Interesting fact about adequate sleep/rest....

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Thu May 28, 2009 2:48 pm

I was on an interview yesterday at a chiropractor/holistic wellness center and they had an informational video playing in the front waiting area.
When it came to the part about how rest is vital to our health/healing, it mentioned that 1 hour of sleep before midnight, was equivalent to our bodies in terms of quality of rest, to *4* hours after midnight!!

So, I'm going to be really trying to get to bed by 10:30 every night, because once I've gone to 11 pm, I seem to always slide past that, while usually aimlessly surfing around on the net.. And then before you know it, it's 1 am!
I've been waking up tired every day, and I hate that feeling.
Even when I sleep late to "make up" for that late bedtime, I don't feel rested.
This new info really explains a lot.

Debs

Bushranger · Post by **Bushranger** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 4:17 pm

4 hours! Wow

I have heard this before but I was sure it was 2 hours. Either way, I have the same experience as you Debs and I really should be curbing my late nights more seriously too.

deadweight · Post by **deadweight** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:36 pm

Sadly, this is just an old wives tale.

But oh how I wish this really were a "fact." I would just go sleep from 10PM to Midnight everyday and that would be my 8 hours of sleep right there.

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:10 pm

Deadweight, I'm curious.
Why do you say it's an old wives tale?
For me I definitely *don't* feel rested if I go to sleep after 12.. And you're mis-reinterpreting what I wrote with your example..
It's not saying that 2 hours before midnight would feel like 8 hours sleep.. it's saying that if you go to sleep *after* midnight, the hours you sleep will feel like *less* than their actual time in terms of the body being rested.
Hmmm I don't know if I really explained what I meant very well, but I know for me, unless I go to sleep before midnight, I generally feel very sluggish most of the next morning, and it kinda carries through the day.
It takes a while to get into REM sleep I suppose, and healing/regeneration etc, happens when we are in a deep sleep.

Debs

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:12 pm

Bushranger wrote:4 hours! Wow I have heard this before but I was sure it was 2 hours. Either way, I have the same experience as you Debs and I really should be curbing my late nights more seriously too.

We should spy on each other and give each other mutual scoldings if we catch each other up past midnight!!! But not sure how that would work since you are 15 hours ahead of me!! LOL

Bushranger · Post by **Bushranger** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 2:22 am

It's definitely not an old wives tale. Sure it may not scientifically be 1 hour before = 2 hours after but the concept is very real. There is comprehensive scientific proof that sleeping at night vs day is better. Also having a regular sleeping pattern has shown significant benefits over shift work sleeping. Not to mention the fact that we all slept at night pre-industrialisation. Finally, being a night-blind creature it is obvious that staying up all night is NOT what we are naturally made for.

On a personal note, sleep issues are one of my biggest problems. They have been all my life. I know very well that I feel MUCH more rested with 8 hours sleep somewhere between 9pm and 7am then I do with getting that same 8 hours somewhere between 3am and midday.

My problem seems to be strongly linked with TV and the internet at night. I have an extremely hard time winding down my mind for sleep and these two items destroy any chance of that. In fact this is such an issue in my life that today I am beginning what will probably be my biggest habit struggle; evening luddite.

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 4:21 am

That's a great idea Bushranger!! Good luck with it.

I may not actually do a HabitCal on that yet, because I still haven't mastered the three I've got already, but I will certainly try and do this with you.. My hope is to go to bed by or before 12.
Well I'm twenty mins late now, so must get my head down!

Debs

deadweight · Post by **deadweight** » Tue Aug 04, 2009 11:21 pm

gratefuldeb67 wrote:Deadweight, I'm curious.
Why do you say it's an old wives tale?
For me I definitely *don't* feel rested if I go to sleep after 12.

Hey Deb, sorry I missed this question.

I say it's an old wives tale because the saying was coined by the English novelist Henry Fielding (the guy who wrote Tom Jones). As the dictionary of superstitions says about that line, "The biggest advantage of going to bed early is that you will probably spend more hours asleep."

Let say you only have 6 hours to sleep. Your body doesn't know the difference between you sleeping from midnight to 6 as opposed to 10PM to 4AM. It's all just 6 hours. If we did an MRI scan of your brain, the quality of sleep and brain activity would be identical.

Of course you may feel like you can tell a difference and if you feel that way, that's great! I'm jealous.

Bushranger · Post by **Bushranger** » Wed Aug 05, 2009 3:08 am

deadweight wrote:Let say you only have 6 hours to sleep. Your body doesn't know the difference between you sleeping from midnight to 6 as opposed to 10PM to 4AM. It's all just 6 hours. If we did an MRI scan of your brain, the quality of sleep and brain activity would be identical.

My experience as a former shift worker doesn't support this. Your body does indeed know the difference and the quality of sleep is definitely different. Even when I regularly got the same hours sleep as I used to when night sleeping, I was much less alert and awake and my mental capabilities were definitely diminished.

