The ultimate guide to sleep

(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) From personal experience, I’ve found that taking control of my mornings–and popping out of bed as soon as the alarm clock rings–has changed my life. If you’ve read or listened to The 5 Second Rule , you already know how I feel about the mornings! I’m obsessed with mornings and, in the book, I outline exactly how I use the 5 Second Rule to wake up early and take charge of my day. Your mornings set the tone for your day. And when I wake up early and have time for relaxing, planning, and being with my family, I tend to always have a better day of work. Here’s the thing…when I’m tired, it’s hard to do this. It’s tougher to wake up early and I’m lagging the whole day. I decided to delve into the topic of sleep and figure out for myself if waking up early (and going to bed early) is actually any better for us. My personal experience says it is…but I wanted to see what the experts said. Like I do with many other topics, I wanted to know everything. So I pulled together the best research about sleep on four different topics: Which Hours You Sleep, Staying Up Late, Sleep Deprivation, and Waking Up Early. FIRST: WHICH HOURS YOU SLEEP The first thing I discovered is that the hours that you sleep DO matter. In fact, sleep is made up of 2 phases: REM sleep, in which memories and thoughts are processed, and non-REM sleep, in which restorative functions occur and hormones are released to help the body recover. As we sleep, we experience 90-minute cycles of these 2 types of sleep. The ratio of the types of sleep, however, changes during the night – no matter what […]

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