DZGN/design

I love my new iPad.

Sleep hacking

I got up this morning, ran up the stairs (walking up is slow :P) and proceeded to sort out my breakfast of toast and a big man-size smoothie. I usually have this before the gym because it’s not too heavy but full of the right amount of energy. Well it got closer to gym time but I still felt horribly sleepy. Feeling tired and lethargic is up there as one of my most hated states of being. So I called off going to the gym, and instead did a little research on better muscle building techniques for my gym workouts. In the process, I came across some interesting info on sleep. Yeah, you’re probably like… yawn… everyone gets told they need around 8 hours sleep a night, but the explanations the article provided were valid. 

This year, more than any other, I need to form much better routines and habits for approaching work and general wellbeing. Sleep, I feel, can make or break a lot of this – since a lazy sleepy brain, well, sucks. I noticed around Christmas and New Years that I was going to sleep around the same time but also waking up at 6.30am – often bang on that time. I’ll get to why this is interesting soon (if you haven’t fallen asleep).

People go through a couple different phases when they sleep. To quote the article which will do a better job of explaining it:

The first of these stages is called deep sleep, slow wave sleep or non-REM sleep. During this level the entire body relaxes, cerebral cortex activity is minimized and heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and energy usage declines by about 30% (Martini, 2001: 496). 

The second level of sleep is known as rapid eye movement or REM sleep. This level is where dreaming occurs as well as changes in a person’s blood pressure and breathing. Studies conducted with an electroencephalograph (EEG) have shown that activities within the brain are similar to those that occur while awake. Although this is the case people in the REM stage of sleep are less receptive to external 

These two levels of sleep alternate throughout the night. Deep sleep fills the initial hour and a half of sleep followed by REM sleep for much shorter periods (starting at 5 minutes) and alternates throughout the night.Over an eight hour night around 2 hours is spent in the REM sleep (Martini, 2001). 

Those sleep cycles last about 90 minutes at a time and happen throughout sleep. What I found cool about my 11pm to 6.30am sleep was that it was a perfect 7 hour 30 minute sleep, or 5 cycles of 90 minutes almost down to the minute.

So in an effort to increase productivity, mood and gym results blah blah, I’m going to try and get back to that. I’ve used the iOS app ‘Sleep Cycle’ quite a bit to track my sleeping cycles. You can see a couple of the cycles below.

iMessage for Mac OS X

Now please.