Just a small (but important to me) question about sleep

I know this isn’t really dream talk but I just need to ask a question seen as though most people on here must know their stuff about sleep. :tongue:

So yeah, people say you should get six hours sleep at night, times differ depending on the person, but does being in bed trying to go to sleep count as sleep? It’s just the reason I’ve been going to bed at stupid stupid stupid times this summer holiday (we’re talking about 5:00am to 7:00am) is because I haven’t been tired and just the general fact I always have trouble sleeping, and I think I’m developing Insomnia. :eh:

Can someone help me out? I’m really not happy with myself right now. :sad:

IMO if you are lying in bed, tossing and turning trying to sleep that would be ‘bad’; but if you are lying as relaxed as possible you will get some rest and increase the possibility of drifting to sleep.

Nah, it doesn’t count as sleep. The sleep you really need is called REM. There are 5 stages of sleep, where REM is the fifth. Throughout the night, you usually go through 4-5 cycles of these. It takes generally 90 minutes from the first stage to REM. In the first cycle, REM only lasts about 10 minutes, but the time increases by each cycle until the fifth.

This is why 8 hours of sleep normally is reccomended. But it really depends on the person. Some people need 10 hours, and some only need 4. It is also bad to get too much sleep, but I don’t think that’s a problem of yours :tongue:

Now you just have to get rid of insomnia ^^

Ok, thanks for the info! :smile: