When is the best time to go to bed: expert advice

As you know, peo­ple are divid­ed into “larks” and “owls”, which lie down and wake up at dif­fer­ent times. “Larks” are awake dur­ing the day, and the activ­i­ty of “owls” begins with the advent of dark­ness. Sci­en­tists believe that this depends on the inter­nal cir­ca­di­an rhythm deter­mined by the cir­ca­di­an clock. But when is the best time to go to bed?

What do the experts say?

In their recent study, pub­lished in the jour­nal Bio­chem­i­cal Phar­ma­col­o­gy, sci­en­tists found that sleep time is con­trolled by a sub­tle inter­play of cir­ca­di­an and home­o­sta­t­ic oscil­la­tors, which, in accor­dance with their endoge­nous prop­er­ties, allow peo­ple to spon­ta­neous­ly feel that it is time to go to bed or wake up with the earth cycle. i.e. sun­rise. How­ev­er, noc­tur­nal arti­fi­cial light changed bed­time.

Mod­ern peo­ple no longer take into account the time of sun­set and dawn in their dai­ly activ­i­ties, which has led to a large indi­vid­ual vari­abil­i­ty in sleep time. Depend­ing on the con­straints and demands placed on us by work, domes­tic and dai­ly activ­i­ties, our sleep time may not coin­cide with the inter­nal cir­ca­di­an rhythm deter­mined by the cir­ca­di­an clock. In this case, the per­son begins to suf­fer from a cir­ca­di­an rhythm dis­or­der, a chron­ic sleep deficit asso­ci­at­ed with late going to bed or ear­ly awak­en­ing.

All this leads to a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in cog­ni­tive func­tions — vig­i­lance, atten­tion, mem­o­ry. Sci­en­tists believe that this can be cor­rect­ed by reduc­ing expo­sure to evening light, but again, many peo­ple are used to falling asleep to the TV or read­ing an e‑book before bed. Mean­while, sci­en­tists, whose pub­li­ca­tion was pub­lished in the jour­nal Clocks & Sleep, con­sid­er it a bad habit to go to bed with your phone, because it has a dev­as­tat­ing effect on cir­ca­di­an rhythms and sleep qual­i­ty.

When to go to bed?

When is the best time to sleep? Pro­fes­sor and TV pre­sen­ter Ele­na Maly­she­va in one of her pro­grams rec­om­mend­ed going to bed at 22.00. That is, at this time the long-await­ed dream should already come, which means you need to add half an hour here to fall asleep. Thus, a per­son should go to bed at 21.30, turn­ing off the lights, turn­ing off the TV and all elec­tron­ic gad­gets. This is ide­al, and here’s why. The fact is that all the main recov­ery process­es occur in the body from 10 pm until mid­night. It is at this time that the accu­mu­la­tion of nec­es­sary sub­stances, the syn­the­sis of amino acids and hor­mones, tis­sue regen­er­a­tion, etc.

Accord­ing to the pro­fes­sor, it is sim­ply impos­si­ble to replace this time with anoth­er, that is, to “get” the miss­ing hours in the morn­ing, dur­ing lunchtime, and at anoth­er time suit­able for rest. And on week­ends, you won’t be able to sleep for the whole week either, because sleep is not some­thing that you can recharge for the future. How much sleep do you need? Of course, every­one has their own needs for a night’s rest. For some, even 10–12 hours for a com­plete recov­ery is not enough, but for some, 3–4 is enough, like the famous French com­man­der Napoleon.

But most peo­ple need 8 hours of good sleep, and unin­ter­rupt­ed sleep, for a “qual­i­ty recharge”. That is, ide­al­ly, a per­son should put his head on the pil­low in the evening and open his eyes in the morn­ing on an alarm clock or when he wakes up on his own. There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to try to accus­tom your­self to go to bed at the same time, mak­ing sure that the total dura­tion of sleep is not less than 7–8 hours.