When it comes to bedtime, he says there's a window of several hours—roughly between 8 PM and 12 AM—during which your brain and body have the opportunity to get all the non-REM and REM shuteye they need to function optimally.
Sleep is important to a number of brain functions, including how nerve cells (neurons) communicate with each other. In fact, your brain and body stay remarkably active while you sleep. Recent findings suggest that sleep plays a housekeeping role that removes toxins in your brain that build up while you are awake.
A 10pm snooze supports, rather than fights, your natural circadian rhythm. It is controlled by the interaction between the pineal gland in the brain and the levels of light in our environment. Working against that can impact hormones and biology.
"The pre-midnight sleep seems to bring about the most powerful repair to the brain and body," she says. "It sets the body into a good rhythm thereafter. In my experience, people who go to bed before midnight tend to have better daytime routines and are more likely to eat healthy and exercise regularly."
“The 90-minute phase before midnight is one of the most powerful phases of sleep, because it's the period where the body is replenished,” Dr Ramlakhan says. “It's rejuvenated on every level - physically, mentally, emotionally and, I believe, spiritually as well.
As the sun sets each day and it gets dark outside, you should ideally be winding down to go to sleep. But bingeing that TV show or scrolling through social media keeps you up past midnight instead of hitting the hay at a decent hour. A recent study suggests that going to sleep at 10 p.m. is the optimal time.
When it comes to bedtime, he says there's a window of several hours—roughly between 8 PM and 12 AM—during which your brain and body have the opportunity to get all the non-REM and REM shuteye they need to function optimally.
Take the time you plan to wake up (say, 6 a.m.) and subtract the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep (which is around 9 to 11 p.m. the night before). This is your bedtime ballpark.
Some experts say yes. For starters, getting up earlier can improve confidence, Snowden says, because it can feel like an accomplishment. And there's something to be said for not constantly feeling like you're in a rush, which only elevates stress levels and negatively impacts mental health.
Research on circadian rhythm have shown that sleeping from 10pm to 6 am gives the best results in terms of productivity and vitality. The light has a key role.
If you wake up at 6am, to get 7-9 hours of sleep you should be going to bed between 9pm and 11pm.
10pm is the perfect bedtime. Going to sleep at 10pm enables you to get the recommended 7–8 hours of sleep, and still wake up by 5 or 6am. That means you can get in at least a 30-minute workout in the morning — a common habit among the most successful and productive people — and still be at work by 8 or 9am.
Memories seem to become more stable in the brain during the deep stages of sleep. After that, REM—the most active stage of sleep—seems to play a role in linking together related memories, sometimes in unexpected ways. That's why a full night of sleep may help with problem-solving.
A study published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews found that there is a bidirectional relationship between sleep and intelligence, with better sleep promoting higher intelligence and higher intelligence promoting better sleep.
If you wake up early feeling alert, should you just get up? It depends how early it is. If it is 3am, you should do your best to get back to sleep because if you don't, you're likely to feel tired and irritable later.
Experts typically recommend that adults take naps eight or more hours before bedtime. For most people, that means napping before 3 p.m. Napping too late in the day may contribute to nighttime sleep problems. For some people, naps may feel natural or even necessary after lunchtime.
Sleep and Aging
Older adults need about the same amount of sleep as all adults—7 to 9 hours each night. But, older people tend to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier than they did when they were younger. There are many reasons why older people may not get enough sleep at night.
The Best Time to Sleep Is Between 8 p.m. and Midnight
To align our sleep schedules with our body's natural cycles (our circadian rhythms), adults should go to bed when it's dark out, after 8 p.m. We also get deeper, more restorative sleep when our sleep time begins before midnight.
How Much Sleep Is Too Much? Sleep needs can vary from person to person, but in general, experts recommend that healthy adults get an average of 7 to 9 hours per night of shuteye. If you regularly need more than 8 or 9 hours of sleep per night to feel rested, it might be a sign of an underlying problem, Polotsky says.
To promote your bed-sleep connection, follow the quarter-of-an-hour rule: if you notice that you aren't asleep within around 15 minutes of going to bed, try getting out of bed, go to another room go through your wind down routine until you are feeling sleepy-tired and ready to return to bed for sleep.
Between the times of 10:00 pm and 2:00 am the body goes through a dramatic process of physical repair. Between roughly 2:00 am and 6:00 am the body will go through a process of psychological repair. A disrupted sleep pattern will cause the Cortisol to elevate and negatively affect the regenerative process.