How to sleep little and get enough sleep? Proven methodology, recommendations. Get quality rest in a short time: how to do it Method number one: complex, but effective
Since I usually have little time to sleep, I have compiled this information for my personal use and based on own experience. I hope it will be useful not only to me, but also to you. I would be very glad if you share your experience of short sleep! :-)
So, how to sleep little and not feel like wet salt (which, as you know, does not get enough sleep).
Awakening and a new day:
We wake up in the desired phase of sleep. Collectively, we sleep in cycles of 5 phases. These are naps, “slow” sleep of varying depths (slow eye rotations), “rapid” sleep (rapid eye rotations, the shallowest and shortest - 10 - 20 minutes, about 20% of all sleep). In time, each such cycle lasts about 1.5 hours and it is advisable to wake up at its end - towards the end of the REM sleep phase. Of course, ideally you need a “smart” alarm clock (for example, like this one) that measures your biorhythms and calculates your sleep phase based on these indicators. But not everyone has such an alarm clock. Therefore, let’s think about how to find the desired phase yourself.
- Approximate calculation. For example, we decide to sleep for 3 cycles - that is, 4.5 - 5 hours (with each cycle the size of the REM sleep phase gradually increases). We estimate in our minds the approximate time for us to fall asleep (preferably with a reserve, we often do not fall asleep right away) and add 4.5 - 5.
- Empirical method. For several days we set the alarm clock in the morning back and forth for 5-1-15-20-25-30 minutes, “groping” for the time when it is easiest to get up.
Don't set your alarm too loud. This will traumatize your psyche and ruin your mood for the whole day.
Don't think. Don’t give yourself time to think about how unfair fate is to you and how nice it would be to take a nap for another 10 minutes. Just get up. Like a robot. Get up and go.
Jump and run. As soon as the alarm clock rings, immediately, sharply, immediately jump out of bed or you may even fall from it. Without delay, run around the apartment.
Shower! Without giving yourself a break and a chance to start nodding off again (because you are still nodding off anyway and are doing everything very slowly), jump into the shower and turn on any tap indiscriminately. This extreme measure will help shake off the clingy dream.
By the way. I use it to wake up contrast shower- it gives great energy. And in the evening I use it to fall asleep - for some reason it relaxes me at this time. If you are interested, write in the comments, I will share my experience in one of the following posts.
Let there be light! Hide the curtains and blinds, there is a new day outside the windows, and it’s time to let pieces of it into the sleepy gloom of the apartment. Moreover, sunlight destroys the sleep hormone melatonin, helping us wake up.
A glass of water. A glass of cool water in the morning is a great way to activate your body and brain. By the way, the idea came to us from yogis.
By the way. Also try to drink more water throughout the day.
Morning exercises. Of course, laziness and of course, reluctance. But still force yourself to jump for at least a few minutes. From here you can get ideas for simple exercises.
By the way. It is advisable to save physical activity throughout the day - it (like morning exercises) raises body temperature, increasing the activity of it and the brain.
Avoid coffee. Incredible but true - coffee can easily disrupt the functioning of your biological clock, as a result of which it will not be possible to get the maximum benefit from a short sleep. The same goes for alcohol. Cigarettes are also undesirable.
Perfect breakfast. As dense as possible, but you shouldn’t forcefully push the food into yourself. It is recommended to allocate 25 - 30% of the total for breakfast daily ration. At the same time, food should be varied, tasty and healthy. An ideal breakfast should contain 1/3 daily norm protein, ½ the vitamin norm, about a third of all minerals introduced into the body per day, a little more than two-thirds of carbohydrates and, finally, less than 1/5 of fat. This is why eating fried foods is not recommended. Great option A healthy and satisfying breakfast would be porridge and eggs.
Drink orange juice, but don’t get carried away, it can damage your teeth enamel and is not recommended for people with increased acidity stomach ( frequent heartburn, increased appetite and - excuse me - constipation). It is best to drink water or weak tea.
Lunch nap. The better you had breakfast, the less food you will eat at lunch. This means you will be less sleepy. If you still can’t resist, sleep for a maximum of 30 minutes (so as not to have time to go into the “slow” sleep phase).
By the way. If a person is woken up during the slow-wave sleep phase, he will be angry and gloomy all day. This is where the expression “Getting off on the wrong foot” comes from.
