Sleep

We are often told we need more than 8 hours sleep per night but why is that?

Sleep is incredibly important for your body to rebuild, repair, in addition to maintain itself in addition to anchoring memories, new skills and more. Moreover, sleep isn’t just based on how long you sleep for, there’s a lot more to it.

Your sleep quality and how refreshed you feel when you wake up is based 4 to 6, 90 minute (roughly) cycles. The cycles are made of 4 segments -

Stage 1 - NREM (N1). The first point of falling asleep, you body isn’t quite relaxed but your body and brain start to slow.

Stage 2 - NREM (N2). More subdued, you spend roughly half your sleep in the stage where your temperature drops, your muscles relax and breathing slows.

Stage 3 - NREM (N3). This is the deep sleep stage, thought to be the restorative stage allowing for body recovery and growth. It may bolster the immune system and may help with creativity and insightful thinking.

Stage 4 - REM (N4), this is where your brain activity picks up, close to when you are awake. At the same time your body experiences Atonia which is temporary paralysis of your muscles. This is thought to prevent you reacting physically during dreams. N4 is essential for cognitive functions like memory, creativity and learning.

“to try and ensure you wake up as refreshed as possible work out the time you want to wake up and count back in 90 minute segments to work out what time you should be asleep by”

To get to sleep faster it is often recommended for you to avoid watching tele, playing on your phone or listening to music for around an hour before you plan to be asleep. Try reading a book or practicing meditation to aid this further.