What can you do If you struggle with bedtime procrastination? Yet encouraging restful sleep is often overlooked as a way to improve our physical and mental well-being. Sleep is one of the three pillars of health, along with good nutrition and exercise. Routinely getting less sleep than you need, or not getting sufficient good-quality sleep, is associated with many poor health outcomes, including cardiovascular issues like high blood pressure and heart problems, cognitive issues, and depression. One key factor? Smartphone use: procrastinators use their devices for an average of almost 80 minutes before bed compared with 18 minutes for non-procrastinators. Their research showed that adults who procrastinated significantly about going to bed were more fatigued and slept less compared to those who did not procrastinate. Nearly two decades ago, a group of researchers in Europe coined the term "bedtime procrastination" to describe someone who goes to bed later than planned, despite knowing that there will be negative consequences if they do. Is it any surprise that many of us procrastinate about going to bed? Daily pressures and challenges can make it hard to carve out time for ourselves. Our highly-wired world jockeys to keep us engaged there's always one more episode to watch, another text to respond to, a few more social media apps to check out. Here's why it's time to rethink bedtime procrastination and take steps toward a healthier path. But the urge to stay awake may be affecting your health. On average, it takes 90 minutes to go through each cycle.A few years ago, the official Twitter account for Netflix sent out the following message: " Sleep is my greatest enemy." This perfectly sums up the battle you might experience when you know that you should be in bed but avoid going. When you fall asleep, you whirl through several cycles, each of which has four sub stages, comprised of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and the last stage: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Our minds and bodies thrive on routine.' What about sleep cycles?Īnother thing you might want to consider are sleep cycles. The best advice is to find a time for bed that works for you and try to stick to it where possible. If you don’t tend to get sleepy until midnight, don’t force yourself to go to sleep at 10pm in the hopes you’ll wake feeling more refreshed. 'Some of us are naturally pre-disposed to be night owls while others prefer to sleep earlier and wake up early. 'Getting into the habit of a sleep pattern that works well for you is the best strategy,' caveats The Sleep Council. (Need help? Here are 19 ways to sleep better tonight.)īut that's not to say that this will work for everyone. This time allows 20 minutes to get into deep sleep, gives you 90 minutes of pre-midnight non-REM sleep and depending on your morning alarm, should bring you to between 7 and 8 hours of rest a night. They found that this was the bed time of choice of those with the 'best' (read: most consistent) sleep routines, and that this, in turn, engendered healthier eating habits – 82% of those with a regular bedtime also had consistent diet and fitness routines and 74% of regular sleepers also found it easier to maintain a healthy weight. According to their data, 10.10pm is the optimum time for lights out. This has been backed up by a 2018 study from wellbeing brand Forza Supplements. As the day darkens, your brain will also start to produce melatonin, the hormone you need to make you feel sleepy,' said a spokesperson.) When it comes to the 10-11pm time, The Sleep Council is very much in favour of this choice ('This is an ideal time as it’s when your body temperature and the level of cortisol, the stress hormone, starts to drop. What is the best time to go to bed at night? Given the change in working conditions, nixing of commutes and possible redundancies, it's likely that there has been some chunky change to bed times. Two in five (39%), for example, said that they’ve slept fewer hours a night on average compared with before the lockdown. Important note: research conducted by King's College London in May 2020 found that the nation's sleeping habits had been seriously affected by the national lockdown, announced in late March, to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus. Close to a third of people stay up until 11pm-12am and 18% don’t go to bed until after midnight. There's a sizeable chunk of late nighters out there, though. The most popular time for shut eye to commence in the UK, according to 2017 data from The Sleep Council, is somewhere between 10 and 11pm – over a third of people in this country hit the hay around then. What is the best time to go to bed? That's a question with something of a convoluted answer.
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