The Secret To Better Mornings

The Secret to Better Mornings?

If you want to feel refreshed and sharp, there’s one simple thing you can do to improve your chances. Go to sleep at the same time each day. Yahoo Finance recently published an article relating to a Fitbit study.

Fitbit, of course, are the small sleep bands that people wear to monitor sleep, heart rate, steps and other activities.

6 Billion Nights of Sleep Data

So, Fitbit completed a study based on the 6 billion nights of sleep it’s Fitbit users have recorded since they began tracking sleep. The data has been compiled anonymously and is a virtual treasure trove of sleep data. Who sleeps more? Men or Women? In what region do people get more sleep?

It turns out that women sleep on average 25 minutes longer than men. It’s not really known if this is due to cultural or physiological influences.

Fitbit also records what kind of sleep you’re getting; Awake, REM, Deep Sleep and Light Sleep are all recorded. Interestingly, there was virtually no difference between men and women on the percentage of various sleep phases.

Women tend to get about 10 minutes more REM sleep than men do…and this gap increases once past the age of 50.

What about the Better Mornings?

Part of the study involved analyzing the variance in bed time for people. So the idea is, if you go to bed at exactly 10pm each night, you have ‘no variance’ in bedtime.

However, if you’re going to bed at 10pm weeknights, but weekends stay out late – say until midnight – then you would have 2 hours of variance in bedtime.

What’s the big deal?

It turns out that the wider the variance in bedtime, it’s a bit like jet-lagging yourself.

The implications? The data shows, that if your bedtime varies by 2 hours a week, you’ll get 30 minutes less sleep, per night, than another person who has only 30 minutes of variance in their bedtime.

Over time, this can lead to real consequences. Sleep deprivation leads to Decreased  Cognitive function.

So, if we understand correctly…less sleep makes us not as intelligent! Or at least temporarily less capable for problem solving and similar cognitive tasks.

Some other interesting stats that came out of the study were;

• Men: Ave hours of sleep / night 6:26
• Women: Ave hours of sleep / night 6:50
• Women suffer from insomnia 40% more often than men
• 20 year olds get 30 mins more deep sleep than 70 year olds
• East Coast sleepers go to bed an ave of 7 mins later than West Coasters

There’s a ton of other insights that can be pulled from the Fitbit sleep data. Fitbit plans on keeping this data widely available to sleep scientists.

At Fawcett, we’re not scientists. But we do like our sleep. Our amazing Fawcett clients tell us they love our Mattresses.

Many also note how good their sleep is on a Fawcett Mattress.

Where to start? If you’re near Victoria, come on down to our showroom.

If not take a look at our Mattresses and we can always do a telephone consult, make sure you’re getting the right one, and then ship to you anywhere in Canada!

Questions? Simply drop us a line @ 250.384.2558 or Email Us and we’ll be happy to help.