Sleep Cycle

[kpreston]

Many articles and people recommend sleeping in full sleep cycles, so that waking up feeling alert is easier. However, when setting the alarm clock, how do you decide when you'll be waking up?

If I'm closing my eyes at 12:00AM, and set the alarm for 7:30 (5 sleep cycles), what happens when I don't fall asleep right away? What if it takes me 5 minutes? 15 minutes? 30 minutes? How do you account for this?

[silicon toad2000]

I wouldn't worry about 5 minutes, 15 is a bit iffy but if you can't fall asleep before half an hour of going to bed then you're either not tired enough or over stimulated.
The thing about the sleep cycles is that if you wake up in the delta sleep phase of the cycle you will feel very tried and groggy for some time after you wake up while you brain waves revert from delta waves to alpha waves. The recommendation to get entire sleep cycles is so that you can wake up in the phase of the sleep cycle (end or beginning of the next one) where your brain is in an almost wakeful state.

My suggestion would be that you adjust you waking time for that night and then examine your pre bedtime routine and perhaps do less stimulating things and start dimming lights half an hour before bed.

[Rockchick26]

i've had this problem FOREVER! I've almost always taken about an hour to fall asleep,and i ALWAYS wake up groggy and exhausted,no matter if i get 7 or 8 hours of sleep or even 9. Sometimes i wake up on my own,sometimes not,and either way,i'm too tired to get up for a while. I know Steve has a blog about this,he basically says to only go to bed WHEN you are tired,but always get up at the same exact time. I HAVE done that and its never worked for me so i think some people are just naturally slower to start and slower to slow down

[kpreston]

Perhaps. All I know is it usually takes me anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. The problem is that the timing is so variable that it's difficult to accurately set an alarm clock.