The Dream Cycle
By Andrea Parisca

Do you sometimes wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day? But other day you wake up feeling extra tired and drousy? Although it may sound like an irratioinal feeling, it's not, it's completely normal and has to do with something called the dream cycle. Scientist have proved that we go through four main phases during our sleep. They have also concluded that dreaming is very important and not dreaming enough can affect your mood and learning ability. Scientist still don't fully understand why we dream but there are many theories about why we dream. Some people believe that it is the brains way of oraganizing all of the previoius activity and making conections to help us improve our memory and learn faster. Others believe it serves no real purpose. Although we may not know why we dream, we do know that we go through four main phases.

• Phase One: Brainwaves flow to a slower frequency called alpha state. In this state you feel like your floating, your muscles relax, and your heartrate decreases.

• Phase Two: Your brainwaves continue to slow down until the state of Theta. This is the phase of light sleep where your brian bursts into brain activity. This is the level where most dreams occur, characterized by rapid eye movement also known as REM sleep. This stage may last for several minutes to an hour. Although your body may twitch you are mostly paralyzed.

• Phases Three and Four: In this last stage your brainwaves reach the ultraslow, delta frequency, which produces a very deep almost dead sleep. Waking up in this stage can make you dizzy and make you feel fuzzy. The best thing to do is to simply fall back asleep and wake up in the two fist stages of sleep.