A Good Night’s Sleep Is Tied to Interruptions, Not Just Hours

So you see that I spent about 9 hours in bed and I had very bad sleep quality.

A few months ago, I started learn a lot of stuff about sleep. Most of what I read on the internet was useless.

But I found in academic sources (i.e. inside ".edu" and ".gov" domains) two very important concepts (they tightly connected to each other):

1. Sleep effectiveness;

2. Sleep restriction;

You can get idea about them here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_restriction

I started to follow very strict sleep schedule.

1. I go to bed in the interval between 21:15 - 21:50

2. I wake up in the interval between 06:00 - 06:03

Note that my wake up time is strictly fixed.

Now I spend even less time in bed (21:50 - 06:00), but I feel much, much, much better. As my fitbit shows me, I have much less interruptions during the night.

The older I get, the earlier I am starting to feel tired, and the earlier I want to wake. I have friends who are very much the opposite, so we are definitely not all wired the same.

I was woken up briefly twice tonight, once by my flatmates returning home and talking to each other and again by the heating pipes clanging as I live in a prewar and the steam boiler turns on at 5 every morning. I also imagine the train noise from the Metro North/other outside vehicle noise has an effect I'm not aware of.

If anyone has studies about optimizing sleep quality given these kinds of conditions, I would be very interested to read about it.

To really know what's happening with your sleep, you need polysomnography. An actual sleep study.

The second best option are some of the consumer-grade ballistocardiography devices - the "under mattress" alternative to wearables.

I have been tracking my sleep and fixing problems with it using the Beddit device. As a gadget and product, I rate it 2 or 3 out of 5 - I'd love it to be more polished. But considering its potentially life changing value and its technical merits, a highly recommended purchase.

Even just the resting heart rate reading and HRV data are worth the price.

My 2 months of data are so far fairly inconclusive and pending deeper statistical analysis. There are many variables at play, so recognizing and documenting them takes time and effort and is error prone. The most confident recommendations are not drinking alcohol, earplugs (fairly noisy environment), and melatonin. Even with these, I have been unable to consistently get more than an average of 5 hours (±1) of actual total sleep during 7-9 hours of time spent in bed. The time spent awake isn't something I experience or remember. This hasn't been noticeable to me despite long days and an active athletic lifestyle including goal-oriented recreational endurance and strength training.

What would be way more interesting is to study people who wake up naturally multiple times per night to toss and turn. I do this at least 5-10 times per night due to muscle aches and pains. I fall back asleep very quickly. I've been doing this for years, but do remember rare times when I've slept through the night and felt so fresh in the morning.

Now I'm in university and it's killing me. Reading before bed helped ease my mind for a while, meditation helped for a while, but now I'm still in the same position. I wake up frequently because of this weird "habit" and my mind never gets to rest. What should I do?

Does that mean the disrupted group received 140 minutes less sleep than the control group?

For myself I've found that an uninterrupted chunk of sleep > a long sleep with waking periods caused by interruptions (bathroom breaks, police sirens, etc.).

It is for this reason that a year ago I adopted the usage of ear plugs when I go to sleep, and now I cannot sleep without them. I found a good brand of ear plugs that are comfortable and dampen ambient sounds (traffic, footsteps), but don't completely block out all sounds so I can hear my phone or the alarm clock.

Another thing I've found is that usually when I can recall having a dream, I feel like I was able to achieve a deep level of sleep, and consequently I feel more refreshed that morning. I often don't remember details about the dream, and I even quickly forget what the dream was even about (or even if it was a nightmare) but the important thing is that my mind went into that dream state.

I would value a 4 hour chunk of deep sleep more than 8 hours of sleep broken up by some interruptions.

Then I got a job that required a 7:00 AM start on the weekends, and the late nights stopped. So did the headaches.

In this research, people were forced to wake up every hour and then stay up for 20 minutes. Then I would feel totally different - I have no doubt. After twenty minutes, probably in bright light, I would be awake and that would disrupt the sleep cycle totally. This might be the case when you have a small kid, but how often does this happen (in the real world) with these frequencies?

With me this is not the case. It feels natural. I don't put the light on - I can find my way without it. It takes two or three minutes, and that's it. Back in bed I fall asleep right away.

This research is presented here as if this would influence my mood? I don't know. I guess I can sleep better, but this is not the explanation that works for me.

I think you need to find your own best sleep cycle and follow it.

You might need attention, but attention has two sides and as a baby you don't want to get angry adults' attention, especially in more primitive societies.