How much sleep do you really need in a day?
After seeing the title, you might blurt out right away: 8 hours. Indeed, we have known from an early age that we should have a guaranteed of 8 hours of sleep on a day.
Scientists also tell us that not enough sleep not only increases the risk of major diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer but also tends to get fat. So, when we woke up in the middle of the night, it is easier to get anxiety, because of the fear of not having 8 hours of sleep. There is also someone who slept for 8 hours or even more, but still feel tired in the morning.
In fact, the above concept of sleep is not comprehensive, recently, through the experiment, the University of California came to a sensational conclusion, that sleeping 8 hours a day may make you die faster.
The researchers explained that this is because blindly lie on the bed just to sleep for 8 hours will not get a high quality of sleep. Your body will not receive enough energy, your immunity will be reduced. This is harmful to the human body and will even shorten your life.
So how much sleep should be the right day? In the book "SLEEP: Redefine Your Rest, for Success in Work, Sport, and Life", Nick Littlehales, a world-famous sports sleep coach, put forward his own unique view of the "R90" program, also known as the 90-minute sleep method.
This method mainly includes three points of view, respectively, to ensure the completion of the cycle, sleep can be disassembled, and sleep quality measurement frequency should not be daily, but weekly.
First, ensure the completion of the cycle.
After 30 years of sleep research, Nick found that a person's sleep cycle can be divided into hazy period, shallow sleep period, deep sleep period and rapid eye movement period. A complete cycle is about 90 minutes at a time. Hazy period falls between sleep and awake, easy to wake ourselves up without the outside stimulation. Shallow sleep period, if there is a relatively large movement around us, we will be awakened.
Deep sleep, which is the time for the brain to relax completely, is most effective in restoring physical brainpower. Fast eye movement period, as the name suggests, the eyeball is moving, which is why some people see other people asleep but the eyes are moving. The dream usually happened in this stage.
At the end of a cycle, we usually wake up automatically, but generally, if we don't react, we will go into the next cycle. The 90-minute sleep method is simple to understand, that is, the quality of sleep, is not about how long you sleep but measure with how many cycles you completed.
Nick's advice is that we have to have at least 4 full sleep cycles a day.
Second, sleep can be disassembled. Do we have to sleep enough at night? Nick thinks it's unscientific. Because everyone's genes are different, some people do not sleep easily at night, and some people belong to the early sleep type.
We should respect our physiological laws, if we are not easy to fall asleep at night, rather than lying in bed doing nothing, it is better to simply reduce the cycle of sleep. Take the time that you can’t sleep to do something else, and the missing sleep can be made up in other ways, such as naps.
1 to 3 o ' clock in the afternoon, because of the sleep impulse caused by circadian rhythm, our needs for sleep will be stronger, especially when the work is too busy, or when the sleep at night is not good, napping is very necessary.
If there is really no time at noon, evening sleep is also OK. Evening perception is the same as napping, which Nick calls it controllable sleep repair period. This kind of rest can effectively repair our lack of sleep and can even help us repair our brains.
Finally, the frequency of sleep quality measurement should not be daily, but weekly. In the past, we thought that if we didn't sleep well one day, we would feel that there might be something wrong with the quality of our sleep.
In fact, the quality of our sleep is changing every day, which is related to our mood and the degree of physical exertion. Occasionally one or two days of poor sleep quality is normal, as long as we have 28 to 35 full cycle a week is reasonable.
Nick once used this theory for Federer and other well-known athletes to do sleep counseling and guidance, it is evident in its effect. We can also combine our own actual situation from the above three angles to improve our sleep quality. From Nick's analysis, we can see that judging a person's sleep is not based on the length of time, but whether he has more complete cycles.
If the alarm goes off at the end of a cycle in the morning, we will wake up naturally, without the feeling of being forced, and even if we sleep late last night, we will still feel well asleep and relaxed. And if we are woken up by the alarm clock during the deep sleep period, we will feel exhausted, don't want to get up, and feel like we did not sleep well.
Therefore, we can get better sleep by adjusting the time to fall asleep and get up properly. For example, because of the need for work, you need to get up at 6:30 A.M. By forwarding calculation, for 90 minutes a cycle, if you sleep at 11 o'clock, it is a full 5 cycles, which means you have 5 deep sleep periods, your body and brain will get a full rest.
And if you miss the time, just read some book and put off your sleep for 90 minutes, which is around 12:30 in the morning. It seems to shorten the sleep time, but it guarantees the integrity of 4 cycles.
Of course, everyone's sleeping habits are different.
To find the best solution for ourselves, we can take note of the time we fall asleep and get up every day, find our sleep rhythm, properly advance or push back to sleep, and make sure that the next day's alarm doesn't ring during our deep sleep.
I need to clarify that the 11 o clock we are talking about here is pure bedtime and doesn’t include the time when you are lying in bed with your phone to play games. Therefore, it is necessary to create an environment suitable for sleep in advance.
If you feel a little tired during the day, you can take a nap at 1-3 or 5-7 in the evening, which will be very effective in repairing our energy. You should take a nap for half an hour or 1 and a half hour to avoid being woken up during the deep sleep period.
In addition, we have to habitually record our sleep status to check the quality of our sleep. If we have one or two days of special busyness and do not sleep well, don’t feel anxious about it.
Finally, let's sum up how much sleep we should have in a day, not by time, but by ensuring at least 4 full sleep cycles a day.
Don’t feel anxious if you occasionally have one or two days of bad sleep, just ensure you have 28 to 35 full cycle a week. If you have not enough time at night, make up for it with a nap in the evening, it can be a good way to help our bodies replenish our energy.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://walkinharmony.vornix.blog/2018/12/27/how-much-sleep-do-you-really-need-in-a-day/
Congratulation @walkinharmony! Your post has been recently featured on Myach's Daily Pick Edition!
Have a nice day and STEEM to the moon!
Unfortunately, many of us work on a schedule so we cannot get sleep when we really need it. I am more of a night owl but I work from morning to evening. :(