[Alison]

I was surprised to read on this forum about how many of you also experience light sleep. For me it’s one of the more annoying and strange variations of insomnia. I literally feel half awake all night with thoughts running through my mind and then I’m exhausted in the morning.  It has become that when a night starts out this way, the light sleep will remain all night.

These are my questions:

When I record my sleep efficiency in the morning, how do I measure this kind of sleep? For example, one night I “slept” through much of my SW and calculated 86% sleep efficiency, but I don’t feel it counts as 86% because the quality of sleep was awful. It doesn’t seem accurate to calculate it the same way that a deeper sleep is calculated. Any thoughts?

I would love to hear how others do to combat light sleep? I feel like the only way to fight it is if I get up immediately when I notice it (and try go back to bed when I’m good and sleepy), refusing to allow that kind sleep. I don’t always do this though. Not sure if I should just accept it as sleep or refuse it until I fall into a deeper sleep.  Would love to hear how others deal with this!

[suren]

Hi Alison,

This is also the crux of my insomnia anguish, as even on the nights that I’ve had some sleep relief, the quality of my sleep is so poor (what I refer to as superficial sleep) that I wake up super exhausted as well.

Like you, I also do not count this superficial sleep as sleep, as it’s not deep and restorative in nature. Plus, it’s important to not just improve the efficiency but the quality of our sleep as well.

I feel the best way to combat it is to go to bed when sleepy and not tired, but this is often easier said than done. In my case, I rarely (if ever) experience night time sleepiness, so does that mean that I never go into bed??? Consequentially, I often get into bed when not sleepy knowing that I’ll likely have superficial sleep as a result.

I also believe that getting out of bed when you’re experiencing this kind of superficial sleep is best. But, I’m also curious to hear if others have had any success in remedying this?

Natasha

[Martin Reed]

Hello Alison and thanks for the good questions!

We don’t typically record the kind of sleep we get on a sleep diary since this is not constructive because we have no control over sleep stages. Sleep is an autonomous process and the body decides how much time we spend in each sleep stage. If we try to control this, the end result is worse sleep.

What I can tell you is that when we have a bad night, the body compensates by prioritizing deep sleep so although you feel as though you are getting a lot of light sleep, you are far more likely than not to be getting enough deep sleep.

By consolidating sleep (and improving sleep efficiency) we typically see better overall sleep quality over time. Observing a regular (and appropriate) sleep window also helps build sleep drive and this can also help to increase sleep quality.

I hope this helps.

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