Everyone knows sleep is important, vital to your health, happiness, energy, appetite, blah blah blah.
The Sleep Health Foundation estimates that between 33 and 45 per cent of Aussies have poor sleep patterns that lead to fatigue and irritability that’s putting them at risk of low productivity, damage to their mental health and unsafe behaviours. Everyone knows these things, but a huge majority of us still find it hard to fit in enough good quality sleep every night.
New research shows that it mightn’t be about how many total hours of shut eye we’re clocking, but rather how good the quality of that sleep is. It all comes down to figuring out your personal sleep cycle and sticking to it.
How d’you do that?
This intuitive little tool asks you to plug in what time you want to wake up (7:25am, for example) and works backwards, counting back from the time a person needs to wake in 90 minute cycles and takes into account a ‘15 minute dropping off period’.
It’ll then present a selection of optimal times for you to hit the sack, likea so:
“Getting a good night’s sleep is about more than simply going to bed early – it’s about waking up at the right time too,” reads the calculator’s website.“Using a formula based on the body’s natural rhythms, the Sleep Calculator will work out the best time for you to rise or go to sleep. And that means you can look forward to feeling fresh and alert … every morning.”
Yep, you can apparently sleep way less if you use this method and wake up feeling fresher than a damn daisy.
Source: News.com.au.
Photo: The Simpsons.
