I hit 90 last night! But I don’t know why.
Okay, lemme explain.
Six or seven years ago I got a Fitbit for Christmas. Not one of the fancy ones–mostly what I wanted was a wearable pedometer. But by the time I adopted the technology, my Fitbit would tell me all sorts of things about my heart rate, my exercise level, my oxygenation, and yes, my sleep. And I got the Fitbit at about the same time that I began to look at the correlation between sleep and brain health, especially in later life. And six years ago, my sleep scores were… not stellar. Fitbit grades on a 1-100 scale, based on time spent awake and asleep, time spent in each sleep stage (light, deep, REM and awake… which I would not have thought was a sleep stage, but there you go), movement during sleep, and sleeping heart rate. I don’t think I’ve ever gone below 60; the 70s are “fair,” and the 80s are “good.”
If families have mythologies of their own (they do) one of the roles I played, and was weirdly proud of, was “the last person to turn out her light.” This probably grew out of my childhood difficulty in going to sleep–once I was broken of thumb-sucking, anyway. Most nights I would crawl out of bed and sit in the window of my bedroom to read by the streetlight–until my mother discovered that I was ruining my eyes this way. At that point she said “Okay, read until you’re tired, then turn out your own (subvocalized) **damn** light.” From that point on, I usually read until midnight, even as late as 2am. Given that I had to be up at 7 or for to school, I don’t know how I survived. But I did. In fact, throughout most of my adult life I got by on 5-6 hours of sleep a night (with occasional weekend sleep orgies of 10 hours… and that ended when I had kids who wanted my attention regardless of what I wanted).
This, I now know, is not healthy. So for the last six years I have been working on a conversion of manners: I now go to bed around 10pm most nights, read for a while, and (if all goes well) am asleep by 11. Over those last six years I have trained myself to fall asleep faster–breathing techniques, lavender pillows, temperature checks, light-blocking curtains, no screens before bed, reading soporific material–you name it, I’ve tried it. I have worked out a system of sorts, and I am pleased to say that my sleep scores are now almost always in the 80s. Sometimes even in the upper 80s.
But last night I hit 90. Excellent.
I feel like I should get an award. If I could figure out what I did last night to attain excellence I would do it every night. So I checked the statistics.
Last night slept for 7 hours and 13 minutes. I was awake for a total of 31 minutes in tiny increments. I had an hour and 51 minutes of REM sleep. I totaled 4 hours and 22 minutes of light sleep, and 59 minutes of deep sleep. My oxygen variation was low, and my sleeping heart rate was 59. Fitbit only detected movement during 2% of my sleep. That accounts for a 90.
A week or so ago, I slept for 7 hours and 14 minutes. I was awake for 17 minutes, clocked an hour and 27 minutes of REM sleep, 5 hours and 3 minutes of light sleep, and 44 minutes of deep sleep. My oxygen variation was low, but my sleeping heart rate was 69! And I was restless about 5% of the night. My score for that not-terribly-different night? 83.
So what do I learn from all this? A lot of the things that affect my sleep I cannot directly influence. How often I’m awake seems to be a function of whether I’m comfortable, and while I strive to be, obviously in the middle of the night sometimes I’m not. Maybe I’m thinking too much. I cannot, as far as I know, control the quantity of REM sleep I get. Or my sleeping heart rate. Dammit, there are too many variables.
I will note that yesterday we went to see a screening of the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along (it’s terrific) and I know that the music inserted itself into my dreams. Maybe the secret to upping my sleep score is musical theatre?
Stranger things have happened.
As someone who spent most of my life resisting going to bed, and not a small number of years getting up in time to make 7 am class at the Aikido dojo about four times a week, I am glad to learn that I was not alone in that bad habit and also not alone in trying to make up for it. These days I try not to stay up late for no reason and I also refuse to get up until I have had enough sleep — which is at least 8 hours. I haven’t used the fitbit for it, since my last fitbit bit the dust and I found I could no longer get a relatively simple one that would measure steps and tell me the time (I have a pedometer on my phone that works pretty well), but I’m pretty sure just the refusal to get up until I’ve had enough sleep is an improvement.
I have discovered that doing enough to exhaust myself is a good way to get to sleep, and it does seem to be a little easier to get that tired as I get older. But there are still nights when I stay up because I am just not sleepy.
“These days I try not to stay up late for no reason ”
Well, in my case, “try not to stay up late for no reason except I don’t -wanna- go to bed.” It’s astonishing how hard that bit of childhood rebellion has been to quell. I will say that I am now at a point when I try going to bed even when I think I’m not sleepy, and I read a bit, then turn out the light thinking, “Yeah, not tonight.” And then I’m asleep.
But there are still the occasional night when it doesn’t matter what I do. I have to turn on the light and read for an hour because my brain just isn’t there yet.
Yeah, it was always just staying up for no reason. I mean, I discovered Doctor Who because of it — the PBS station in DC put it on late at night. But it is still a ridiculous habit.
I have discovered three barriers to sleep. Sometimes I just can’t go to sleep. Those are when I need to get up to read. And then there are the nights when I can’t get comfortable, when something hurts no matter what position I get in. Those nights I just suffer, usually. Third is waking up at 3 am (3 am is the canonical hour for this) stressed and worried. I do not get up for this, because I am absolutely unwilling to face those problems at 3 am and anyway they usually can’t be dealt with then even on the West Coast where 3 am is morning is time to get up in some locations.
But all those are different from I don’t wanna. I think for many years I resented sleep as a waste of time. I have now learned to cherish it. Perhaps that’s part of recognizing that I’m a creature with a body that needs direct attention — food and movement and sleep — in addition to all the wonderful ideas to pursue in the world.