Things I have learned about my sleep so far
1. Even small amounts of pain that I would normally ignore are disruptive to sleep. Anything I can do to make myself more comfortable is useful for increasing my sleep efficiency, even if the pain itself doesn't really bother me.
2. I am extremely sensitive to cold. If I am very cold, I will wake up numerous times throughout the night and sleep miserably. I've noticed this before. However, if I am sort of cold, I will not wake up repeatedly, but my percentage of deep sleep will significantly decrease. So, even being a little bit too cold is fairly harmful to me and important to correct for. (I suspect that overheating is also going to be an issue, but I have gathered less data on this, because I've had more data points with cold being an issue than heat. I expect this to change with the seasons.)
3. Sleeping on my back, while hard for me to do, decreases the number of times that I wake up during the night, often significantly. This likely relates to point 1, as it also decreases the odds of one of my limbs getting into an uncomfortable position and/or "falling asleep".
4. Having a migraine and/or my period (currently the two things always happen at the same time and are essentially one factor, so I can't figure out which part is the problem or if it's the combo that is) seriously prevents me from getting an appropriate length of sleep. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about this right now though.
5. A lot of what I thought of as "oversleeping" was really just me sleeping enough to get a reasonable amount of deep sleep or very slightly more than is typical for my age. I probably was not oversleeping so much as compensating for not being able to get enough sleep in an efficient manner. Possibly there was a small amount of oversleeping sometimes, either as actual sleep dep catch-up in the short term (due to bad nights) or a certain amount of variable increased need.
6. I haven't had enough data points to confirm this yet, but I had some interesting data pointing to increased sleep percentage of deep sleep if I went to bed extremely late (after 4AM). I don't feel great if I do this, so it's probably not the way to go, but I slept for less time and yet got enough deep sleep. It makes me wonder if I may have delayed sleep phase syndrome, since my sleep efficiency increased by going to bed much later. But the sample size is small. I may also want to experiment with things like melatonin and see what that does to my sleep.
I also learned obvious things like waking up because you're sick and then staying up because you're sick and feel miserable is bad for your sleep. Well, by learned I mean got the data on. I kind of knew that already. Also having other people/cat wake me up disrupts my sleep - go figure. Also having the cat wake me up often enough starts to make me wake up at the same time on days when the cat doesn't wake me, which isn't surprising.
Anyhow, I will probably need to take more steps to adjust for temperature than I used to. It seems to be more important than I realized. This is good to know. There is an extent to which it cannot be changed, but there is an extent to which there are things that can be done. Cold was certainly helpable. So, paying a little more attention to having adequate blankets on the bed before I go to sleep is now happening, and it is being of some help. It's not going to be a miracle cure or anything, but it should be a beneficial thing to do.
2. I am extremely sensitive to cold. If I am very cold, I will wake up numerous times throughout the night and sleep miserably. I've noticed this before. However, if I am sort of cold, I will not wake up repeatedly, but my percentage of deep sleep will significantly decrease. So, even being a little bit too cold is fairly harmful to me and important to correct for. (I suspect that overheating is also going to be an issue, but I have gathered less data on this, because I've had more data points with cold being an issue than heat. I expect this to change with the seasons.)
3. Sleeping on my back, while hard for me to do, decreases the number of times that I wake up during the night, often significantly. This likely relates to point 1, as it also decreases the odds of one of my limbs getting into an uncomfortable position and/or "falling asleep".
4. Having a migraine and/or my period (currently the two things always happen at the same time and are essentially one factor, so I can't figure out which part is the problem or if it's the combo that is) seriously prevents me from getting an appropriate length of sleep. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about this right now though.
5. A lot of what I thought of as "oversleeping" was really just me sleeping enough to get a reasonable amount of deep sleep or very slightly more than is typical for my age. I probably was not oversleeping so much as compensating for not being able to get enough sleep in an efficient manner. Possibly there was a small amount of oversleeping sometimes, either as actual sleep dep catch-up in the short term (due to bad nights) or a certain amount of variable increased need.
6. I haven't had enough data points to confirm this yet, but I had some interesting data pointing to increased sleep percentage of deep sleep if I went to bed extremely late (after 4AM). I don't feel great if I do this, so it's probably not the way to go, but I slept for less time and yet got enough deep sleep. It makes me wonder if I may have delayed sleep phase syndrome, since my sleep efficiency increased by going to bed much later. But the sample size is small. I may also want to experiment with things like melatonin and see what that does to my sleep.
I also learned obvious things like waking up because you're sick and then staying up because you're sick and feel miserable is bad for your sleep. Well, by learned I mean got the data on. I kind of knew that already. Also having other people/cat wake me up disrupts my sleep - go figure. Also having the cat wake me up often enough starts to make me wake up at the same time on days when the cat doesn't wake me, which isn't surprising.
Anyhow, I will probably need to take more steps to adjust for temperature than I used to. It seems to be more important than I realized. This is good to know. There is an extent to which it cannot be changed, but there is an extent to which there are things that can be done. Cold was certainly helpable. So, paying a little more attention to having adequate blankets on the bed before I go to sleep is now happening, and it is being of some help. It's not going to be a miracle cure or anything, but it should be a beneficial thing to do.