What helps us to sleep restfully again? Sleep tracker? Regular sleeping times? A midday nap?
What helps us to sleep restfully again? Sleep tracker? Regular sleeping times? Or the good old nap? In this interview, Sarah Morzinek, Head of the pme Work-Life Academy, explains what constitutes restful sleep and introduces a simple breathing exercise to help us calm down.
Sleep trackers can provide us with certain guidelines, such as sleep time and sleep phases. For example, do I always go to bed at the same time? How many hours do I spend in bed? When do I get up? How many deep sleep phases do I have? These questions influence the quality of our sleep. Of course, a sleep tracker or a sleep app will not help us to get out of sleep disorders. However, it can help us to improve the quality of our sleep.
The big problem is that you might think you are sleeping when you are lying down. For example, if you have very low blood pressure anyway, the sleep tracker may not even recognize whether you are inactive or active because your medical reference values may not correspond to the norm.
In any case, you can see on the device how many deep sleep phases you have had. Deep sleep is the most important phase for us because it is when we fully recover and our brain no longer performs any major cognitive tasks. Only in deep sleep do we no longer process the content of the day. However, if we do not enter the deep sleep phase, we do not have a high recovery effect. This makes us feel tired in the morning.
A sleep cycle usually lasts 90 minutes. At the end, we reach the deep sleep phase. We then wake up briefly or enter a light sleep phase. Here we can wake up quickly, for example due to traffic noise.
It depends a little on what kind of sleeper you are. Short sleepers only sleep an average of four hours, while long sleepers need up to 14 hours. Our sleep needs are very individual. A short sleeper logically has fewer deep sleep phases. Nevertheless, they do not feel less rested the next day.
You should be clear about this: How many hours of sleep do I need? There are people who go to bed very late, get up early and still feel rested. The opposite of this is the late sleeper principle: even if they go to bed at 10 p.m., they find it difficult to get up at 6 a.m. the next morning. They don't feel rested even though they have slept for eight hours.
This may be because your biorhythm does not correspond to your sleeping time. If you generally only become active during the day and are simply not a morning person, then even eight hours of sleep won't do you any good if you have to get up at 6 am. Your biorhythm is determined by your genetic code. We cannot change this. Of course, it is also possible that your sleep was not restful because you were not in deep sleep.
Both physical stress and emotional stress, i.e. issues that make us feel emotional, can haunt us while we sleep. Or you may have a lot on your plate at the moment and have to deal with many issues at the same time. With regard to corona, there are also changed conditions that you didn't have to deal with before: working from home permanently, closed childcare centers, homeschooling.
However, physical overload or underload can also disrupt our sleep. For example, you may currently have someone in the family that you need to care for. Or you may be doing too much office work sitting in front of a screen and lack the physical balance.
First of all, you should take a look: Am I a lark or an owl? Do I get out of bed well in the morning or not? Then you should see if you can adapt your working hours to your sleeping needs. Employers who want to make the best use of their employees should therefore offer flexitime.
Then you should see how much sleep you really need. You can't simply avoid this. You should therefore plan your day accordingly. You should also consider how high your stress level is and how long you may have been under stress. A chronic stress level significantly disturbs your sleep.
Whether you are a short sleeper or a long sleeper, everyone needs regular sleep times that signal to the body: Okay, I should be active at these times and I have my rest time at these times. Regular means that I always go to bed and get up in the same time slot - plus or minus 30 minutes. A smartwatch or sleep tracker can be helpful to see how well this works.
Simply taking a nap every now and then is a big mistake if you have trouble sleeping. Either you always take a nap or you never do. Because if I start to routinely take an afternoon nap and then interrupt it again, my body has trained itself to adopt a strategy that it can't abandon so quickly.
No, power napping is all about going into a light sleep phase for just 15 minutes and winding down a little. You give your body and mind a short break. However, you are still responsive. If I were to pat you on the back, you would wake up.
Try the 4-7-8 breathing exercise. Breathe in for four seconds, then hold your breath for seven seconds. Then breathe out for eight seconds. This exercise is very simple and effective! We are no longer used to breathing slowly. The breathing exercise stimulates our parasympathetic nervous system, i.e. the area of the nervous system that helps us relax and fall asleep.
Sarah Morzinek manages the Central Academy of the pme Familienservice Group in tandem with Darina Doubravova. She specializes in occupational health management, blended learning and health insurance cooperation. She also has a practice for coaching and psychological counseling and has several years of experience as a lecturer in university teaching with a focus on BGM.