We've found that no one sleep stage is more important than the other. Different sleep stages produce different effects on your brain and body at different times of the night. So when people come to me and say, "Look, how do I get more REM sleep? Or how do I get deeper sleep?" I'll ask them, "Why do you want more of that deep sleep?" And they'll say, "Well, isn't that the good stuff?"
Why would Mother Nature lie to you so vulnerable and unconsciously? If only one type of sleep was important, it would have long since eliminated the other type of sleep during evolutionary development. The fact that they are all with us to this day suggests that they probably all have functional, evolutionary, and fundamental importance, and that is exactly what we have discovered.
People will say to me, 'Look, it's so weird.' I fall asleep, watch TV on the couch at night, and then I go to bed and I'm wide awake and I don't know why.' And part of it is because your brain has learned this negative association and attached this negative association of being awake to this thing called a bed. And you have to break that association.
By the way, sleep efficiency is defined by the amount of time you sleep relative to the amount of time you spend in bed. So if you lie in bed for eight hours and sleep for the entire eight hours, that is 100% sleep efficiency.
I think the first point I need to make in all of this, and I've spent so much time thinking about all of this, journaling, and kind of meditating, is that if I'm ever wrong about anything, life in general or science, I don't want to be wrong any longer than I have to.
Why would Mother Nature lie to you so vulnerable and unconsciously? If only one type of sleep was important, it would have long since eliminated the other type of sleep during evolutionary development. The fact that they are all with us to this day suggests that they probably all have functional, evolutionary, and fundamental importance, and that is exactly what we have discovered.
People will say to me, 'Look, it's so weird.' I fall asleep, watch TV on the couch at night, and then I go to bed and I'm wide awake and I don't know why.' And part of it is because your brain has learned this negative association and attached this negative association of being awake to this thing called a bed. And you have to break that association.
By the way, sleep efficiency is defined by the amount of time you sleep relative to the amount of time you spend in bed. So if you lie in bed for eight hours and sleep for the entire eight hours, that is 100% sleep efficiency.
I think the first point I need to make in all of this, and I've spent so much time thinking about all of this, journaling, and kind of meditating, is that if I'm ever wrong about anything, life in general or science, I don't want to be wrong any longer than I have to.
