Our body’s sleep cycle is always changing and for the average adult, managing to get enough sleep is not usually our priority.
While some people choose to sleep less than the recommended eight hours and others simply cannot make the time, it’s important to know how to capitalize on the few hours of sleep we do manage to capture by understanding our sleep cycles.
A very beneficial way to wake up refreshed despite minimal sleep is to wake up during a period of your lightest sleep. Being woken in a light stage of your sleep cycle has proven to make people feel more energetic and alert upon awakening.
When you fall asleep, you experience rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep throughout the night. The beginning stages of sleep prepares your body to shut down. During this stage, you can be easily awakened by noise or thoughts. The middle stages involve light sleep usually lasting anywhere from 10-25 minutes. Deep sleep occurs in the later stages when activity in the body is low and activity in the brain is very high. REM sleep is the last stage of the sleep cycle where for about 70-90 minutes we are in our deepest sleep. This is the stage of sleep where we dream; when we are awoken during this stage, we often feel disoriented.
These cycles repeat throughout the night and into the morning. Waking up in the beginning stages of your sleep cycle is important because our bodies aren’t entirely shut down. Meanwhile, being awoken in the middle of REM sleep can cause grogginess that has the potential to last throughout the morning and even throughout the day. This explains why sometimes even when we sleep for eight or nine hours, we can sometimes still feel like we barely got any rest at all.
But how do you wake up during your lightest sleep?
Use sleep tracking apps like Sleep Time to identify your sleeping patterns. Simply turn on the app and lay the your phone face down on the side of your bed. As you sleep, Sleep Time will track your body movements to measure your different sleep phases. The app will also generate monthly sleep reports that will provide deep analytical insights into your sleeping habits so you know where you need to start improving.
Sleep Time also acts as your ideal alarm clock. Set up what time you would like to wake up by and Sleep Time will wake you up at the perfect moment of your lightest sleep phase so you’ll feel refreshed for the rest of the day. Start on your road towards better sleep by downloading Sleep Time today!
Sleep Time is a free app available today on iOS and Android. For more information, visit Azumio.com or follow us on Twitter and Facebook. If you have any questions, please email us at support@argus.com.
