Sleep - Part 1

Something nuanced that caught my attention

Here’s the nuanced aspect of sleep that I (Levi) am currently trying to implement.

REM sleep & how to use the 90 minute sleep cycle

Do you sometimes wake up easily and sometimes you are super groggy? If you’re groggy, it’s a possibility that you woke up during the middle of a REM stage. (unless you just got a very small amount of sleep)

basics of sleep stages & cycles

• 4 sleep stages in a single sleep cycle

• REM is the last stage and the most important stage of a sleep cycle

• Each sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes (but can obviously vary!)

• Theoretically you should complete 4-6 total sleep cycles a night

  • 6 hours of sleep = 4 sleep cycles

  • 7.5 hours of sleep = 5 sleep cycles

  • 9 hours of sleep = 6 sleep cycles

In the image below, you can see my actual sleep from my Garmin watch and how 9 hours of sleep resulted in 6 REM stages (tall bars). I normally don’t get this much sleep, but it was the night before Thanksgiving, and this example worked out great for illustration purposes.

Recommendation

Try to aim for 7.5 hours of sleep or 9 hours of sleep (since those are multiples of 90 minutes). And to clarify, I said…SLEEP! Not 7.5 hours in bed with 30 minutes of phone scrolling and 30 minutes of trying to fall asleep resulting in 6.5 hours of sleep.

Why is 8 hours of sleep the main and most common recommendation?

There are multiple reasons, but this is my theory from the time perspective. It takes ~15 minutes to fall asleep. So either you’ll just be finishing up your 5th REM stage and sleep cycle, or you'll be in a lighter sleep phase of your 6th sleep cycle… which is easier to wake up from.

And most people like to aim for 8 hours instead of 7 hours and 47 minutes of sleep.

Here’s a specific example that I think is the most realistic and healthy.

• Start getting ready for bed at 9:30pm

• Lights out at 10pm

• Fall asleep at 10:15pm

• Finish your 6th REM cycle around 5:45am

• Your alarm goes off at 6am

You’ll have gotten 7 hours and 45 minutes of sleep and will be waking up in the beginning stages of a lighter sleep cycle which should help with your ability to wake up.

Again, this is theoretical and ideal, and the real world doesn’t always come in cookie-cutter numbers, but it’s nice to have something tangible to grab at.

This could also be disrupted by waking up in the middle of the night, and that is why my next post is going to talk about a change I made in order to sleep through the whole night!

Until next time…

Get REM sleep and dream BIG dreams!

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