you, it's crucial for your body to have time to recover from the rigors of work, errands and household chores, as well as for your brain to make sense of the information it£absorbed. After falling asleep, you move through four stages of nonrapid eye movement sleep (NREM) before beginning the fi rst of several periods of deep, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep; REM and NREM sleep then alternate every 90 minutes or so. The body uses NREM to rest and recover. As muscles relax, body temperature drops and breathing slows. Growth hormones and extra blood fl ow from the heart help restore and grow tissues. Your immune system gets a boost, and the body begins stockpiling energy for the day ahead. During REM sleep, you dream, and the brain makes sense of everything you encountered during the day and fi les away the important information as memories. SLEEP, INTERRUPTED With so many important functions dependent upon sleep, interruptions can have a big impact on health. Many people struggle to sleep through the night or fall back asleep when they wake up too early, which is a type of insomnia. If that sounds like you, don't try to force yourself back into dreamland. Breathe deeply, and tense and relax your muscles. If you're still wakeful after a few minutes, get up and do something to make you drowsy, such as read a chapter of a dull book. Also, kick your napping habit, as naps — while restorative in the short term — can make it diš cult for individuals with insomnia to fall and stay asleep. ✚ While you sleep, your body keeps working. A Deep Look at Sleep For the past two weeks, you've struggled to keep your eyes open at work. You've been feeling down. This morning, your spouse mentioned having trouble falling asleep last night because you were snoring. All of those clues point to a sleep disorder called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). A sleep study, also known as a polysomnogram, can help you be sure. Diagnosing a sleep disorder, such as OSA or narcolepsy, is di® cult without insight into what happens while you sleep. During a sleep study, which typically takes place overnight at a sleep center, technicians monitor your breathing, heart rate, brain waves, blood oxygenation and muscle movements, among other signs, as you sleep. A sleep medicine specialist then uses the information to determine what's causing your disrupted sleep and the most eŒ ective way to treat the problem. blocked airway soft palate Is interrupted sleep leaving you tired all the time? A sleep specialist can help. To find one, Visit christussetx.org/find-a-doctor or call (866) 683-3627. christusset x.org | Summer 2017 HEALTH AWARE 10