Getting a good night’s sleep for many is a natural activity that people can do. While rest may seem like the most natural thing in the world for people to do, many people may have sleep disorders and sleeping habits that they don’t know about, causing long-term consequences. Sleep Awareness Week is a holiday all about educating people about their sleeping habits and how they can effectively change the way they sleep.
Every year, the National Sleep Foundation takes this time to reemphasize the important connection between your sleep and your health. This year, we’re helping you become your Best Slept Self. Because deep, rejuvenating sleep is what we toss-and-turn about.
You might be getting enough hours, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting the most restful type of sleep. These strategies can help.
When it comes to sleep, quantity is important—but so is quality. Most adults need somewhere between seven and nine hours a night to wake up feeling well-rested, but a lot depends on exactly what happens during those hours. The quality of your sleep ensures that you get the essential physical, mental, and emotional benefits you need from your slumber.
Sleep quality is the measurement of how well you’re sleeping—in other words, whether your sleep is restful and restorative. It differs from sleep satisfaction, which refers to a more subjective judgment of how you feel about the sleep you are getting. Sleep quality is more complicated to measure than sleep quantity, but it’s not entirely subjective. Guidelines give an overview of sleep quality goals, and they include some individual and age differences. Four items are generally assessed to measure sleep quality:
Sleep latency: This is a measurement of how long it takes you to fall asleep. Drifting off within 30 minutes or less after the time you go to bed suggests that the quality of your sleep is good.
Sleep waking: This measures how often you wake up during the night. Frequent wakefulness at night can disrupt your sleep cycle and reduce your sleep quality. Waking up once or not at all suggests that your sleep quality is good.
Wakefulness: This measurement refers to how many minutes you spend awake during the night after you first go to sleep. People with good sleep quality have 20 minutes or less of wakefulness during the night.
Sleep efficiency: The amount of time you spend actually sleeping while in bed is known as sleep efficiency. This measurement should ideally be 85 percent or more for optimal health benefits.
If you’re curious, this is how you can calculate it: First, find your actual sleeping duration. Take your total time in bed (in minutes) minus how many minutes it took you to fall asleep and minus how many minutes you spent awake during the night. Divide that figure (actual sleeping time) by your total time in bed (in minutes). Finally, multiply that number by 100 to arrive at your sleep efficiency percentage. For example: 480 (total minutes in bed) – 30 (minutes to fall asleep) – 0 (minutes awake during the night) = 450 (actual sleep time in minutes). 450 / 480 = .9375 x 100 = 93.75% sleep efficiency
Together, these four elements can help you assess the quality of your sleep. They contribute to an overall sense you have of your sleep being “satisfying” or not. Improving your sleep quality can help ensure that your sleep cycles won’t be interrupted, which in turn helps assure that you will wake up feeling energized.
There is no precise number of minutes or hours of sleep at night that guarantees you will wake up feeling totally refreshed. But based on your age and lifestyle, what’s recommended for you likely falls within a certain range. To help yourself stay alert during the day, try sticking with these guidelines.
Newborns: From 0-to 3 months, babies need between 14 and 17 hours of sleep. This includes daytime naps since newborns rarely sleep through the night. Older infants (4-11 months) need about 12 to 15 hours of sleep each day.
Toddlers: Between the first and second years of life, toddlers need between 11 and 14 hours of sleep each night.
Children: Preschoolers (3-5 years) should get 10 to 13 hours, while school-age kids (6-13 years) should strive for nine to 11 hours each night.
Teenagers: As kids get older, their need for sleep decreases slightly. Teens (14-17 years) require about eight to 10 hours of nightly sleep.
Adults: Between the ages of 18 and 64, adults should aim for seven to nine hours of nightly sleep. If you’re older than 65, you may need a little less: seven to eight hours is recommended.
Some people can function well on the lower end of the range and others will need every minute of the upper limit. In fact, an additional hour or two on either side of a given range may be appropriate, depending on the person. Still, straying too far from the recommended amount could lead to a variety of health issues. For example, shortchanging sleep has been associated with weight gain, reduced immunity, high blood pressure, and depression.
The negative effects of too little or too much sleep aren’t just physical—they can also interfere with your mental health. Your outlook, mood, and attention span all depend on getting the right amount of sleep, and without it, your job performance (not to mention your personal life) can suffer.
Not surprisingly, poor sleep quality is characterized by the opposite factors. If it takes you longer than 30 minutes to fall asleep, if you wake up during the night more than once, or if it takes you longer than 20 minutes to drift back asleep after waking up, your sleep quality is considered poor. You’re likely to feel tired the next day, even if you get the recommended number of sleep hours. It is important to note that there are some individual and age differences in these factors. For example, it’s common to wake up more frequently during the night as we get older. As long as you return to sleep quickly, this won’t hurt your sleep.
If getting enough sleep seems like an uphill battle, there are a few tips you can try. To start, head to bed at the same time every night, to allow your body to settle into a regular sleep-wake schedule. Just the way kids benefit from a set schedule, adults who stick to a regular pre-sleep routine that includes reading, meditation, journaling, and a warm bath may find it easier to wind down in the evening.
To help get quality sleep, avoid alcohol, caffeine, and spicy and fried foods right before bedtime. Aim for a bedroom temperature between 60 and 67 °F, make sure it’s dark, and block any bothersome noises with a pair of earplugs.
Sleep Awareness Week gives people a chance to see if they have sleep problems. Promote good sleep using social media by using the hashtag #SleepAwarenessWeek. Convince your friends and family to see if they need an assessment of their sleeping habits.
Ask your doctor if you can get an appointment with a sleep professional to know if you need to change your sleeping habits. Head on over to the National Sleep Foundation to learn about the potential health risks and disorders that may arise from a lack of sleep. Take their online poll to see if you have any sleeping disorders.
Sources:
https://www.thensf.org/what-is-sleep-quality/
https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/sleep-awareness-week/
https://www.thensf.org/how-many-hours-of-sleep-do-you-really-need/