Picture 041028-rem-sleep

This is a 4 minute chunk of "REM" sleep for me. In case you didn't see the "normal sleep", here's the rundown on the wiggly lines:

The purple lines at the top are left and right eye movement. The next 4 black lines are brainwave activity. The dark blue line next is airway muscle activity. Next is leg movement, which apparently I don't do any of, save one good kick on this one. After that is EKG which in this lower res image you can barely make out, but it's made up of a bunch of little tic marks that get closer together when there's more brainwave activity above.

Now we get to the good stuff: the green line is how much air I'm actually taking in, and the next two purple lines are my chest and abdomen muscles trying to breath. After that is a red line with oxygen levels in my blood. The last one will show up on my results from next Wednesday, as that's the pressure the CPAP machine puts out.

The core of it is the green line vs the purple line right below it: a big burst on both while I breath, then back to sleep, relax, and the airway collapses. Little breathing attempts for a while to no avail, as the blood oxygen level below drops, then wake up (note the brainwave activity) and breath. Every 45 seconds give or take. The blue line through the oxygen level is the lowest it ought to be.

The interesting thing is the difference from "normal" sleep: in REM sleep, the body is paralyzed. The only muscles activated are heart, diaphram and eyes. Save for a good kick of the legs apparently ;-) But notice how everything is much weaker than during the other period. Also note how the chest keeps trying harder and harder to breath: it takes a lot more for the brain to notice things in REM. Also note that the blood oxygen mostly never even makes it up to the minimum level. It's a wonder I can function ;-)

Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to getting one of those machines.