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Tired of feeling groggy when you wake up, even after a full night of sleep? According to Dr. Charles Puza, your bedtime is probably to blame. But the dermatologist and self-proclaimed biohacker doesn’t advise just going to bed earlier, he says a simple formula will reveal your “perfect bedtime” so you’re well-rested when you rise and shine.
Puza explains that it’s all about getting the maximum number of sleep cycles, so we complete all of the vital stages of sleep. “You should be timing your sleep to align with natural sleep cycles of around 90 minutes,” he shares in an Instagram video. Getting full cycles of about an hour and a half each is the key to feeling refreshed and energized when you wake up, because if an alarm wakes you in the middle of a cycle, you may miss out on the most restorative phase.
Since a healthy adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep a night, that comes out to five or six sleep cycles. To make sure you get complete ones, Puza suggests this formula for finding your ideal bedtime.
- Start with determining what time you need to wake up the next morning.
- Five full sleep cycles equals seven hours and 30 minutes, so if that’s how long you want to sleep, add another 15 minutes to give yourself time to fall asleep, and you get seven hours and 45 minutes.
- Then subtract that from the time you need to wake up to come up with your bedtime.
- For example, if you need to be up at 7 a.m., work back by seven hours and 45 minutes and you’ll get a bedtime of 11:15 p.m.
- And if it takes you longer than 15 minutes to drift off, add in extra time for that and push your bedtime back to make up for it.
Source: Daily Mail