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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Different terpenes found in cannabis, help shorten sleep latency—meaning, it helps you fall asleep more quickly, and perhaps lengthens the early phases of these lighter stages of non-REM sleep.Light sleep might sound like a throwaway sleep—inconsequential, or lacking in substance. It’s not. Throughout a night of sleep, light sleep paves the way for the cyclical stages of deep sleep and REM sleep, with changes to brain waves, nervous system activity, and hormones. Dreaming can occur during light sleep, and important elements of cognitive processing—including the emergence of sleep spindles in Stage 2, which help the brain transfer memories and newly acquired information, and also elevate the soundness (aka quality) of sleep—take place during these sleep stages. Sleep architecture is a finely-calibrated balance of stages, each serving important purposes. That’s true for light sleep as it is for slow-wave sleep and REM.Deep Sleep: Stages 3 and 4While the full spectrum of research to date is somewhat mixed, with some individual studies showing no changes to slow wave sleep or decreases to slow wave sleep via cannabis, a persuasive body of research has demonstrated that cannabis is likely to increases deep, non-REM, slow-wave sleep. This sleep phase, composed of Stages 3 and 4, is when the body engages in its most powerfully restorative work to the body, repairing cells and tissue, strengthening immune function, and makes important contributions to memory processing. One open question about the effects of cannabis on slow wave sleep is, for how long might these deep-sleep boosting effects last? Some research indicates that the increase of slow wave sleep from using cannabis may not be a long-term, durable phenomenon. We don’t know enough yet to have a clear answer to that question.REM SleepThere’s been a fair amount of attention paid to the effects of cannabis on REM sleep. Cannabis, especially THC-rich strains, are likely to reduce levels of REM sleep. This is the stage of sleep when we do our most active dreaming, and when the brain does a lot of memory processing and consolidation of acquired information, as well as the processing of emotional experiences. REM sleep
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