Originally Posted by buckner
Pardon me for butting in, but deep sleep is just Stage 3 & 4 of your sleep cycle. It does the body no harm (other than feeling a bit more tired) to be woken up during these two stages. Our REM cycles only go during Stage 3 & 4 (deep sleep) which cause us to dream, but we cycle throughout our sleep cycle 4-6 times a night. It does NO harm to be woken up during this time. Think about it - you're alarm wakes you up in the morning, correct? How does it know if you're in deep sleep or not? It doesn't. It just goes off and you wake up. Sometimes you feel more tired because you were in deep sleep, but that's it.
I've never heard of what you're talking about. Just because her dog was dreaming and she woke him up, that could cause him to have a heart attack? I don't believe that's true either simply because it's just dreaming. There's nothing *REAL* about it. If I was sleeping around someone and they saw me twitching and making noises, I'd hope they'd wake me up so I'd stop dreaming like that. Also, sleep walking is just "reenacting" what we are dreaming about.