Body: How to sleep well

Lately I developed this new sleeping pattern which I'm getting used to, but it's still a bit weird. Normally I go to sleep, sleep about 8 hours per night and wake up refreshed to start a new day. Now I somehow manage to sleep only 6 hours per night, wake up refreshed, but take a siesta in the afternoon (around 15h) for about half an hour. I don't know how this came to be but it works like a charm and I suddenly gain 1,5 hours per day. This sparked my interest in how sleep actually works. Well, I'm in luck because the book I'm using for the diet I'm trying out also has a short chapter on sleep full of useful information. Following is a short summary of what I found really interesting in this chapter.

Apparently there are 3 types of insomnia: When it takes you too long to get to sleep you have onset insomnia, when you wake too often throughout the night you have middle insomnia and when you wake too early and are unable to get back to sleep you have terminal insomnia.

Good sleep is mostly dependent on the percentage of REM to total sleep. Not total REM duration. The higher the REM percentage to sleep, the more restful the sleep and the better the recall of skills or data acquired in the previous 24 hours. An REM increase can be accomplished by extending the sleep to more than 9 hours or by waking up 4,5 hours after going to sleep. One intentional waking isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The higher the percentage of deep-wave sleep, the better your subsequent physical performance. More than 2 glasses of wine within 4 hours of sleep decreases deep-wave sleep 20-50%!

Tips for better sleeping:

• Room temperature is very important. It's very individual so experiment with this to see what your ideal temperature is. If you can't control the temperature try using socks of different thickness.
• Eat a meal that consists largely of fat and protein within 3 hours of sleeping to get to sleep faster.
• Include iso-lateral (one-arm or one-leg) resistance training in your exercises when you work out. The more complex the stabilization requires, the faster you get to sleep.
• Take a cold bath one hour before going to bed.
• Lie in the half military crawl position when sleeping to immobilize yourself. Less fidgeting is faster sleep. Lie on your chest with your head on a pillow and turned to the right. Both arms are straight by your sides, palms up. Now bring your right arm up until the elbow is at 90 degrees and your hand is close to your head or under the pillow. Next, bring your right knee out to that side until it's bent at 90 degrees.

If all this fails I suggest resorting to more high-tech solutions:

• F.lux: Application that dims your computer screen.
• Zeo Personal sleep coach: To reduce grogginess
• Philips goLITE: Go to sleep faster
• Air-O-Swiss Travel Ultrasonic Cool Mist Humidifier: Improve time and depth of sleep
• Clocky Moving Alarm Clock: Alarm clock that runs away! :D

And then there's also something called "polyphasic sleep". Something really interesting that explains my sleeping behavior of the last few weeks. The idea behind it is to spread your hours asleep throughout the day by taking naps instead of the regular monophasic sleep of 8 hours. There are huge advantages to this. For every nap of 20 minutes you take during the day, you have to sleep approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes less during the night. The siesta I'm taking every day now, actually does that, so I'm living proof this works. The most extreme version of this consist of taking just 6 naps of 20 minutes evenly spread throughout the day. People doing this only have 2 hours of sleep in total and it has been proven numerous times that is actually works! There is one big drawback however. The more naps you take, the more important it is to take those naps on time. If you miss one, you'll feel tired for days.  

Slaapwel! ;)