Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Katrina S. | Delivered July 26, 2019

REM/Deep Sleep Studies

Goals

To understand the ways to get more REM/deep sleep by finding papers and research, globally, that show the participants in these studies gained more REM/deep sleep when they did hypothetically X, Y, Z, and then further to find out the participants who actually did XYZ got more/less REM/deep sleep than a control group. The goals would also be not to include research that includes children, teens, and elderly groups.
 

Early Findings

A greater percentage of REM sleep was accompanied by more marked reductions in leptin. Leptin is a protein that's made in the fat cells, circulates in the bloodstream, and goes to the brain. Leptin is the way your fat cells tell your brain that your energy thermostat is set right.
The relationship between sleep duration and weight gain may be a function of loss of REM sleep, rather than a result of less overall sleep.
A 2013 review of 27 studies on alcohol and sleep found that total nightly REM sleep was decreased at moderate and high intakes of alcohol, although no clear trend was seen at low levels of alcohol intake.
A meta-study back in the 90s found that for the population as a whole, "exercise improves the metrics of sleep quality. The amount of deep sleep, amount of REM sleep, and total sleep time all tend to increase with exercise, sleep latency tends and fragmentation tend to fall."