I’ve learnt a little about sleep cycles and remember that every 90 minutes is when we move through the 5 stages of sleep, but I’ve also heard it’s recommended to have 8 hours of sleep. Wouldn’t that make you feel drowsy if you’re interrupting the sleep cycle when you wake up after 8 hours?
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There’s a natural variation in amount of time adult humans need to sleep, but 7-9 hours is now the recommended sleep length (but this varies by age). Even if we keep to the traditional 8 hours of sleep, your first sleep cycle (consisting of all sleep stages) is usually around 2 hours. The longer you are asleep, each cycle gets shorter, and the proportion of time spent in each sleep stage (N1, N2, N3, REM) changes, shifting to longer and longer time in REM/dreaming sleep. How groggy you feel when you wake up depends on which stage of sleep you were in when you woke up. At 8 hours, it’s often easier to wake up not groggy because even if you are in the middle of a cycle, you are more likely to be in REM/dreaming sleep which looks a lot like your awake brain leading to less grogginess, generally.
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