Getting ready for bed:
Bed. The bed must not be used for other purposes. It should give rise to a persistent image of a serene infant sleep in your head. Don't turn it into workplace, cinema, meeting room or, especially, a dining room.
By the way. Of course, the bed and all bedding (especially the mattress and pillows!) should be as comfortable as possible. Don't waste money on buying a comfortable bed and sleeping accessories - you'll thank yourself.
Cool. A decrease in body temperature promotes sleep. The bedroom should be cool, but in moderation.
Hot bath. Only if at least 30 minutes before bedtime! As I already wrote, body temperature should have time to decrease.
Peace. Away from the computer, games, TV and running around the house - all this warms up the body, which means it delays the moment of falling asleep!
Complete darkness. Sleep in complete darkness, without night lights or “glowing” laptops. Darkness promotes good sleep and good sleep
Ritual of falling asleep. Do the same things before going to bed - then they will begin to be associated with sleep, which will help you successfully fall into it.
Don't think - 2! Throw away all your worries, otherwise you won’t sleep. Relax and breathe deeply, trying to “let go of the mind” and just go with the flow.
If you can't sleep, get up! If you can't sleep, don't toss and turn, but rather get up and do something relaxing until you feel sleepy.
If you don't want to sleep, don't sleep! Listen to what your body is saying. Don't force yourself to sleep - you'll disrupt your routine. But - attention!- get up at the same time in the morning, even if you didn’t get enough sleep! This technique will allow you to quickly get rid of even hints of insomnia - you will sleep as sweetly as you have never slept before. And with benefit.
If you have any other ideas about improving the quality of sleep, despite the small amount of it, be sure to write and I’ll add it to the collection. Thank you and good dreams to you - always!
Human sleep is divided into phases. The most important for us are the third and fourth, which occur in the first 2–3 hours of sleep.
Kalkulator-sna.ru
The methods that I will talk about were invented by the scientist Alexander Vein. Their essence is to achieve maximum stay in the fourth phase of sleep.
Before you start practicing, you should know the following:
- Before using the first technique, you must not sleep for 1–2 days. Then you will have to sleep strictly certain time, otherwise your efficiency will tend to zero.
- During the experiment, you must have a minimum of three hours of rest per day. Take a walk in the park, have a cup of tea with someone, spend time with your family, do meditation. No physical or mental stress.
Practice
Method 1
First, you need to understand when your sleep is most effective. To do this, set aside a few days free from urgent matters (for example, weekends).
On the first day you should go to bed at your usual time. You wake up, do your business, but at exactly 12 o’clock at night, start researching.
Listen to your feelings. Soon you will notice that you don’t always want to sleep, but with a certain frequency. We will identify it.
Rate your desire to sleep on a three-point scale:
- 1 - want to sleep;
- 2 - I really want to sleep;
- 3 - I feel unbearably sleepy.
Record such sleep attacks in a notepad or phone.
At 24:00 next day(that is, after a day) the experiment can be considered completed. Now you can lie down, get a good night's sleep and next morning start analyzing everything.
Review your entries. Of all the sleep attacks, choose the longest ones, and from them - the two strongest ones. You should have two time periods when you were simply knocked out.
This could happen to you in different times, but usually people experience their first strong and prolonged desire to sleep between one in the morning and six in the morning, and the second during the day. For example, if you have an irresistible desire to sleep at 4 o'clock and at 16 o'clock, then your sleep schedule will be as follows.
Go to bed at four in the morning and set your alarm clock so that it rings in 2–2.5 hours. During this time, you will stay in the fourth phase of sleep for the same amount of time as those who sleep 8–10 hours a day, and you will have a full rest. At 1 p.m., sleep for another hour.
As a result, you will sleep 3–3.5 hours a day, but you will stay in the fourth phase of sleep even more than ordinary person for an eight-hour rest.
The main thing here is accuracy. If you fall asleep at 4:15 instead of 4:00, you won't get enough sleep or even hear your alarm. Although it is possible that these 15 minutes will help you find your optimal time for falling asleep. Listen to your body.
Method 2
If you don't want to do this research, then this method is for you. Go to bed between 4:30 and 5:00 and sleep until 9:00, as this is usually when you feel the most. strong desire sleep.
