Fascinating read from Brain Pickings:
“For the past half-century, sleep researcher Rosalind D.
Cartwright has produced some of the most compelling and influential work in the
field, enlisting modern science in revising and expanding the theories of Jung
and Freud about the role of sleep and dreams in our lives. In The Twenty-four Hour Mind:The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives:”Rosalind D. Cartwright writes:
“The more severe the depression, the earlier the first REM
begins. Sometimes it starts as early as 45 minutes into sleep. That means these
sleepers’ first cycle of NREM sleep amounts to about half the usual length of
time. This early REM displaces the initial deep sleep, which is not fully
recovered later in the night. This displacement of the first deep sleep is
accompanied by an absence of the usual large outflow of growth hormone. The
timing of the greatest release of human growth hormone (HGH) is in the first
deep sleep cycle. The depressed have very little SWS [slow-wave sleep, Stages 3
and 4 of the sleep cycle] and no big pulse of HGH; and in addition to growth,
HGH is related to physical repair. If we do not get enough deep sleep, our
bodies take longer to heal and grow. The absence of the large spurt of HGH
during the first deep sleep continues in many depressed patients even when they
are no longer depressed (in remission).
The first REM sleep period not only begins too early in the
night in people who are clinically depressed, it is also often abnormally long.
Instead of the usual 10 minutes or so, this REM may last twice that. The eye
movements too are abnormal — either too sparse or too dense. In fact, they are
sometimes so frequent that they are called eye movement storms.” Read More Here:
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| Lisa Congdon from Brain Pickings: Anais Nin and Lisa Congdon |
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