Sleeping mechanics 101

Intro

Ok. To get the basic context on this blog post you have to understand my mechanics (for the last 15 years more or less).
I normally have trouble going to sleep early, I am a more active person during the evenings and night... just not a morning person, I suppose. Well, the whole "growing up thing" about working kills me because of the so called **office hours**. Ok, so you need to be completely aware and concentrated from 9 to 5 but on the other hand I can't go to sleep earlier than 12 - 1 am...
So the classic comment I've heard was "Just go to bed earlier", BUT ! of course the need to have my nightly-happy-time pushed me to ask me the questions:

• How can I optimize my sleep time ?
• Can I even reduce my sleeping hours and feel active and awake ?

The journey

First... to understand the sleeping mechanics I surf the net and read a few ebooks. The overall knowledge and tunable parameters that I learned about will be presented (just the 'meat', btw) in the following paragraphs:

Melatonine: Hormone which is highly related to the day-cycles (the so called circadian cycle). Our exposure to sun light is the main way to control his levels. Conclusion: get sunlight -> melatonin -> deep sleep (or at least, the urge of sleeping)

Day temperature cycle: During normal operation, the body has a daily cycle of temperature which ranges between 36 and 38 Celsius. By the time that we want to go to sleep our body should be closer to the lower limit (thus, avoid doing sports at night if you want to go to sleep in the following hour)

Sleep Stages: There are 5 sleep stages defined by the common wisdom: REM and Stages 1,2,3 and 4, where stages 3 and 4 are known as deep sleep. The order in which their appear is 1,2,3,4,3,2,REM,2,3,4,3,2,REM and so on.... The important variable for each is the time they take on each cycle during sleep. During deep sleep stages (longer in the early cycles) our body does the most of his muscle regeneration and rest. REM stage on the other hand presents a high brain activity, is the stage where we dream on... and is the easiest stage to wake up from, or at least the one from you will feel more awake rested and ready (<--Goal). Then.... when are my REM stages and how long are they ??

My data collection stage was to log nightly for approximately a month the hours I slept, the time I went to bed and intensity or feeling after waking up (tired - sleepy - like crap - really awake - hyperactive, etc...)

On my next post I will share the data with you, I am still trying to find more angles to conclude something that can help me optimize my sleeping time. I know that it is not a sample highly representative but I hope it will be enough to draw some suggestions at the end.

Attached to this introductory post is a screenshot of the hours of sleep per night...