There was an interesting article in the New Yorker last month that covered the field of sleep research. The takeaway was that it remains a mystery. The writer at one point underwent sleep testing where he was wired up for a night sleep and all his patterns were analyzed. Reading it, I thought to myself that I would love to spend a night in one of those facilities.
Thanks to my new exercise toy I don’t have to leave the house to get a reading on how I sleep. Wearing the Fitbit One Sleep Tracker on your wrist and turning it on right before bed will produce a graph like the one in the picture on the left. That was my first night sleep and it scared the bejesus out of me.
According to the graph I slept precious little. In bed for 6 hours and 19 minutes, I only slept for 3 hours and 53 minutes. That can’t be good. It took me 21 minutes to fall asleep and if I remember the article correctly the writer fell asleep in 2 minutes. I woke up seven times but it is crazy for me to look at the chart and see that I was basically awake from 2:45-3:50 with five minutes of sleep in between.
Maybe I am being dramatic but I find these results to be intense. It isn’t that I walk through the day like a zombie—I tend to have pretty good energy, but less than four hours of sleep a night can’t be good.
There is one caveat that I am hoping will save me. I am just finishing the first week of a month long cleanse and I am hoping that maybe the detoxification is messing with my sleep. I am very curious to find out over the next couple of weeks.