I can’t remember the last time I slept properly. The day fibromyalgia moved into my body was the day that I gave up sleeping. I didn’t give it up like one gives up alcohol or chewing their fingernails. It was more of giving up on a lost cause. So many things in life are lost causes, including, somewhat ironically, Googling examples of lost causes. Sleep should not be one of them.
The average person needs between seven and nine hours of sleep. I am lucky if I get four. The other extreme are the days that I sleep an unnecessary 18 hours. No, I am not catching up on sleep, you cannot make up lost sleep. I don’t know why people think they can make up sleep like they can make up an exam. It doesn’t work that way.
In high school I took advanced science classes. During my first attempt at college I double majored in biology and chemistry. In one of those many science classes we touched on sleep, the phases of sleep, and what happened during them. We were told this information would be on an exam. I want to say that I understood the information. I was able to regurgitate it for my exam, a demonstration to my instructor that I knew the material. I wouldn’t really understand sleep until it was taken from me.
The human sleep cycle consists of periods of non-REM (NREM) sleep, and REM sleep. REM sleep is that stage of sleep where you dream. NREM is that deep…
