Everybody wants to live a healthy life. Many factors affect our health. Lifestyle is one of them. Eating habits are one of them. Maintaining a better and healthy diet is a basic requirement for people to remain fit. Plenty of sleep is also an integral part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Thus, people should also regulate their sleeping time and waking up time. Sleep not only keeps you healthy but also gives you proper energy to work. Besides, there should be consistency in your sleep cycle. Proper sleep for approximately 8 hours regularly is advised by doctors.
Now you can easily achieve the desired sleep using a sleep calculator. Do not worry about untimely disturbances and let your sleep calculator work its magic for you.
What does a sleep calculator do?
The sleep time calculator gives you suggestions regarding the best time for sleeping and waking up. It also tells you the number of sleep cycles you finish during sleep time. For an instance – if you have slept for 8 hours and still wake up exhausted or in lack of sleep, there might be a possibility that you woke up mid-cycle.
It can also happen that your REM sleep did not complete which leads to exhaustion or grumpy behavior. Thus, the sleep time calculator helps in regulating a schedule that gives you complete sleep cycles and helps you remain active throughout the day.
How to decide the best time to sleep or wake up?
Sleeping and waking up every day at the same time is nearly impossible. Many factors that affect our sleep, that include age, working conditions, social engagements, or studies that make it difficult to complete the required sleep. Besides, every individual has different sleep requirements. This can also be based on their age, medical condition, lifestyle choices, and others.
While children need more sleep, adults can easily function with 7-8 hours of sleep. Nevertheless, the important factor is to finish the sleep cycle. Each sleep cycle continues for almost 90 minutes. It is extremely important to make sure that you finish the 90 minutes sleep cycle to feel fresh when you wake up.
Now, it is quite common that a person with only 6 hours of sleep behaves more actively than one who got 8 hours of sleep. This would completely depend on their body requirements, work pressure, and completion of sleep cycles.
Experts recommend completing at least 5 sleep cycles. Sleeping and waking up time is rather an experimental method that you need to test and find out what is best for you.
Difference between REM and NREM sleep
REM is Rapid Eye Movement while NREM sleep is Non-Rapid Eye Movement. Any individual starts to sleep with the NREM stage, which is the lighter stage. You slowly enter into the dreamy stages, that is, REM sleep.
Now, if you wake up in the REM stage, you end up feeling exhausted and unsatisfied with the amount of sleep. Sleep time calculator helps you to wake up during the NREM stage. You can easily understand the difference by using a sleep time calculator. The benefits would be prominent to you as you start using it.
Stages of sleep
You can both REM and NREM stages during a night’s sleep. If you manage to get the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep, it means there are 5-6 sleep cycles. Each sleep cycle continues for approximately 90 minutes. There are certain phases that bodies go through during each stage.
Stage I
The first stage of sleep is when heart rate begins to get slower, breath rate becomes less rapid and you can get woken up easily. Your body is just starting to relax.
Stage II
The 2nd stage of sleep is characterized by continued reduction in heartbeat and breath. Another important feature of this stage is sleep spindles. This is when the brain wave activities take place that integrate memories. Throughout the day, the information gathered gets synthesized in this particular stage of sleep.
Stage III and IV
In this stage, the slowed heart rate prepares the body for REM sleep. Both body and mind are entirely relaxed. These stages involve predominantly deep sleep with no rapid eye movement or activities in muscles.
REM sleep
This is the most thought-provoking stage in the sleep cycle. Heart rate and breathing are fastened. The body enters into a numb or paralyzed state, rapid eye movement occurs and activities inside the brain are high. In this stage, individuals either dream or have nightmares.
If you wake up from your sleep with a jerk, sweaty and scared, that means you were in the REM sleep stage. If you wake up relaxed, you are in a lighter stage of sleep. Sleep time calculator helps you determine in what stage of sleep you were.
Can routine help in having better sleep?
Consistency in sleep and wake up cycles can lead to a healthy lifestyle. Waking up from sleep naturally without an alarm is perhaps the best gift you can give to your body. Minor lifestyle changes can hugely benefit your sleep. Remember to follow the following points and wake up from a more relaxed sleep.
- Try not to use technology at least half an hour before you sleep. This helps in reducing the use of blue light and lessens distractions that would otherwise keep you awake till late.
- Meditate before bedtime. One of the most common ways to calm your mind is through daily meditation. Practice a routine of meditating for 10 minutes before you go to bed. This would release your mind of all the things that keep you awake till late at night. Besides, you can have a relaxing sleep.
- Drinking warm beverages before sleep. If you drink warm beverages before sleep that help in the digestion process and give a calming effect, you can have better sleep. Many have warm milk or chamomile tea before they sleep.
All these routines along with the much-recommended sleep time calculator can ensure the right amount of sleep and proper wake.