Hi FredeRick,

There aren't established figures for recommended sleep values by age or any other major factor. Sleep experts assert that sleep is highly individual for many reasons – how active you are, how your genes are wired (some people just need less sleep), how much sleep debt you have accumulated (to name a few). The goal should be to get enough sleep so that you feel your best during the day.

You'll be able to find generic numbers from around the web… for example, the National Sleep Foundation and the National Institutes of Health recommend 7-9 hours of sleep per night… but ultimately your sleep is up to you.

The individuality of sleep is something that I've certainly learned since being at Zeo – my sleep looks different than anyone else's sleep in the office. Funny story from the early days of Zeo: Steve, Moose and Andi, who used to manually process the sleep records, used to be able to tell who's sleep they were looking at just by the look of it.

Have you noticed changes in your sleep since you started using Zeo? Or have you noticed different things that impact your sleep in particular?

Thanks for posting!

-Derek@Zeo

References & more reading…

http://healthysleep.med.harvar...../sleep_lab

http://www.sleepfoundation.org.....eally-need

I agree with both posts, mostly.  My take is that if for your age you are not well beyond the average numbers published, improvement is needed.  However, until more rigourous research is done, there is not objective gold standard beyond 'how you feel' after a night's sleep.  I am in my late 30s and largely do better than people in their 20s that were studied.  Yet there are areas - deep sleep in particular - where my numbers are slighlty below average.  So a big project is to work on that.  My REM is almost double the average....on the esoteric side, some traditions e.g. chinese herbal medicine point to problems associated with too much dream state sleep.  So perhaps double to avg is not neccesarily a good thing.  In any case, the ability to track specific impacts to specific aspects of sleep is great.  I especially am please to see the insights derived in the latest zeology blog and the fnctionality to track custom factors that I didn't realize was in the software all this time....in fact I think that deserves its own forum topic.....

We've known for years that we are all wired slightly different yet I find it interesting that there is such a range of sleep 'behaviors' between different people.

I wonder if dominant personality traits have any bearing on the types of sleep we get. For example, do left brained people spend more time in REM sleep than right brained people? How about more deep sleep for the athletically inclined even if they don't workout everyday? In short, how do our different streagths and weeknesses come into play during our sleep?

Thioughts?

I go a step further and say our wiring is actually - in the long run - within our control.  Some people inherit the sins of their parents and others the benefits, for example.  They may APPEAR to need less sleep but only because their tanked was charged more to begin with.  They still need just as much sleep.  It is akin to saying a teenager doesn't need to eat as well as an 80 year old.  Well of course they do but their store of minerals, vitamins, energy is less depleted by the throes of life and thus for a little while the can seem impervious....but eventually most who abuse the basics go one to become the very 80 year old who must eat gold to live and even then are only able to turn that gold into lead.  Teenagers eat lead and somehow turn it into gold.  But don't mistake the initial mercies of life with a long term capacity to sustain it....get your sleep!

I wanted to second "The Future's" final sentence:

"I especially am please to see the insights derived in the latest zeology blog and the functionality to track custom factors that I didn't realize was in the software all this time….in fact I think that deserves its own forum topic….."

It would be interesting just to develop a list of custom factors which various of us are looking into. Later, we could share results.

Good Idea Granbob.  Similar to the article, I employ various activities in my daily regime, some early in the day (workouts, qi gong) and others later in the day (qi gong, meditation, relaxation exercises).  These are items I am tracking.  There are also nutritional supplements ones could track, some of which are reputed better taken in the eve as they tend to induce a relaxed state (e.g. Calcium/Magnesium)

The Future said:

I go a step further and say our wiring is actually - in the long run - within our control.  Some people inherit the sins of their parents and others the benefits, for example.  They may APPEAR to need less sleep but only because their tanked was charged more to begin with.  They still need just as much sleep.

I'm not sure, from a science perspective, that it's a questions that's been fully answered. My guess would be that there's a combination of nature and nuture. For example, check out this story about genetically short sleepers. On the other hand, famous "short sleepers" like Bill Clinton, probably just needed more sleep. I think our sleep needs are all different, and there's a range. I agree with Derek@Zeo that the most important thing is how we feel while we're awake and need to perform at our best.

RE: Desolace. For sleep cycle length, check out Steve's blog post about sleep architecture. In it, there's a graph that Steve built using several hundred of his nights to determine the length of each of his sleep cycles. You can do this too using the export feature on Zeo (followed by some data crunching), or (if you're a programmer) using the python script that Brian wrote (see the first comment on this post). Either way, it still takes some work on your end, but this is the first time we've heard that request... So thanks!

RE: Granbob & The Future. We've created a section in the forum devoted to personal sleep experiments and this is absolutely the stuff that we'd love you to share! (Side note, we're also working on making it easier for you to track custom factors - still a ways away, but in progress).

Great conversations going here...

Derek@Zeo said:

RE: Desolace. For sleep cycle length, check out Steve's blog post about sleep architecture. In it, there's a graph that Steve built using several hundred of his nights to determine the length of each of his sleep cycles. You can do this too using the export feature on Zeo (followed by some data crunching), or (if you're a programmer) using the python script that Brian wrote (see the first comment on this post). Either way, it still takes some work on your end, but this is the first time we've heard that request... So thanks!

 

RE: Granbob & The Future. We've created a section in the forum devoted to personal sleep experiments and this is absolutely the stuff that we'd love you to share! (Side note, we're also working on making it easier for you to track custom factors - still a ways away, but in progress).

 

Great conversations going here...