Credits: Social Media
Quality often outweighs quantity for having a good night’s sleep, expert says
Do you monitor your sleeping habits? There are plenty of options available to those who want to gather information on their hours slept and overall sleep scores, plus a host of other data points.
Issues emerge, however, when interpreting sleep scores. You might have received a sleep score in the high 70s on a night when you slept just six hours, and a score in the mid-60s on another night when you slept seven and a half hours. What gives? The Focus spoke to two sleep experts for their insights regarding the benefits, and potential pitfalls, of using a Fitbit or other sleep monitor. Neither of them mentioned the value of dancing around the house for having a good nights sleep. Fortunately, we already knew about that.
Quality often outweighs quantity for feeling rested and functional
Dr Chelsea Perry, whose insights The Focus has published before, uses a Garmin device to track her sleep patterns.
To interpret data to the point that it becomes useful, she recommends focusing on key metrics like sleep stages (light, deep, REM), sleep efficiency (the amount of time youre asleep, rather than just lying in bed), and disruptions (time spent awake during the night).
Overall, she finds that quality often outweighs quantity in terms of feeling rested and functional.
The difference between high-quality and low-quality sleep has to do with sleep stages. High-quality sleep involves spending sufficient time in deep and REM sleep stages, since these are crucial for physical recovery, memory consolidation, and emotional regulation.
Deep sleep, also known as slow-wave sleep, is particularly important for restoring the body, she says. REM sleep is key for cognitive functions and mood.
However, quantity is also important, as it takes a certain amount of time to reach the deep and REM sleep stages. Being asleep for several hours in a row allows your body to cycle through all the stages of sleep multiple times.
But you can sleep for a long time without sleeping well: If the sleep is light or frequently interrupted, you might miss out on the deeper, more restorative stages, leading to fatigue even after a longer sleep duration.
In conclusion, she says, getting uninterrupted quality sleep, with time spent in both deep and REM stages, often has a more direct impact on how rested you feel than just increasing the number of hours in bed.
Dr Chelsea Perry is the owner of Sleep Solutions. Shes a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine.
Useful sleep-tracking tips from an insomniac podcast host
Helen K Sernett says her struggle with insomnia motivated her to begin the Sleep Lists podcast. In her words, it helps people with busy minds get the restorative rest they need.
She points out that her sleep tracker gives her a score based partly on how close I am to the goals I have told it.
In other words, if she tells the app she wants to sleep seven hours per night, shell get a better sleep score if she sleeps seven hours than if she manages to sleep for eight hours.
Helen highlights a research paper published by the academic journal Nature and Science of Sleep in 2020 that shows how beneficial long daytime naps can be for memory function.
On the other hand, short naps dont last long enough for sleepers to enter the slow wave sleep portion or REM sleep. In other words, quantity is a prerequisite for quality, but both are vital for good brain health and feeling fully rested.
Helen Sernett is the founder and host of the Sleep Lists podcast. Her insomnia brought medical issues. Having found her way, she wants to help others do the same. She started Sleep Lists in June 2023.
