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Recently, we heard a lot from the media that the best sleep time is from 22 pm – 3 am. Why they think it’s the best sleep time? The period, 12 am – 3 am, is the time when people get into deep sleep phase. Most of them believe only if you have a good sleep during this period, you’re gonna be energetic the whole day. On the contrary, if you miss the essential hours, you will feel exhausted and need more sleep. And it usually takes about 30 -60 minutes to enter into deep sleep phase after get on the bed. Therefore, they think the best time to go to bed is at 10:00 -10:30.
However, it’s just one-sided speculation. The conclusion is based on the study focusing on sleep at night. So, what is the truth? You can learn more from many exceptions around you. There are many night-shift workers, especially the drivers, who work at night and sleep in the daytime. If the theory in first paragraph is right, all night shift workers should have died, or got varied diseases and can’t continue work. On the opposite side, they are alive and well.
There is very little difference between day and night in modern society. When you are in US at night and if fly to Asia, it’s the daytime there. So should we get to sleep or not?
Then what ‘s the default biological clock? And how is it working? What should we do to make optimized allocation between work and rest?
You can do a simple experiment. Spare a whole night to watch soap opera and don’t go to sleep until 6:00 am. And then you will find you wake up naturally at 12:00 pm -14:30 pm. You can calculate your sleep time and it’s just about 6- 8 hours. This isn’t a coincidence. Why don’t you wake up at seven or nine as used to.
That means the default sleep time of your biological clock is 6 – 8 hours. You will be awake after 6 -8 hours sleep. It doesn’t matter when you get to sleep and what matter most is you have slept. And the after-sleep physiological activities proceed as usual. In other words, only if you have a sufficient sleep time, it doesn’t impose influences on your health and it has nothing to do with when you sleep. The daily schedule is just a changeable habit. Of course, it’s a process to get into a new habit. It usually takes about 3 – 6 days and it’s suggested not to alternate sleep habits frequently.