For many years I wondered about sleep. Sleep has always baffled me. It has also frustrated me. Sleep has lured me to my bed at night, during the day, and sometimes I can’t fall asleep at all. This has helped me launch my own kind of research project about sleep. My first burning question: does it matter if you sleep during the day or night?

To start this project, I did a search though different websites, psychology textbooks, and even did a poll of my friends and family. Most of the sources favored: sleeping at night when it is dark. They recommend going to bed early, changing your diet, mediating before sleep, and even if you sleep during the day, to make sure that a cap nap is 30 minutes or less.

Unfortunately, I have tried all of these things. Most nights I wake up as though I haven’t slept at all. This leads me to sleeping the next day where I find I wake up rested. This is completely opposite of all my research findings. So I decided to research more about sleep. What I found was: the most important element to sleep is the quality of sleep.

Sleep actually has many different phases. Each of us travel the different phases that range from getting drowsy, to light sleep, deeper sleep, and then to REM sleep. If a person is awakened in light sleep they feel like they have not slept at all. In an eight hour period of sleep most people travel through each of these phases 4-5 times. REM sleep is where we feel most rested and lasts anywhere from 45-90 minutes. After, each phase of REM sleep though, we start back at phase 1: light sleep. Therefore, if a person is awakened in stage 1 any of the 4-5 times we enter that phase at night, we may feel as though we did not sleep, even though we did reach REM sleep.

From my research, I have discovered that even though I may be reaching REM sleep at night, I often wake up during phase 1 (for many factors), and that is why I do not feel rested when I wake up. By contrast, many times during the day, I am able to sleep uninterrupted. That is the reason I fell more rested when I sleep during the day.

As I talked to my friends and family, I found that each person had their own sleep pattern. Some of them were able to rest comfortably at night. Some were night owls like me. Others swore by a great 2-3 hour during the afternoon. All people are guided by their own type of rhythm. We are all affected by the sun rising and setting each day. Each of us has different lives, with different demands on their time, and different ways we are able to fall asleep. The common factor with each person I spoke to was: when they were able to sleep uninterrupted, they woke refreshed and rested.

So the answer to my burning question? It does not matter when you sleep. Find the best time for you, a good 7-8 eight hour period (6 at least) where you can sleep interrupted. For me, I will continue to research more about sleep and get consistent interrupted sleep (day or night). Sweet dreams to all of you!