The Eight-hour Sleep Myth
Most insomniacs and people who have problems with daily energy levels fear that a lack of sleep will impair daytime functioning. You too are likely to be influenced by the media hype and sleep researchers telling you that everybody need eight hours of sleep to function during the day. This is not necessarily true! Yet most insomniacs and people who suffer from lack of energy during the day share a very common belief: “If I don’t sleep for eight hours or more I won’t be able to function tomorrow”. No one can tell you how much sleep you need, in fact it is very likely that you have unrealistic beliefs about how much sleep you need to function during the day.
There are many examples of people who sleep four, five or six hours per night and yet are perfectly capable of maintaining high performance levels during the day. Studies of transatlantic yacht racers, who intentionally limit their sleep to as little as possible, have shown that their performance is not impaired. In fact, studies have shown that those sailors who average just around five and a half hours of sleep perform the best.
You see, it isn’t really about how long you sleep. It’s really all about the quality of your sleep. However, over the next few chapters your will learn exactly what quality sleep really means.
The burning question,”how can I get more sleep,” should really be: “how can I raise the quality of my sleep?”
Raising the quality of your sleep is most definitely possible, because most people engage in daily activities that suppress the deep sleep stage and hence lowers the quality of your sleep. Our goal is to optimize your sleep system so the deep sleep stage is not suppressed.
Therefore, our mission is not necessarily to sleep longer; in some cases that won’t do any good. What is one to do then? Well, you want to raise the quality of your sleep. You want to optimize your sleep system and make sure that the all-important deep sleep stage that occurs during your core sleep is not suppressed, but rather optimized!
In fact, most people engage in a variety of activities that produce lighter stages of sleep throughout the night. If your activities and habits promote a lighter stage of sleep, naturally you will experience problems with daytime functioning.
In fact, your ability to function during the day is dependent on many other factors than simply how long you sleep. We will explore these in detail in the next chapter.
People who experience a high quality of sleep need far less sleep in order to rejuvenate themselves physically than those who experience a lesser quality of sleep.
Remember that most of your all-important deep sleep occurs during the first part of the night. In fact, you obtain 100% of deep sleep during roughly the first five and a half hours of sleep. Here we find a very important reason why you can perform on less sleep than you think.
Since the deep-sleep stage is responsible for your physical rejuvenation and therefore your daily energy levels, sleeping more than your core sleep will do very little—practically nothing—to help you feel rested and energetic during the day! It doesn’t really matter much whether you get six hours or 10 hours. The extra four hours contain extremely little quality sleep.
Nevertheless, it’s not that simple. If you sleep less and the quality of your sleep is reduced as a direct result of the thoughts and behaviors that we will examine, you will certainly feel tired and groggy, because your deep sleep stage was suppressed!
Furthermore, the extra hours only contribute to disturb your body temperature rhythm making it more difficult to fall asleep at night.
Sleep loss: The important realization here is that the worst thing that can happen is that insomnia affects mood – you may be slightly more irritable.
Research has shown that reduced sleep does not impair performance. In fact, studies have consistently shown that you CAN perform despite not getting the amount of sleep you thought you needed.
Bottom Line on Sleep Myths
There is no need to worry about losing sleep! You can perform well on less sleep than you probably think and furthermore the body has a natural mechanism that will compensate for any lack of deep sleep. So relax and keep reading!
July 5th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Hi every one.
Since you invited me to leave a comment and tell about a tip wich worked for me, I try to contribute.
The most efficient mean for me to fall asleep is the reading in the bed.
it attachs the mind, and allow me to avoid wandering thoughts that lead me often to remind the mistakes of the day and steal from me the want to sleep. The subjet must be exempt of intelectual effort or intensive reflection but we must read only for the pleasure.
During the day, if we experience too much stress we must expect insomnia as well as if we take a dose of coffee higher than we need, especially in the evening.
If insomnia occurs, we must avoid to be annoyed because it increases the problem. If we take the situation as normal, the chance to fall asleep in no long time can be greater. It depends then only on the biologic phenomena, since the psychologic effect (negative) is elimiated. We don’t stay in bed however , but try to do something useful so that we forget the fact that we are in anormal situation.
Take an infusion, or a glass of hot milk with little sugar. Avoid to be hungry when going to sleep, nor take a heavy diner.
Select adequat television program, some of them may affect negatively the subconcious mind and induce insomnia.
Sayd Imessaoudene - Ingineer.