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Originally Posted by JustJess
There's a theory I've heard that it's not just about how much sleep you get, but when you wake up that affects how tired you are. You go through 2-5 sleep cycles a night, and if your alarm goes off in the middle of one, you'll wake feeling extremely tired. But if you wake with less sleep but not in the middle of a cycle, you'll be just fine. Ideally, we would all sleep in short bursts throughout our 24-hour day, but as that can't happen... we DO need a minimum of sleep for our bodies to regenerate. That varies between people, but there are studies correlating people who don't sleep very much with higher incidence of illness etc.
Check out www.emedicine.com, it's really helpful. Might have to sign up for a free membership, though. |
In my own experience, this theory has truth to it. Having to wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle leaves me groggy for the rest of the day. So I try to schedule myself for an 8-hour period of sleep (giving myself up to 30 minutes to fall asleep, therefore 7.5 hours of sleep, which generally fits my sleep cycle schedule). You have to figure out how long your sleep cycles are, though. Since starting shift work, my sleep cycle has shrunk from 1.5 hours to an hour. The best thing you can do is figure out how long you sleep before your body wakes itself naturally--and you can only do that without a sleep debt. It might be as little as six hours in some people. So get rid of your sleep debt first and then pick a bedtime. Go to bed at that time every night with a ritual that clues your body into the fact it's time to sleep. Then sleep until you wake up naturally. Do this for a week--by the end of the week you should have a good idea of what your sleep cycle is (in most people it's 2-4 hours of deep sleep followed by 1.5 hour cycles of REM sleep). But if you only limit yourself to short naps/4 hours of sleep, your body isn't getting the deep sleep it needs to repair itself, and it will catch up with you in the long run.