“If somebody is already habituated to something, they go to sleep when they’re tired and wake up when they want to, and it doesn’t really interfere with their functioning during the day, it’s truly not going to be much of a problem,” Cheng says. While Perlis and Cheng both recommend a quiet, dark, cool environment for sleeping, most of us already know how we sleep best - even when that means having lights, music, or the TV on. (If you’re in a blisteringly hot room, it can affect your sleep swag - we looked at loads of ways to cool down a room that help you snooze.) Your environment factors into your sleep quality too. Īnd when you’re awake, sleep-promoting substances build up in your brain - essentially getting you more and more ready to go to sleep the longer you stay awake. Sex differences in sleep: Impact of biological sex and sex steroids. Hormones and other brain functions are also part of the sleep/waking cycle, including systems that specifically keep you from waking up. However, there’s an overall decline in slow wave sleep as people get older, but more so in males. Exploring sex and gender differences in sleep health: A society for women’s health research report. Studies have found that biological females tend to preserve their slow-wave sleep better than males. “Sex, metabolism, and genetics also likely determine how deeply a person sleeps,” Perlis says. But it’s not only lifestyle choices that affect your ability to tally up sheep. Let’s be real, here: You’re going to have a harder time drifting off at the end of a cocaine bender than after half an hour of meditation and a good book. Other factors - including lifestyle - play a part If you’re one of those people that has a less easy time with staying in deep sleep, we rounded up seven gadgets that might help. The deepest sleep is N3 sleep and occurs more during the earlier sleep cycles and less during later sleep cycles. N1 is very light, occurring as you just fall asleep. NREM sleep is divided into N1, N2, and N3 sleep. So if a person spends a whole lot of time stuck here, they’re going to be easily roused from their slumber. And you hit it up every night, multiple times.Įach REM period lasts a little longer than the previous one, usually reaching up to 1 hour by the final REM stage of the night. We know you’ve probably been told that Disneyland is, in fact, where dreams happen, but we’ve got news for you - REM is cheaper.

Within each sleep cycle (which is approximately 90 minutes long), there are 3 stages of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and then rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Sleep and muscle recovery: endocrinological and molecular basis for a new and promising hypothesis. There are four stages of sleep that we cycle through 4 to 6 times every night, from the lightest (falling asleep) to the deepest, wherein the body repairs and strengthens the muscles, Dattilo M, et al.

No-one is 100 percent a deep sleeper or 100 percent a light sleeper. We all go through cycles of deeper and lighter sleep every night, so the difference between a heavy and a light sleeper may be the amount of time a person spends in certain phases of their sleep cycle.

Light sleeper vs deep sleeper