When We Crunch Our Sleep Numbers
I was putting together a blog post earlier for another blog (Out of Bounds). The post was about reducing stress and included some AMAZING tips from The American Lung Association - 52 to be exact. I’ll put the link at the bottom of this post, so you can check them out - they’re really excellent.
Anyway, one of the 52 was “Get up 15 minutes earlier.” Losing just 15 minutes of sleep isn’t going to do any of us any harm, but it kind of made me wonder about something else.
Just about every self help book, handout, and article urges us to Get up earlier…Get a jump on the day…Set your alarm clock for an hour earlier than normal, etc. The problem, I’m afraid, is that none of us are going to bed any earlier. Basically, we’re robbing ourselves of as much as 7 hours a sleep each week (which adds up to a whole night of sleep for most people!)
Experts say that a lack of sleep leads to:
- Moodiness
- Lack of concentration
- Memory loss
- Weight gain
- Diminished mental capacity
I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to have my mental capacity messed with. It’s like being broken down on the side of the road in Arizona on a blistering July afternoon with just one bottle of water. It might not be much, but if it’s all you’ve got - it’s everything!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally in favor of getting up early. My coffee cup and I love mornings - it’s an amazing time of the day, ripe with promise and full of hope and potential. The smells coming from the kitchen, alone, make it a beautiful time. Coffee, cinnamon rolls, waffles, oatmeal, biscuits and jelly, more coffee….
But, we have to be on the alert for sleep-deprivation problems…little hints that our body craves more sleep. Read over the list above again. If you stop at any of the five and think, “Hmmmm..” and you’ve been doing the whole Early to rise makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise thing, you might want to consider turning in a little earlier in the evening. After all, what’s the use of being healthy, wealthy, and wise if you’re also forgetful, distracted, edgy, scatterbrained, moody, simple-minded, and grouchy?
As promised, here’s the link to the 52 Stress Reducers.
Joi
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
There actually is some pretty good evidence that sleeping through complete circadian rhythms is important enough that getting up an hour early if it prevents you from getting up in the middle of a cycle (most people’s are about 90 minutes) is actually more restful than the extra hour is.
I’ve definitely seen this in my own experiments. I figured out what the length of my cycle is. You do that by, for instance, noting the time you roll over and go back to sleep on a weekend and then noting when you naturally wake up. If you watch this for a while, you’ll see the pattern in all of your sleeping.
Mine is right about 90 minutes, so I’ve adjusted my going to bed time and waking times to match multiples of that interval.
On days following nights where this matched up, I’m far more alert and awake during the day than days following nights where this didn’t match up. The corrolation is much stronger than it is with how many cycles I went through.
Incidentally, part of why waking up in the middle of a cycle is difficult is that your body puts out chemicals to keep you still during REM sleep and flushes those same chemicals at the end of the cycle. In other words, if you are awakened in the middle, you’re still somewhat sedated by your own body and you aren’t ready to be up and moving.
I’d suggest trying a cyclical sleep schedule for 30 days and see how you feel.
Very fascinating - thanks a lot for taking the time to share your knowledge. I’ve been reading a lot about sleep problems, sleep clycles, sleep deprivation, etc - and it seems that the more I read, the more confused I get. There are so many schools of thought on the subject.
I recently read an author who said that sleep was like coffee, it affects different people differently. I guess in a lot of ways that’s true.
The things you said actually make a lot more sense to me than most of the authors I’ve been reading! -Joi
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