From white noise to brown and pink, sleep trackers and bracelets, we are a nation obsessed with a good night’s sleep, but is the pursuit of a restful eight-hours creating the very anxiety that is preventing restorative slumber?
In a new piece by Victoria University’s Professorial Research Fellow Maximilian de Courten in today’s The Conversation confirms that the best indicator that your body needs more sleep is your brain.
“If you’re alert (without caffeine), able to concentrate, feeling you’re able to have a good quality of life at work and home, then you’re probably getting enough sleep,” said Professor de Courten.
As for the magic ‘eight hours’, not everyone needs the same amount of sleep – the optimum for adults ranges between six and nine hours. But assessing the accuracy of what happens between dusk to dawn with wearable devices is not so easy. The apps claim to determine how much time you spend in light sleep, deep sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and how many times you are disturbed during the night, but more advances need to make before they are considered reliably accurate.
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