“The sleep before midnight is the best!” is a widespread opinion. Sleep researchers share this only conditionally. Even those who do not get to rest before midnight need not worry about a healthy sleep. The important thing is not the time of day, but the quality of sleep.
Deepest sleep in the REM phase
According to the current state of sleep research, sleep is deepest and most intense in the first two hours, in the first REM (rapid eye movement) phase, and thus has the most restorative effect. If these two hours occur before midnight, sleep is actually at its healthiest. On the other hand, those who do not fall asleep until midnight only experience healthy sleep later than larks who turn out the lights earlier.
Conclusion
For the feeling of recovery in the morning, the first half of night sleep is probably the most important, because that’s when you have a particularly large amount of deep sleep. However, whether this first half is before or after midnight doesn’t matter.
By the way, did you know…
- We change our position 20 to 60 times during sleep.
- Even good sleepers wake up during the night. About 30 times. These short episodes of wakefulness do not affect the recovery value of sleep.
- Germans sleep – according to a study – an average of 7 hours and 8 minutes. The alarm clock usually rings at 6:23 a.m.
- 14 percent of Germans take a midday nap.
- 29 percent of women and 18 percent of men in Germany suffer from sleep disorders. One in ten has a sleep disorder that requires treatment.