In both cases, the most important thing is to go to bed on time and then get out of bed, even if you want to sleep. Even if you fall on the floor, crawl into the kitchen and drink coffee on the floor. The main thing is to get out of bed. Then you won't feel as sleepy as you would with an eight-hour rest.
And yet there is a small percentage of people who three hours sleep is not enough.
If after two weeks of experiments you feel a loss of strength, it means short nap not for you.
Personal experience
I wanted to try it on myself. On the first day I didn’t want to sleep at all, so I decided to extend the experiment for another day. And they turned out to be very difficult, because I felt terribly sleepy. I realized that it is very important to keep yourself busy with something. If you do nothing, you really want to sleep.
During the first week of sleeping in this mode, the body adapted, so the sensations were incomprehensible. But then everything returned to normal and I was able to appreciate all the advantages of this technique:
- A lot of time is freed up.
- It’s easy to go to bed, you fall asleep almost immediately.
- It's also easy to get up.
- You feel energetic throughout the day.
Try one of these techniques in action and tell us in the comments if it worked for you.
IN lately problem chronic lack of sleep touched many. Many factors lead to lack of sleep: fatigue at work, studying, having a child and many other factors. Mothers of small children, students and simply constantly busy people know firsthand about “ chronic lack of sleep" The face is constantly “bruised”, thoughts are somewhere else, a cast-iron head. This state does not in any way contribute to productivity at work. By the way, snoring good sleep doesn't help either. You can get rid of snoring modern means, For example,
Due to total lack of sleep, a person literally takes on the appearance of an asocial zombie in 3 days. But if constant workload simply does not allow you to sleep 8-9 hours, how to a normal person, what to do? It is necessary to look for a way to get enough sleep in a much shorter period of time.
Many processes in our body are controlled by the brain, including sleep. Since sleep has periodicity, it is fair to assume that it is based on a certain cycle, namely the day-night light cycle.
Already two nights without sleep make the mind one-sided, and we can no longer think adequately. Disorders such as cardiac arrhythmia, arterial hypertension, diabetes, memory loss, obesity, depression and many other troubles.
Somnologists (specialists who study sleep and know a lot about it) claim that today there are no new methods for shortening the duration of sleep without harm to health. To live and restore strength, a person only needs 5.5 hours of stay in the kingdom of Morpheus. However, this does not mean that a person will feel alert and well-rested. And all because sleep has several phases.
There is REM sleep and non-REM sleep. During the phase REM sleep our brain processes the information accumulated during the day. And here is the phase slow sleep serves for the benefit of the body: the brain processes information about “problems” in the body. 
During slow sleep, the body's energy is restored, cell growth and restoration occur.
For those who want to reduce the time spent in sleep, the most main task becomes the calculation of time for effective sleep. This is not an easy matter at all.
For correct calculation it is necessary to conduct some kind of experiment. To begin with, choose a couple of free days when you can allow your body to stay awake for more than a day.
Start the experiment at 00:00. From now on, listen to your body and your own feelings. You can easily understand when your body wants to sleep. You will begin to have spells of falling asleep.
For further analysis, all changes in your body should be recorded. Write down the time when you want to sleep, rate the strength of the sleep attack on a 3-point scale, write down the duration of such an attack.
All this must continue until 00:00 the next day. The next day, after a good night's sleep, identify the two most severe attack sleep. For example, the first phase of the attack is from 5 to 6 am, the second from 16 to 17 pm. In this case, the ideal sleep schedule looks like this: from 5 to 7 am, and from 16 to 17 pm.
And it’s also worth considering that you may miss the moment when your sleep will be effective. Therefore, two hours before “your” bedtime, do not drink coffee or use the Internet!
So, now you know that there are different phases of sleep that our body goes through during its stay in the kingdom of Morpheus. An experiment is also described that allows you to determine your own effective sleep time. So get enough sleep for your health. Sweet dreams!
Short effective sleep technique. Everyone can sleep 4 hours a day without harm to health.
Out of 75 years, a person sleeps 25, i.e. exactly a third of my life. This is based on 8 hours a day. And if you sleep for 4-6 hours, then we give ourselves more than 6 years of wakefulness. Conclusion - you can save time on sleep. How can you learn to sleep less without harming your health?
