Sleeping mechanics 101 - Part 3: The quality

Well, after reading the comment left in my last post I realize that there is a bunch of parameters that of course affect the quality and that they where not taken into consideration. Nevertheless, I got some insights not in the causes for my sleeping quality, but only of the effects.... I might be able to find the thin line between feeling like shit and waking up sharp as a knife....
I divided the sleeping quality into 2 groups: positive nights (including Fair, Good and Fully Awake nights) and negative nights (Sleepy & Like shit).

First, an overview of the quality, with their amount of hours slept and the number of nights I experience them order by quantity:

hours slept	#	quality
07:37	7	Good
07:51	7	Sleepy
05:48	5	Like shit
07:08	4	Fully awake
08:32	4	Fair
07:30	3	No records

Hmmm... it's like the negative and positive nights are pretty even. Let's look at the same data but now ordered by the amounts of hours slept, giving quality levels a simple value: Fully Awake=5, Good =4, Fair=3, Sleepy=2 and Like shit=1. Let's see :

hours slept	#		quality
05:48	5	1	Like shit
07:08	4	5	Fully awake
07:30	3	---	No records
07:37	7	4	Good
07:51	7	2	Sleepy
08:32	4	3	Fair

Now it seems more clearer that the best quality sleep for ME (of course these values should change between individuals) should be around 7 hours. Let's give them a +- 30mins, because near 7:40 minutes there is already information of a lower quality sleep (from Fully awake to Good). So from 6:30 to 7:30 I should consider it my hours_slept target zone. For weekdays, since I have to be at work at 8:30am then my latest sleeping hour shouldn't be later than 1:30am, considering 30 minutes to wake-shower-drive (yes, I don't get any breakfast and I live really close to work :P... screw you commuters ! ).

After the mentioned logical exercise, it is no surprise that the average time I went to sleep for the most positive nights are 1:21am (Fully awake mornings) and 1:38am (Good mornings).

On the other hand... How can I know that my weekend behavior does not affect the presented averages ?? they should, since they are pretty messed up. Well easy, by checking the average time I woke up on each of those optimal nights:

#	hours slept	quality	avg(went to bed)	avg(woke up at)
3	06:38	Fully awake	01:21	07:06
7	07:37	Good	01:38	09:07

Looks like good nights have some bias to my weekend-waking-up-hours.... but anyways, I am interested in knowing the time range... independently of the day :P

Insights:

• The distribution between the number of "positive nights" and the negative ones is pretty even...
• On weekdays, my perfect time-to-go-to-bed is around 1:20am, to optimize my sleeping quality
• The curve shows that there is a high quality sleep range which starts to decrease after more than 7.5 hours of sleep
• Along with that, since the worst quality of sleep I had has an average of slept hours of 5 hours and 48 minutes, I would suspect that below that time range there should be another high quality sleep range, due to the sleeping cycles... so I might start sleeping some 5 just as a test....
  

Interesting, now I know myself better and I can push myself to bed with a better excuse... more experiments to come ? we'll see...

Sleeping mechanics 101 - Part 2: The Data

Ok, The data set is a sleeping log of 30 days (with some days missing, just because... :S ). They contain the time I went to bed, not the exact time I fell asleep, but is the best measuring point... I assume you agree. Also, there are few days where I woke up and could not sleep right after going to the bathroom or setting up the alarm for next day... whatever... you get the picture: the sleep times are quite 'optimistic' in terms that are biased towards the highest sleeping time possible.

Day of the week	hours slept
Monday	06:52
Tuesday	06:59
Wednesday	06:23
Thursday	07:19
Friday	08:45
Saturday	08:13
Sunday	07:22

The median of the data: 7 hours and 5 minutes

Insights:

• First of all, it was impressive to see that my normal perception of the hours I sleep where underestimated, normally responding "I sleep around 6 hours", while my average time is: 7 hours and 25 minutes (app).
  
• I wonder what makes me sleep less during the middle of the week (Wednesday, min value of 6 hours and 23 minutes, one hour less than my average)
• It was easy to predict that even though Friday and Saturday nights are the ones that I went to bed the latest (average of 2:30 am, 1:15 am on Fridays and 3:50am on Saturdays) , they where the ones I slept the most...
• Since I am playing soccer on Saturday "dawns" (9:30am) I have changed a little the party-routines and try to start messin' around earlier (9 pm more or less) to be able to wake up for the matches.
  
• The average time I went to bed during weekdays (or nights before I have to go to work) is around 12:45 - 12:50 am, something I would expect, considering that after a late dinner (9pm) I normally watch one or two movies or something like that.

Finally, no too many discoveries but interesting values and trends. My next post will be related to the quality of sleep and what are the conditions when I defined my sleep time as "positive"

Cheers and keep dreaming :P

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...