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How did you sleep final evening? Your response may depend upon how lengthy you had been in mattress, how a lot of that point you spent tossing and turning or whether or not you’re feeling rested. But it surely may additionally depend upon whether or not you exercised in the present day, what your wearable machine says, or if you end up being requested.
This text is a part of particular sequence investigating key questions on sleep. Learn extra right here.
“Everyone has their own definition of sleep quality – and that is the problem,” says sleep researcher Nicole Tang on the College of Warwick, UK.
Although sleep high quality and what defines it’s a puzzle scientists are nonetheless determining, we do know {that a} good evening’s relaxation includes a sequence of sleep cycles, the distinct succession of phases of mind exercise we expertise throughout sleep (see diagram beneath). And for many of us, every stage of these cycles is critical to get up feeling refreshed. The typical particular person experiences 4 to 5 full cycles throughout an evening and disrupting these can include well being penalties, each within the quick and long run.
“Poor sleep quality is associated with many adverse physical health outcomes,” says Jean-Philippe Chaput on the College of Ottawa, Canada. Just like what you’ll be able to anticipate from not sleeping sufficient (see “Why your chronotype is key to figuring out how much sleep you need”), these embrace the next threat of heart problems, stroke, hypertension, kind 2 diabetes and weight acquire.
Though there isn’t a definitive consensus on what defines sleep high quality, researchers and medical doctors incessantly analyse sleep with an electroencephalogram (EEG), which tracks mind exercise throughout sleep…
