This Side Up

You really don’t need all that sleep, anyway

John Howell
Posted 3/17/15

How could it happen? It seemed too extraordinary to be coincidental, but there it was jolting me awake.

I looked again, just to make sure. The digital red numbers on our bedside clock read …

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This Side Up

You really don’t need all that sleep, anyway

Posted

How could it happen? It seemed too extraordinary to be coincidental, but there it was jolting me awake.

I looked again, just to make sure. The digital red numbers on our bedside clock read 1:23.

It’s not unusual for me to wake up for no particular reason at different times of the night. Sometimes it’s only for a few minutes before drifting back to sleep. On other occasions, too many things weigh on me or, for some reason, I’m just awake.

The 1:23 started the mental wheels turning. What were the odds of that ever happening again without setting an alarm clock? And might there come a time when, for no explanation, I would wake up at 2:34? And what about the next, 3:45, and the one after that, 4:56? Of course, that would be the end. There’s no 5:67.

For some reason that went through my mind at 1:23 a.m.

OK, I reasoned, it’s one of those oddities. There’s no reason to lose sleep over numbers. I shut out the clock and rolled over. I woke up exactly one hour and 11 minutes later.

Now the clock read 2:34.

I blinked. Was I really seeing that?

What were the odds of that happening? I didn’t have a clue. Math was never one of my strong points, but surely someone could figure that out. At 2:34 in the morning, I wasn’t about to spend a lot of time on it. The thought did occur, however, might I go three-for-three and wake up in another hour and 11 minutes, precisely at 3:45?

I was sort of hoping that would happen, although sleep was the preferred alternative. Instead I found myself thinking about our internal alarm clocks.

Maybe this has happened to you, but rarely has an alarm clock wakened me. I’ll set the alarm, believing I’ll have a restful night and get up at the right time to catch the plane, go on the fishing trip or set off on that early morning drive. That doesn’t happen. There seems to be an inner alarm that really isn’t terribly reliable. In many cases I’ll be up an hour before I need to be, cursing the fact I’ve missed out on an hour of sleep. Once in a while I’ll pop awake literally seconds before the alarm sounds. That’s pretty good when that happens.

The thought occurred: Might my intrigue with the next set of numbers program me to wake up exactly an hour and 11 minutes later?

All of this wasn’t doing me any favors, if you believe all that you can find on the Internet about sleep and sleep deprivation. If my internal alarm clock was set to go off every 71 minutes, I wasn’t even getting to the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, which is when you do most of your dreaming. I’d be missing out on the dreams.

There was no doubt either that I was being robbed of the seven to nine hours of sleep recommended for adults. Kids, especially teens, need more sleep, according to the studies. And, as I learned, sleep follows a pattern that moves between deep sleep and more alert stages of dreaming. What I found especially interesting is the importance of deep sleep, as described by what I found on the site Helpguide.org.

“If you want to make mornings less painful – or if you know you only have a limited time for sleep – try setting a wake-up time that’s a multiple of 90 minutes, the length of the average sleep cycle. For example, if you go to bed at 10 p.m., set your alarm for 5:30 (a total of 7½ hours of sleep) instead of 6:00 or 6:30. You may feel more refreshed at 5:30 than with another 30 to 60 minutes of sleep because you’re getting up at the end of a sleep cycle when your body and brain are already close to wakefulness.”

That seems counterintuitive, the idea that you actually feel more rested with less sleep.

I drifted off again. But my eyes popped open to stare at the glowing digital numbers of the clock. It read 3:44. I had missed the next sequence by a minute; this was freaky. Just so I could see it, I waited about a minute and watched the clock change to 3:45. I wondered if I would wake at 4:56.

Next I knew, the sun was streaming in the room and Carol was saying, “I figured it was time for you to get up.”

It’s a good thing I have a dependable alarm clock.

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