Sleep Doesn't Work the Way Most People Think It Does

When you sleep, your body runs a maintenance cycle - clearing waste from the brain, repairing tissue, rebalancing hormones, boosting the immune system, and consolidating memory. Break the cycle and the work stalls, pushed forward into tomorrow. Seven hours of broken sleep leaves a different imprint than seven hours of deep rest. The body keeps score.

Most people measure sleep by duration. Completion matters more. When repair work is left unfinished, backlog builds. Eight hours can pass, yet exhaustion greets you in the morning.

When it comes to sleep, quality often takes precedence over quantity (duration) because hours in bed don't guarantee rejuvenating and regenerative rest. Quality sleep means being restorative, consolidated, and efficient across all sleep stages (lightest, light, deep, REM) within an adequate duration (7-9 hours for most adults), making uninterrupted, deep sleep more valuable than just more time spent in bed.

Why completion (quality sleep) matters more:

• Restoration: Quality sleep involves cycling through all sleep stages, crucial for physical and mental restoration, learning, and memory.

• Efficiency: 7 hours of great sleep is better than 10 hours of fragmented, poor-quality sleep, which won't leave you feeling energized. Broken sleep can negatively impact physical and mental health in both the short term (irritability, poor focus, increased stress) and long term (heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cognitive decline).

• Health Indicators: Studies suggest sleep quality is a stronger indicator of health, wellbeing, and daytime functioning than just duration alone.

The bottom line: focus on achieving restful, continuous sleep (quality), aiming for the 7-9 hour range (quantity), as both are fundamental for true sleep health.