There’s been a lot of attention paid to getting enough sleep. If we read enough of the published articles about sleep, five-hour sleepers are damaging their brains. By not allowing enough rest, the brain’s glial cells are not able to finish their work cleaning out toxins that potentially lead to dementia.
Caution caregivers!
Sleepless Nights
How many of us have spent sleepless nights caring for a loved one? Caregiving sometimes requires care 24/7, 365 days a year! While the Five-Minute Respite can do caregivers a lot of good, there’s a sleep hack you may want to know about.
I’ve been experimenting with this sleep hack for the last four years. I’ve even tried to disprove it. IT WORKS!
Now, you may have read the funny saying:
Remember when you lay your head down upon the pillow and fell immediately to sleep?
Remember when you slept all night a awoke well-rested?
Yeah? Well me neither!
I’ve always had to get up in the middle of the night. Since childhood, I’ve needed to use the bathroom. These days, a hot flash wakens me. I use the flush of a personal summer to also use the bathroom. (Pardon the flush – bathroom pun.)
Overview of A Sleep Hack
We sleep in one-hour and 20- to 40-minute increments. If we wake before the cycle ends, we’re doomed. It doesn’t matter if we’ve already gotten seven hours of sleep. If we start a new cycle and wake before it’s finished, we’re likely to feel tired and a bit off for the day.
I had trouble sleeping as a child. Due to this, I’ve maintained an interest in sleep over the years. While I do sleep soundly (likely due to 14-hour work days), of all the drug-free sleep tips, this sleep hack has made the most sense. I’ve applied it as needed and it has made a major difference in my energy during the day.
I’m an early riser. When I see 4:30 on the clock, I realize falling back to sleep will mean it’ll be after 6AM before I complete another sleep cycle. Since I try to get up before 5:30, I simply lay in bed and read or take a shower. Surprisingly, I found that even if I’ve already slept for 7 hours – the optimal minimum to allow our bodies to clear the toxins – if something awakens me in the middle of the sleep cycle, I will feel groggy all day.
To read more about this click on: Sleep-Cycle Hack. [7/6/2023: TCV Updated broken LifeHack URL with Medium article.]
Try it. Unlike many of the magic elixirs on the market today, you do not need to spend your hard-earned money. All you need is to make sure this makes sense for you. If it does, then you need to apply this hack consistently.
It took me four years before I felt strongly enough about it to share it here.
I even tried to disprove this sleep-cycle hack.
I went back to sleep at 4AM only to wake at 5. This was not enough time to complete the sleep cycle. I felt groggy all day. Sometimes, I get away with a minimum of three sleep cycles. Other times, I need four and five.
On a related note, too few hours of sleep may lead to dementia.
Wake up – You’re fooling yourself about sleep.
“Many of us have notions about sleep that have little basis in fact and may even be harmful to our health, according to researchers at NYU Langone Health’s School of Medicine, who conducted a study published in the journal Sleep Health.”