Sleeping every 24 hours with minor deviations is considered normal. Most important role lighting plays a role here. In darkened rooms, the body begins to secrete melatonin. An increase in the level of this hormone causes an irresistible desire to sleep. By the way, it is believed that you can sleep best on dark sheets. But it’s easiest to wake up in the morning in a brightly lit room.
During sleep, the body rests, growth hormone is released, the brain is enriched with oxygen, biosynthesis of proteins and neurons occurs, and immunity is restored. For healthy sleep it takes from 6 to 10 hours, but these figures are quite arbitrary. Need for more long sleep manifests itself, for example, during heavy physical labor.
Two main phases alternate: slow and fast sleep. For most people, sleep consists of several cycles lasting from 60 to 100 minutes. Each cycle includes a phase of slow-wave sleep (75%) and REM sleep (25%). Interruption of REM sleep can be more severe than disruption of slow-wave sleep. Slow sleep restores the body's energy expenditure, while fast sleep processes information and ensures its exchange between a person's consciousness and his subconscious. When reducing sleep time, it is important to do so by reducing the number of cycles. Sleep phases cannot be interrupted - the person will feel depressed and sick. This is the basis of the short nap technique.
This system was developed in 1975 at the Department of Dreaming in Moscow. Its essence is that a person should sleep only at the time of day at which he does it most effectively. Scientists have come to the conclusion that 4 hours is enough for absolutely any adult. good sleep per day. More than 70% of people can sleep 2-3 hours a day, but all the rules below must be strictly followed.
The most important thing is to calculate the time for the most effective sleep. Choose a couple of days when you can afford to stay awake for more than a day. The experiment starts at 0 o'clock. From now on, listen to your own feelings. You will understand that you want to sleep in fits and starts. For a while the eyes just close, and then it becomes tolerable again. Write down all observations: the time when you start to want to sleep, how many minutes this attack lasted, evaluate its strength using a 3-point system. Continue this way until 0 o'clock the next day. The next day, after getting enough sleep, identify the 2 most severe attacks. For example, I have the first phase irresistible desire sleep from 5 to 6 am, and the second from 16 to 17 pm. This means that the ideal sleep schedule for me would be from 5 to 7 am, and from 16 to 17 pm. If you don’t have the opportunity to sleep during the day, like me, you can only sleep 4 hours at night. For me - from 2 to 6, or from 4 to 8 o'clock.
The main thing in this technique is accuracy. If you miss right moment and if you don’t fall asleep within the first 15 minutes of your “sleep phase,” rest will not come. You will either sleep for 4 hours, ignoring the alarm, or wake up on time, but completely exhausted. Can't get up even though you fell asleep very quickly? Immediately when you wake up - under cold shower. If, on the contrary, you cannot fall asleep right away, take a warm shower or hot bath. It is also important to rest three hours a day between 10 am and 10 pm: read, sit at the computer, etc. The rest of the time you can do whatever you want. But, get busy! Keep yourself busy with work, especially at first. When you wake up, you need to get up immediately; at first it will not be easy. But after 5 minutes it will become easier, you will finally wake up. Eat no later than 2-4 hours before bedtime.
Yes, and you will have to decide what to spend the freed up 4+ hours on. You can laze around and not sleep for only 3 hours and only during the day. The rest of the time you need to do something. In this case, you can sit at the computer for no more than 12 hours. It is worth remembering that music in the daytime tires you, and in the dark it invigorates.
If you approach the matter wisely, not only will you have extra hours, but your sleep will also become better quality. Long-livers sleep no more than 4-6 hours a day. This time is enough for the body to rest. Sleep to your heart's content and enjoy every waking minute!
You need to sleep at least eight hours - we learned this axiom by heart. They talk about this from all sides and advise sticking to this magical number. But personally, such recommendations always seemed a little strange to me. I love strong coffee, I fall asleep best late at night and wake up refreshed not at seven, but at ten in the morning. I made a sincere effort to stick to a strict schedule, sleeping eight hours and waking up early. But as a result, I felt like a sleepwalker and suffered unbearably.
It became clear to me that the eight-hour rule does not work for everyone. Seven hours is enough for me to sleep and feel great.