Some recent studies are showing shift workers and day sleepers to suffer from a wide range of issues from chronic fatigue, mental impairment to even more serious physical health issues. We are night sleepers by nature, we are night blind, and a normal circadian rhythm rises and falls in a way to line up with evening time as sleep time. The damage night shift work did to me was enough to make me quit. It just runs you down over time and you start to break. Most of the long term night workers I knew were chain smokers and alcoholics and extremely antisocial with paranoia even seeming semi-common. I won't ever opt to work nights again unless given absolutely no choice financially.

I suspect a lot of people, quite probably myself included, are so chronically sleep deprived in this modern world we have created that it would take many weeks of good sleeping to get even close to a feeling of what it would be like to be well rested. I wish I could, I think I would quite like that feeling. I think I vaguely remember it as a small child.

The saying might have been coined by an author, it might not technically be 100% accurate, but the concept of it can't be argued as anything but true.

deadweight · Post by **deadweight** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 5:01 pm

Bushranger,

You might be misreading my posts because I haven't been talking about night sleep versus day sleep.

Bushranger · Post by **Bushranger** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:07 am

You state the body does not know the difference between 6 hours sleep at one time slot vs the same 6 hours at another time slot. I say there is a difference and that the body knows this difference, even when they are both in the "night" hours. Science agrees with me.

deadweight · Post by **deadweight** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 6:59 pm

Bushranger wrote:You state the body does not know the difference between 6 hours sleep at one time slot vs the same 6 hours at another time slot. I say there is a difference and that the body knows this difference, even when they are both in the "night" hours. Science agrees with me.

I've done a lot of sleep research and experimentation personally. Shifting around the hours I sleep and trying Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion sleep schedule (30 minutes of sleep about every 6 hours, for a total of 2 hours of sleep a day). And I had a polysomnogram last summer. It's such an interesting field of study.

I've never heard it suggested that sleeping 10PM to 4AM would be more restful than sleeping Midnight to 6AM. If anything, one would think that getting up closer to sunrise would be the better option.

Anyway, let me know what sleep studies you're referring to, because I'd be interested in reading them.

Bushranger · Post by **Bushranger** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 1:27 am

deadweight wrote:I've done a lot of sleep research and experimentation personally. Shifting around the hours I sleep and trying Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion sleep schedule (30 minutes of sleep about every 6 hours, for a total of 2 hours of sleep a day)

You actually do that!? I think I'll leave it there. Good luck to you.

deadweight · Post by **deadweight** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 3:17 am

Oh, I don't do it anymore. I did it for about 3 weeks, it was an interesting experiment. Polyphasic sleeping is to sleeping what fad dieting is to dieting. It can be interesting and perhaps even helpful in the short term, but in the long run it's unsustainable and anti-social.

I did a little more research into the notion of night sleep before midnight being more beneficial than night-time sleep after midnight, but haven't been able to find anything. But as I said, if it feels true for you, that's really all that matters.

Of all the things I've tried, I have two strategies that have made getting up for me easier in the morning.

1. Drinking a glass of whole milk before bed. I'm not sure what it is, the fat, the protein, maybe it's psychological, but I feel more rested when I wake up.

2. This is counterintuitive, but waking up 30 minutes earlier than I need to has been tremendously helpful for me. The key is that I don't fill that time with anything. If you're curious, I wrote about this technique here. I've heard from a couple other people who have found this technique helpful, but we may be members of a small minority that this works for.

Bushranger · Post by **Bushranger** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 3:47 am

I'm not sure why or how that works for you but since it does then might as well use it I think. I find if I wake up at 6:30am I am totally broken for the day but if I get up at 7am (which has been the time I've gotten up most of my life including all my school years) I am fine.

I agree that the extreme type of polyphasic sleep (30 min chunks) is unsustainable. Indeed I think the only people who can do it long term have actual physiological quirks that allow them to and they usually do it almost naturally. Just like those people who function fine on 4 hours a night, most of us can't do it. For most of us it's just a way to prepare yourself for an early grave, be it by a horrible accident or simply long term damage to your health due to that sleep deprivation.

Dandelion · Post by **Dandelion** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:37 pm

There is evidence that the body does know the difference. It's not just about how we feel, but about very complicated hormonal and chemical processes, light and dark, seasons - cycles that have evolved over millennia.

When I was ill a few years ago, one of the first things my doctor suggested I change was to sleep earlier in as total darkness as possible. Around that time I read a book called 'Sleep, Sugar and Survival'. I don't care for the style of the writing, but it might if anyone is interested in reading further, you may want to look it up.

sheepish · Post by **sheepish** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 1:46 pm

I think there's a big difference between sleeping during the day (which, I agree is usually more difficult for people) and sleeping during the morning. I've had a number of different jobs and commutes and I really feel awful if I have to get up any earlier than 8 at the earliest. It doesn't matter when I go to bed, I still feel awful when I have to get up at 6 or 7 am because I just don't sleep well before about midnight. It doesn't matter how much I try to get used to it over a period of time either.

My natural sleep pattern is 1am till 10am, I feel great when I can do that. For me, it really is the other way around - sleep before midnight counts for much less than sleep after midnight.