Whilst I feel groggy every morning, I notice that I operate better when I don’t oversleep, if I stay up late and get up somewhat early, let’s say maybe 6 hours sleep, why is this? They say people need 7 / 8 hours of adequate sleep for good health.
In: Biology
You could be routinely breaking your REM cycles, and this shorter sleep happens to wake you up when you’re not in one.
If you can remember your dreams–particularly if you are aware you were in one at the moment of waking– then it’s *very* likely you are breaking REM, which causes your grogginess and low energy.
A full cycle is important and healthy, but getting two and a half cycles is still better sleep than getting just one, even though you’ll wake feeling better rested in the second case.
It could be that you genuinely need less sleep.
It could be that you’re overtired. Our sleep is regulated by hormones and when we don’t sleep when our hormones suggest we should, we produce adrenaline/cortisol instead. This can cause us to wake up early and still have the stress type hormones going.
I have the exact same thing actually. It’s why I also get grumpy in the weekends; no reason to get out of bed so I oversleep, then I get grumpy.
It’s best to sleep in cycles of approx 90 minutes each; if you wake up in the middle of a cycle you will feel unrested. So, you might feel surprised at feeling rested after 6hrs if you were expecting 7.5 or 9.
It takes approx 10-20 minutes to fall asleep, so give yourself that extra time. Also, having a wind-down routine will help a lot, such as no caffeine close to going to bed and not being on your phone in bed, like I am now! Lol
Train your brain to see your bed as only for sleep, so if you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back asleep, get out of bed and do a mentally undemanding activity before getting back into your bed.
It’s a trap. You need 8 hours of sleep. When you get by on less, your system temporarily adapts, so that when you get a bit of extra sleep it throws things out of whack. If you were to sleep 8 hours every day, you’d soon adapt to that and be much healthier in the long run
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