The vast majority of studies and articles insist on eight hours of sleep. But perhaps this figure is the influence of the development of civilization, not biology. For example, if we study the sleep data of those who lived in the pre-industrial era, it turns out that average duration sleep is 5.7–7.1 hours per day.
Researchers are still trying to figure out how much time we need to spend sleeping. But it is absolutely clear that it is better to have little sleep than to sleep for a long time.
Less is more
Professor Franco Cappuccio analyzed 16 sleep studies involving more than 1 million people. As a result, he found out that those who sleep for a long time die earlier than those who are always sleep-deprived.
However, this conclusion cannot be relied upon entirely. After all, tracking the effect of sleep on a person is quite difficult. Diseases and problems hidden from the eyes of doctors make themselves known. For example, long sleep associated with, and short-lived - with stress. But when Professor Shawn Youngstedt, realizing the shortcomings of experiments with in large groups, spent own research using 14 volunteers, he obtained the same results as Cappuccio.
Apparently, long-term sleep in the long term has the same effect on a person as a sedentary lifestyle.
Of course, someone will live happily ever after despite spending 12 hours at a desk. And some people need to train a lot and often and do physical labor. To each his own.
If you're between 18 and 64 years old, you probably need about 6 to 11 hours of sleep. But even these recommendations, made on the basis scientific research, should be secondary for you. Margaret Thatcher ran the country, and some teenagers won't remember their name unless they get 10 hours of sleep without a break.
How much sleep do I need?
The sleep cycle consists of five stages: four stages of non-REM sleep and REM sleep. We quickly move through the first stage, spend a short time in the second while the binaural beats slow down, move into the third and fourth stages of slow waves and finally reach the fifth stage - the REM phase.
This cycle is believed to repeat every 90 minutes. But, apparently, its duration can vary from 70 to 120 minutes. Just like with the required amount of daily sleep, the duration of this cycle is unique and different for everyone.
But we know for sure that we need 4-5 such cycles to get enough sleep. Because their duration varies, it is difficult to predict when exactly you will be, say, between the fourth and fifth cycles and when perfect time for awakening.
But even this is not all: throughout the night, the duration of the cycles changes. It increases towards the middle of the night and falls towards the morning.
So what to do with this knowledge?
- Don't believe statements like "You need N hours of sleep a night." Unless it's a recommendation from the specialist who just gave you an electroencephalogram.
- Get some minimal technology that will help you track your sleep cycles and wake you up at the ideal time in the morning.
Technology is the only thing the right way track, monitor and understand your sleep cycles. But before you learn how to do this, you need to understand why this is needed at all.
Listen to your inner rhythms
Modern technology is one of the main reasons why we stop feeling our own. Gadgets, electronics, street lighting and all other objects that emit light disrupt our circadian rhythms and synchronization with sunset and dawn.
Circadian rhythms are controlled by a group of cells that stimulate the body's response to light signals. They send a message to the brain and cause the body to wake up, increase its temperature, produce necessary hormones (for example, cortisol) and reduce the production of unnecessary ones (for example, melatonin).
The problem is that we also react to artificial lighting. When you look at night bright screen smartphone, your body receives a signal: wake up and shine!
Technology is not the only one to blame for this, of course. Other factors such as noise, hormones, sports exercises, stimulants, also have a similar effect and disrupt circadian rhythms.
But there is also good news. For more than 6 million years, our ancestors learned to fall asleep during sunset. This means that to restore disrupted circadian rhythms, we need very little effort. You just need to avoid irritating factors. Electric lighting, for example, or light from a monitor.
Get busy with this. Don't exercise before bed, stop drinking coffee at night. Buy good earplugs and an eye mask. Finally, turn your bedroom into a place for relaxation, namely for deep, restful sleep.
Monitor your sleep
Finding a sleep monitoring gadget is not difficult. The market is filled with similar devices for almost any budget.
Or you don’t have to buy a new device, but install it good app for sleep tracking. We liked the program Sleep Cycle. It uses your smartphone's accelerometer and microphone to track your sleep, movement and breathing.
Of course, you can try other applications or gadgets. The main thing you need to do is understand exactly how you sleep and how long your sleep cycles last.
Abstract advice like “sleep more” and “get enough sleep” has no basis. After all, no one knows exactly how much time you need to recover. Only you know how your body works.
