At the same time, your brain activity changes and eye movements stop. Once you’ve entered stage two, your muscles relax, your body temperature drops, and your breathing and heart rate slow. The body soon follows, with occasional movements like twitches. During this time, the sleeper hasn’t fully relaxed their body, but the brain starts to slow down and lightly changes in activity associated with falling asleep. Stage one is often referred to as the transition stage and lasts only one to five minutes. Each stage is determined by the brain activity while you sleep, which shows distinct patterns that identify a specific stage. One for rapid eye movement (REM) and the other three that form non-REM (NREM) sleep. Later cycles will range from 90 to 120 minutes, but the composition of each cycle will change as the night goes on. The first sleep cycle you go through is usually the shortest, ranging from 70 to 100 minutes. It’s typical for your sleep cycles to change as you progress through a night’s worth of sleep. However, not all sleep cycles are the same length and vary depending on different factors such as age, sleep patterns, and personal preferences. On a typical night, the average person goes through four to six sleep cycles that last around 90 minutes each. There are four total stages in a sleep cycle, each lasting a different amount of time. Sleep cycles are the stages your body goes through each night as you snooze. Although sleep duration is important, it’s also critical to focus on your sleep cycle. Understanding basic sleep hygiene will give you insight into what things you may be doing that cause you to have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up tired.Contrary to popular belief, the amount of time you spend sleeping doesn’t guarantee a good night’s rest. These are determined principally by heat and light, making it natural to sleep when it's colder and darker, and wake when it's lighter and warmer. Our circadian rhythm determines our sleep/wake cycles. If that doesn't help, you should focus on improving the quality of your sleep by understanding basic sleep hygiene guidelines.
You may need 8.5 hours or 9 hours of sleep/night. Why am I still tired after sleeping for 8 hours? If you wake up at 6am, to get 7-9 hours of sleep you should be going to bed between 9pm and 11pm. What time should I go to bed if I wake up at 6am? For example, newborns need 14-17 hours/day, while adults aged 65 and over need 7-8 hours/day. As we age, the number of hours of sleep needed daily decreases. Does your need for sleep change with age? Some people are better off going to bed early and waking up early (early birds), while others feel better going to sleep later and waking up later. What time should I wake up and go to bed?Įveryone has a different circadian rhythm. Here are the answers to our most frequently asked questions about calculating sleep times. We break these tips down on our comprehensive sleep advice page. If you find yourself struggling with falling asleep or staying asleep, making some simple adjustments to light exposure, activity levels, stress, and your environment will support you in finding a long-term solution.
If you have any questions about this sleep calculator or would like to reach out to one of our experts, please don't hesitate to send us a message. We created this personalized sleep calculator because we believe people should know roughly when they should wake up and what time they should aim to go to sleep based on the latest recommendations from the National Institute of Health, the Sleep Health Journal, and other trusted sources. The results are broken down to optimize your REM and non-REM sleep cycles. You will be given multiple results based on your age as well as your goal wake time or bedtime. Use our sleep cycle calculator to estimate the best time for you to wake up and go to bed.