7 ways to get better sleep

[spogmai shaglay]

Cell phone are suppose to be for our convenience and they have ended causing a lot of inconvenience to us..

sometimes i feel not having a cell phone is good...atleast there should be sometime where we cant be located, we can be by ourselves....

[PFgulalai]

Normally the moment I close my eyes, I enter my sleep valley. But I am nocturnal and that is the worst part. I sacrifice my sleep time for my other activities which is really an unhealthy habit.Perhaps I take advantage of the fact that I can function well on even 3 hours sleep for about 39 hours.I just have to tune my brain to not think about it a lot.However, 5 hours sleep is the minimum requirement for memory retention/recalling accoording to science.So for my countless exams I try to get at least 5 hours sleep to recall everything besides sweating at the thought of exams. A good old remedy for the sleepless people is to take a warm bath and have a hot cup of milk (Ah, reminds me of hot choclate now!!) and to read something pleasant (not like flood stories, Afghanistan problems, or God's existence issues, lol), and think positively and feel that you are about to forget the rest of the world for few hours. One of my wishes is to sleep for 10 hours continuously at some point in my life. A lot of recent scientific studies have made a correlation between lack of sleep and certain diseases, so getting a decent amount of sleep like 7-8 hours is really important!!!

[Shehbaz Khan]

Cell phone the worst enemies of humans mara !! They kill your peace of mind all the time .. You can't turn them silent (May be I get a call) and their are times when you really need time to be mentally present with the ones sitting around you .. !!

You do good deeds and you will get a comfortable sleep this is what I believe

[Talal]

Work hard you'll sleep well

[amna.]

Work hard you'll sleep well

and you will snore.

[Baygham]

I was told that 8 hour sleep is ideal and great for health. Is this true?

not necessarily, some need less some more.

For good sleep follow something called sleep hygiene

[IamDZJ]

priorities are priorities my priend. i will always choose that message over sleep.

[spogmai shaglay]

Cell phone are suppose to be for our convenience and they have ended causing a lot of inconvenience to us..

sometimes i feel not having a cell phone is good...atleast there should be sometime where we cant be located, we can be by ourselves....

Why do you feel like that?

sometimes we want to have some time for ourselves and we cant as we are disturbed by it.....

sometimes we want to have some quality time with family butthen agian disturbed....

you can be reached anywhere and everywhere......

the cell phone is for our convenience not for the caller's convenience...

[pukhtana]

I agree with Spogmai but it has been a amazing invention that has made our lives very easier.

[PFgulalai]

I was told that 8 hour sleep is ideal and great for health. Is this true?

Hmmm the recent research is changing the definition of ideal sleep.For instance, = > 8 hours is linked with morbidity which is not what we thought previously.But it is very recent information so nothing conclusive as such could be drawn out of it at present.
Sleep requirement varies with individual and age group: Children and old people need to sleep more than young folks so there is no prefect and absolute magic number. I think the best magic number is the one which makes you function the best.For a large number of population,the good old formula of 7-8 hours/night sleep works as a basal sleep need (the amount of sleep needed to perform regular activities optimally). Less than this average would not kill you, but you might have damaging effect if you continue the same routine (note that basal sleep need for some people can be 5 hours).The inability to meet the basal sleep need results in sleep debt (the amount of sleep accumulated due to sleep-deprivation as a result of illness, exams, unhealthy sleep habits, disruption of sleep due to different factors such as loud music/intense light etc). If any time you feel sleepy during the usually active part of the day, you might be having an unresolved sleep debt.
Personally, I think the best sleep (i.e., number of hours) is the one which makes you feel active and alert before your your regular circadian dip(s).

[PFgulalai]

Gulalai I have a question.

I was told something similar to do this.

5 hours sleep - Good
5-8 you begin another round and even if you sleep for 6 it wont be as good as if it were to be 5?
8-11 you began another round and its not good for your health?
How does this go?

As I said before there is no magick number. The optimal performance of some people depends upon 9 hours sleep while for others it is just a matter of 5 hours.Also, do these rounds of sleep happen in an unconscious state during sleeping? I have never heard of such unconscious cyclic rounds of sleep during sleeping so I can't say anything about it.But in any case,five hours sleep could be good only if that is your basal sleep need. Sleeping more or less than that would qualify as sleep debt.

[Baygham]

As I said before there is no magick number. The optimal performance of some people depends upon 9 hours sleep while for others it is just a matter of 5 hours.Also, do these rounds of sleep happen in an unconscious state during sleeping? I have never heard of such unconscious cyclic rounds of sleep during sleeping so I can't say anything about it.But in any case,five hours sleep could be good only if that is your basal sleep need. Sleeping more or less than that would qualify as sleep debt.

He is probably referring to Sleep cycles,

Aseer jana, Sleep cycles are actually not based on a 5 hr cycle. Now we have 3 stages of regular or what is called non REM sleep and REM sleep. Stage 3 is the deepest and we need all stages for a refreshing sleep. REM is usually more later in the night (early morning) and Stage 3 earlier in the night.
so as gulalai said, 5 for some, 6 for others and 10 for others. More than ten is considered abnormal and less than 6-7 if functionally impairing and affecting social activities is considered insomnia.

BTW, gulalai are you doing your research on sleep?

[PFgulalai]

He is probably referring to Sleep cycles,

Aseer jana, Sleep cycles are actually not based on a 5 hr cycle. Now we have 3 stages of regular or what is called non REM sleep and REM sleep. Stage 3 is the deepest and we need all stages for a refreshing sleep. REM is usually more later in the night (early morning) and Stage 3 earlier in the night.
so as gulalai said, 5 for some, 6 for others and 10 for others. More than ten is considered abnormal and less than 6-7 if functionally impairing and affecting social activities is considered insomnia.

BTW, gulalai are you doing your research on sleep?

My bad!Thanks Baygham.

AseerJaan,

Baygham has already explained it.But I will just add one more point that what matters most is how much time you spend in each stage of sleep.So a normal healthy individual must spend 50% of the sleep time in stage 2 (Light sleep stage of the Non-REM--10-30 minutes after you pass the "transition to sleep" stage which is the first stage of Non-REM), 20% in REM/Dream stage (about 70-90min after you fall asleep), and 30% in the remaining stages of sleep such as Stage 3 (Deep Sleep) and Stage 4 (highly intense deep sleep) of Non-REM.

Also, we tend to move back and forth between deep sleep and REM sleep.So for the entire sleep time, we repeat the sleep cycle mutiple times.In addition, most deep sleep would take place in first half of night, followed by REM, and so on.So we spend different amounts of time in each stage as the night progresses.But as Bagham mentioned precisely, deep sleep (3 and 4) and REM sleep are very important to have good sleep.

About 3% population carry a gene which helps them to function well on 5-6 hours sleep but the majority of us do need >6.5-<8.5 hours as adults.Exceptions are there obviously.

Try this fun activity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/


Baygham,

Not doing any research at present related to sleep, but I have done a SNP genotyping study on the role of HLA complex in the onset and progression of narcolepsy (a sleep disorder) in Parkinson's disease patients a year ago.