Sleep

I have always been one that needs sleep.  If I do not get my 8 hours or more I really feel I struggle through my day.  And lets be real over here people, I struggle through my days a lot.  I intentionally go to bed early because I know my alarm is going to go off at 5, but I am still not getting enough sleep.

Have you ever tracked your sleep before?  I recently just began looking at my sleep patterns closer because I was thinking I was getting 8 hours of sleep, but still waking up tired.  I understood that your body went through different sleep stages in the evening, but I did not realize how often those stages cycled.  I have found that even though I go to bed early due to needing to get up early, I as still waking up quite a bit in the middle of the night.

Last night I went to bed at 830, and still came up short a half hour of getting my full 8 hours of sleep. This stuff fascinates me and frustrates me at the same time.  I researched that it is normal to see about 10-30 awake times each night, and most times you don't even remember being awake.  However last night I was awake for 73 minutes, and I don't remember any of it, accept once when I moved the cat off my leg but I rolled back over and fell back to sleep.

One sleep stage that I have noticed that is very equivalent to my awake time is my REM sleep.  REM sleep is to improve your memory and mood, and your dreams are the most vivid.  It has been a couple weeks since I remember my dreams.  This may be because I am not spending a lot of time in this stage either.  Could this lack of stage be the cause of my crappy attitude?

A majority of my sleep is in the light stage of sleep.  This is super important because it promotes mental and physical restoration, but this makes so much sense why I wake up so many times at night...I hear everything!!  Last night my light sleep made up 61% of my sleep.  I should feel mentally rested, however I secretly want a nap.

I have been looking back my past week of sleep and really have noticed that my deep sleep has only been on average about 10% of my sleep at night.  This is funny and sort of explains the lack of feeling refreshed.  Deep sleep helps with physical recover and aspects of memory and learning.  If you spend some solid time in this stage you are to feel refreshed, and I am noticing I never have a solid chunk of time in this stage.  I wonder what would help me get that?

Overall I am noticing that I need to try and get more sleep in my life, but I need to do this with balance.  I seriously should not be going to bed right after I put my kids to bed at 8, but it looks like I may need to start doing so, so I can get the rest I need to be a better person.  I have included a couple screenshots of my sleep from last night from my fit bit.  I am not exactly sure how accurate this is, but it does open my eyes a bit as to why I am so tired all the time.

Hopefully you are all sleeping better than I am over here.  Sleep is so important to our bodies and I really feel this part of rest gets neglected by more of us than anyone wants to admit.