{"id":41200,"date":"2016-05-15T20:15:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T04:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/?p=41200"},"modified":"2019-03-02T15:38:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T23:38:27","slug":"the-ultimate-guide-to-sleeping-less-and-living-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/the-ultimate-guide-to-sleeping-less-and-living-more\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Guide To Sleeping Less and Living More"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I think I\u2019ve cracked this sleep thing.<\/p>\n

For months now I\u2019ve been waking up feeling great after only being in the sack for a few hours.<\/p>\n

The revelation came after years of obsessing with getting the recommended 8 hours in. As a night owl who loves coffee, it rarely happened, but even when it did, I often rose feeling worse.<\/p>\n

After eventually realizing that something wasn\u2019t right, I did some digging and found out not everyone thinks 8 is the magic number. In fact, some believe there isn\u2019t one at all.<\/a><\/p>\n

Another number that\u2019s thrown around by the media is 7\u2014the average number of hours<\/a> we sleep. This is more likely an effect of society not biology, regulated by television schedules and working hours.<\/strong> Looking back on the sleep patterns of pre-industrial societies supports this as you can see back then we slept between 5.7 and 7.1<\/a> hours a night.<\/p>\n

So the jury is still out on how many hours we need, but one thing is clear: getting too much sleep is worse than getting too little.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Less is Always More<\/h2>\n

In an analysis of 16 studies<\/a> that looked at the sleeping habits of over one million people, Prof Franco Cappuccio, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Warwick, found surprisingly that longer sleepers tended to die earlier than shorter sleepers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However it is difficult to measure the impact of too much or too little sleep on our health as they can often be symptoms of underlying diseases and illnesses. For example, sleeping too much is often\u00a0correlated with depression, and sleeping too little with stress. But when Professor Shawn Youngstedt of Arizona State University, understanding the problems with mass sample groups, conducted a small study with 14 young adults<\/a>, he saw similar results that supported those of Cappuccino.<\/p>\n

Participants of his study were instructed to spend an extra two hours in bed for three weeks. At the end of the study Youngstedt found there was an increase across the board in stiffness, back pain, inflammation, and depressed moods.<\/strong><\/p>\n

His results, although limited, make the long term effects of long sleep sound similar to the effects of prolonged periods of inactivity. Could it be that lying down barely conscious for hours and hours every night is actually detrimental to our health, and even threatening to our life span? Well, just as someone can live a long and happy life sitting at a desk for 12 hours a day, while someone else needs to be doing non-stop physical labour, the numbers each of us need in the pit are just as varied.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re between the ages of 18 and 64, it\u2019s said you\u2019ll function on anything between 6 and 11 hours.<\/a> Though even these figures are only a guideline, and according to the National Sleep Foundation are secondary to your individual requirements.<\/strong> We know Margaret Thatcher could run a country on just 4 hours, whereas some teenagers can\u2019t leave the house on anything less than 10.<\/p>\n

So What\u2019s Your Magic Number?<\/h2>\n

When we\u2019re all tucked up in bed, the sand man begins to work his magic, kicking off our five state sleep cycle. This is made up of four non-rapid-eye-movement or \u2018NREM\u2019 stages, and one rapid-eye-movement or \u2018REM\u2019 stage.<\/p>\n

We quickly pass through the light sleep state of N1, hang around in N2 for a while until our brain waves slow down, fall into the deeper \u2018slow wave\u2019 state of N3 and N4, and finally reach the temporarily paralyzed dream state of REM in N5.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s commonly believed this cycle occurs over 90 minutes, but in reality, it can range from anything between 70 and 120 minutes.<\/a> Just like with \u2018the magic number\u2019 of hours, the figure we’re told is just a population average which overlooks the unique and diverse needs of the individual.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We do know however,\u00a0according to the science<\/a>, that we need four to five of these sleep cycles in order to feel at our best\u2014meaning, at least theoretically, Thatcher could have been firing on all cylinders after\u00a0crashing for just 4 hours.<\/p>\n

But with the varying cycle times, it\u2019s pretty difficult to predict when you\u2019re in-between your forth and fifth cycle and therefore in the ideal state for waking up.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not all, as the night draws in, the length of our sleep cycle increases.<\/p>\n

This should give you an idea of how varied your sleep cycle can be over the course of a night:<\/strong><\/p>\n