Normal Sleep and FFI
Normal sleep has different stages that together last 90 to 100 minutes:
- REM-sleep when dreams occur.
- Non REM Stages 1 and 2: Light sleep NREM-sleep
- Non REM Stages 3 and 4: Deep slow wave sleep
REM is most important for health, followed by stage 2. Most reviving and repairing processes of the body are believed to happen during these two stages. FFI patients cannot go past stage 1 and thus their brains are not getting the rest they need to revive. Prolonged REM-sleep deprivation is the eventual cause of death.
Read more about this topic: Fatal Familial Insomnia
Famous quotes containing the words normal and/or sleep:
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Give us a good cheap twenty-four-hour day,
No part of which we’d have to waste, I say,
And who knows where we can’t get! Wasting time
In sleep or slowness is the deadly crime.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)