Good sleep and natural sleep go hand in hand. While there are many different substances and sleeping pills which are effective in inducing sleep, often it is poor sleep quality. There are two parts of the sleep cycle which are most important for the mind and body, REM sleep and deep sleep. Despite the fact you are getting eight hours, if you are not spending a significant amount of time in deep and REM sleep you are not getting good sleep.
Each sleep cycle has five unique stages and lasts about an hour and a half to two hours, and completing this normally is essential to health and wellbeing in many ways. There are a few reasons why someone would not be getting the natural sleep they need. There is a period in between sleep cycles where a person can be awakened very easily, and this is especially so in people with high levels of stress and anxiety. Some prescription medications can interfere with normal sleep cycles, alcohol and recreational drugs also occasionally have this effect. Sleeping under the influence of alcohol is never natural sleep, and rarely good sleep. Additionally, even if you sleep for a long period of time but are awakened many times, you may feel less rested than if you slept a shorter amount of time but were uninterrupted. This is because completing a sleep cycle seems to be very important for sleep quality, and ultimately good sleep.
Lacking in REM sleep, deep sleep and/or having the cycle interrupted can have many more negative effects than simply being drowsy and irritable the next day. The effects of poor quality sleep and lack of sleep on coordination, memory formation and memory recall have been well documented and are resoundingly negative. An interesting study conducted in Germany showed drivers who had not completed their regular amount of sleep cycles were just as dangerous as people with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit. Natural sleep is important for many reasons besides ability to concentrate; missing REM sleep early in life can develop into many other problems. Scientists have come to believe that REM sleep has an important part to play in brain development, and getting significantly less REM sleep as an infant can even result in a low brain mass among many other physical and behavioral problems. Deep sleep is believed to be very important for the rejuvenation of our bodies and affects our immune, nervous and muscular systems as well as others. People lacking in good sleep are more prone to disease, and recover from disease and injury at a much slower rate than those getting a normal amount of natural sleep.
Sleep which is not natural sleep is better than none at all, but definitely not ideal. As previously stated, alcohol and prescription drugs can help a person to fall asleep but can also cause disruptions in the sleep cycle. If you are suffering from insomnia you should first try to regain your natural sleep before settling for any sleep at all. This can be achieved in a number of ways, for instance there are relaxation techniques you can do alone which will put your mind and body more at ease and help you drift off into a pleasant and natural sleep. If you are having problems getting good sleep you can also consider making a few changes in what you eat and what you do during the day; drinking coffee, smoking, eating sugars late in the day and lacking in physical activity can have a very negative effect on the sleep cycle and make it very difficult to fall asleep. While changing these things is undoubtedly healthy, doing a 180 degree turn around in your life is probably going to make it more difficult to sleep in the short term and would be a topic best left for another article. Instead simply try to cut down on stimulants and make an effort to do more physical activity during the day. Examining your sleep environment (your bedroom) is a good place to start; if the temperature, light and noise are far from ideal the reason you are not getting good sleep is fairly obvious. Though these things are not always completely under your control, there are some things you can do to improve them. Finally, before using prescription drugs you can try herbal supplements to get natural sleep. They are safe and more effective than you might realize. If none of these work you may need to talk to your doctor about pharmaceutical options, but you should never self medicate with alcohol or illegal drugs, nor should you use pharmaceutical drugs without a prescription.