Fatal Familial Insomnia - Normal Sleep and FFI

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:

    We have been weakened in our resistance to the professional anti-Communists because we know in our hearts that our so-called democracy has excluded millions of citizens from a normal life and the normal American privileges of health, housing and education.
    Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)

    Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)