Surely you have ever wondered why you don't sleep well, why you are tired most of the day or why you have completely random energy spikes . We have all asked ourselves this at some point.
By doing a little research on this, I entered an abyss of information that I was unaware of and that may be able to help you: circadian rhythms, chronotypes and sleep cycles.
circadian rhythms
Circadian rhythms are the rhythms at which our body changes its physical and mental characteristics throughout the day, that is, the schedules that the different organs follow to produce hormones, start and finish processes, etc. And... they are controlled by light!
Surely you have heard your grandparents say that before they lived better, they rested more and there was not so much stress in society. That's because in the old days (when this was all countryside), there weren't that many light sources, like the screens of computers, cell phones and televisions (in addition to all the lights in the house), so our brain wasn't so clueless about what time of day it was and when to put the rest of the body to work.
The chronotypes
You may be wondering, “what else do circadian rhythms give me?” Well, they give you a lot.
We all have our own biological clock (no, not the one that tells you it's time to have children) that determines the type of circadian rhythm our body follows. These are called “chronotypes” and there are 3 types:
- Morning: those who go to bed early, wake up early and have higher levels of productivity early.
☀️Wake up time: 5:00-7:00
🌙Bedtime: 20:00-22:00
2. Evening: people who go to bed late, wake up late, and are more productive when it gets dark.
☀️Wake up time: 9:00-12:00
🌙Bedtime: 23:00-3:00
3. Intermediate: as their name indicates, they do not fit into any of the above, either because their circadian rhythms are irregular or because they have different schedules b> (the majority of the population).
This reveals many of the keys to lack of performance and fatigue throughout the day. For example: let's say you have an evening chronotype (you are more active in the afternoons/nights) and you go to bed at 2 in the morning, but your work schedule forces you to wake up at 7:00. If your body doesn't really kick in until 10 a.m., there's a 3-hour window where you're in zombie mode, and by the time your energy peak hits at 9 p.m., you'll be out of the zone. job.
I believe that whoever created the work and school schedule in society was a morning person, and did not take the rest into account.
That is why many companies (and now more with teleworking) are beginning to advocate schedule flexibility: this would not only improve work productivity and effectiveness, but would follow our natural cycles of activity and exponentially increase the quality of life and mental health of workers (or students).
Sleep cycles and their phases
Now that we understand that there are some physiological schedules that we cannot control and that "condemn" us in the long term, there are other things that we can influence, at least a little.
To do this, we have to know the sleep cycles.
Sleep is made up of a series of cycles that repeat several times while you sleep. Each cycle lasts about 90 minutes and is made up of 4 phases: the first three are known as “NREM ” (Non-REM) and the last one is the REM phase.
The NREM phases are 1, 2 and 3.
- In the first, you have an extremely light sleep, because the body is going from being awake (wake state) to being asleep. If we wake up here, we will have the feeling of not having slept at all.
- In the second, it is still light, but the brain waves slow down and you fall into a deeper sleep.
- The third is where the dream is deepest. If we wake up in this phase, we will be confused, disoriented and probably in a bad mood. This is where sleepwalking episodes and night terrors (waking up with a feeling of panic) can also appear.
The REM ( Rapid Eye Movement ) phase consists of a period of time in which the eyes move rapidly from one side to the other, the extremities are paralyzed (temporarily), where dreams occur and the physiological restoration of the body begins. As more cycles are completed, this phase becomes longer. When you leave this, the cycle begins again from the beginning .
Knowing this, we can understand why there are days when even if you sleep 4 and a half hours you wake up fresh as a rose, and when you have slept 10 hours you have ruined the rest of the day.
The ideal is to complete 5 to 6 cycles per night (7 hours and 30 minutes or 9 hours) and wake up right at the end of REM phase or beginning stage 1 . To be able to control this a little more, you can calculate the time at which you go to sleep and at which you should go to bed, the sleep cycles that you will have completed by then, and set an alarm for when the sleep cycle in which you want ends. wake up. If this is very confusing, we leave you an online calculator to help you : https://mejordormir.com/
We hope that every day you wake up at the end of a REM phase.
