THE STAGES OF SLEEP

light, deep and REM as honest shares of the night — and the 90–110 minute cycles it is built from

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: body and care · everyone · reference · study

Stage shares (5 · 45 · 25 · 25 %) and the 90–110 minute cycle, 4–5 per night — StatPearls “Physiology, Sleep Stages” (NCBI Bookshelf, 2024 update); stage descriptions, “first REM ≈ 90 min” and the overnight shifts — NINDS “Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep”. The sheet describes typical adult sleep; sleep disorders are a question for a doctor. Checked 2026-08-13.

IN REM THE BODY IS OFF, THE BRAIN IS NOT

In REM the body is switched off but the brain is not: breathing quickens, heart rate and blood pressure rise to near waking levels, brain waves resemble wakefulness — yet the arm and leg muscles are temporarily paralysed so you do not act out your dreams.

Dreams take a quarter of the night, yet the first REM period arrives only about 90 minutes after falling asleep — and with age the share of REM shrinks.

On the sheet

Stage shares (5 · 45 · 25 · 25 %) and the 90–110 minute cycle, 4–5 per night — StatPearls “Physiology, Sleep Stages” (NCBI Bookshelf, 2024 update); stage descriptions, “first REM ≈ 90 min” and the overnight shifts — NINDS “Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep”. The sheet describes typical adult sleep; sleep disorders are a question for a doctor. Checked 2026-08-13.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 7 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

THE STAGES OF SLEEP

IN REM THE BODY IS OFF, THE BRAIN IS NOT

On the sheet

Printing

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