
Stage 2: In stage 2, also known as light sleep, your breathing, heart rate, and brain activity all begin to slow down and become more regular.You may spend 2% to 5% of the night in stage 1. You’re in a light sleep, so you can easily be disturbed by something like a loud noise. Stage 1: This stage only lasts for a few minutes as you first drift off.

Each sleep cycle lasts about 70 to 120 minutes and, depending on the number of hours of sleep you need, we get four to six sleep cycles a night. Once you’ve moved through all four sleep stages, you’ll complete one sleep cycle. Rather than worry about deep sleep, focus on sleep debt to make the biggest difference to your health and energy levels.Įach night of sleep is made up of four different stages of sleep: three stages of non-rapid-eye-movement sleep (NREM sleep) and one stage of rapid-eye-movement sleep ( REM sleep). Sleep debt is the measure of how much sleep you owe your body and has the biggest impact on how you feel each day. Zeitzer shows the amount of deep sleep you get isn’t associated with subjective sleep quality. Deep sleep isn’t the most important metric: Research from Dr.Don’t neglect REM and light sleep in your effort to get more deep sleep. Every sleep stage is important: Deep sleep sounds like the most restorative stage, but every sleep stage plays an important role in your health and energy levels.You should have good sleep hygiene anyway: Most of the behaviors you can do to get more deep sleep (more on those soon) are part of sleep hygiene, the sleep habits you should be doing each day to get a good night’s sleep - even when you’re not thinking about deep sleep.
Lack of deep sleep stage how to#
More research needs to be done: There’s still a lot we don’t know about sleep, including how much deep sleep we need exactly and how to get more of it.And even then, sleep experts only agree on test results about 80% of the time. It’s hard to tell if you’re getting enough deep sleep or not without getting a polysomnography (PSG), or a sleep study, done in a lab. You can’t accurately measure it: At-home sleep trackers that tell you how long you spend in different sleep stages are mostly inaccurate.You can’t control it: You can’t command your brain to get more deep sleep, so why worry about it?.You don’t need to do anything but make sure you’re getting enough sleep overall. Your body knows what it’s doing: Your brain works hard to make sure it spends the right amount of time in deep sleep, as well as every other sleep stage.We argue you don’t need to know how much deep sleep you need. The median sleep need for those aged 24 to 59 was 8 hours 24 minutes - a mere six minutes longer.ĭo You Need to Know How Much Deep Sleep You Need?

When we looked at our own sleep need data, the median sleep need for RISE users over 60 was 8 hours 18 minutes. Sleep is harder to come by as we age, and this may be reflected in generic sleep need guidelines, which are based on surveys that look at how much sleep people get - not what they actually need. Heads-up: Older adults may not need less sleep. And we get less deep sleep as we age.Īccording to the National Sleep Foundation, here’s how much sleep you likely need based on your age: Research shows children get significantly more deep sleep than teenagers and adults. How Much Deep Sleep Does Each Age Group Need?Ĭhildren need more sleep than adults, so they may need more deep sleep, too.
