How Much Sleep Do You Actually Need?!?
Well, the immediate answer is: It Depends!!
The standard and medical recommendation is that you should sleep on average 7-9 hours. But we all know how hard it is to wake up in the morning and feel energetic and on a good mood.
So I think we can all agree that sometimes we need more hours of sleep and others we feel refreshed with a small number of hours laying in bed.
How to find out the right amount of sleep:
As I mentioned before it's not easy to wake up in the morning with the alarm clock killing our ears and our mood for the entire day.
So, how do you find out the exact number to sleep every day?
Our internal clock is the most reliable one to take care of our needs. Which means you should avoid waking up through an Alarm Clock.
The reason for that is, we sleep in cycles, I'm sure most of you have already heard about that. And it works like this:
Usually a Sleeping Cycle is around 90 minutes long and can be divided in two phases:
R.E.M
NON R.E.M
R-E-M stands for Rapid Eye Movement.
Basically, when you are in R.E.M. Sleep your brain is more active and it is when Dreams occur. Also commonly known as "Light Sleep".
The other phase, NON R.E.M. Sleep is where your body slows down and starts repairing and growing tissues, builds muscle and bone, and also boosts the immune system. Also commonly known and "Deep Sleep" (consists of 3 different stages, comment if you would like me to write a post explaining the details).
You want to wake up during REM Sleep, and the only way to assure that happens is by waking up naturally. Which means this is the only way to sleep the correct amount of hours every day.
Thanks for your time!
If you appreciate the work I´m doing:
Dear @diogosantos
Interesting choice of topic. One of those posts, which surely are worth checking out and reading through.
I wonder if you would recommend having power naps during the day. I love having refreshing 20-40 min naps (sometimes even 1h). Just like a baby :)
Many would be late to work if they would apply your idea :P
Also: any idea why some people (like myself) can fall asleep within 2-3minutes, while others (like my wife) may need up to 1h before they manage to do the same? Why is that?
Again, solid read. Upvote on the way :)
Yours, Piotr
It was something I was searching and curious to know more about, so I ended up compiling some information and putting this post together.
When it comes to power naps I think they can be very powerful, but personally I never do it, I just can´t fall asleep during the day. But I think I read somewhere that scientifically it is very good for your productivity.Some even recommend companies should start allowing their employees to have a power nap.
I think it´i s process and, obviously, we have responsibilities. Personally I seem to wake up always around the same hour... naturally. Like I said our internal clook!
On average it takes 7 minutes for someone to fall asleep. Everybody is different and all I can say is that if your wife takes 1 hour to fall asleep either she is not tired (which I doubt after a day of work) or her pre-bed routine is a bit too active and full o blue light. One quick adjustment would be to read a book for 20-30 min before going to sleep.
It's me again @diogosantos
Together with @project.hope - we've started new initiative which I consider quite unique and interesting. Perhaps you could spare few minutes and check out our recent post and share your thoughts:
https://steemit.com/hive-175254/@project.hope/it-s-official-our-new-partnership-is-starting-today-let-s-see-will-where-it-take-us
I would appreciate your feedback. I read all comments.
Cheers, Piotr