(Continuation of the post of yesterday.) Okay so what have I said so far? Great, I have not said much of anything yet and know where I left off. Mostly...


I started with a simple question. How much sleep does a person really need? At first it was 6.5 to 7.5 hours, anything over 8 is oversleeping and will feel bad, as well as cause a person to die younger. Then I looked at  some charts laid out for different age group sleeping requirements, most seemed to show that as time went on you just needed less and less sleep. "Cool", I thought,  " but how much do I need?". For someone about my age some said I needed just a little over eight hours of sleep. Upon further reading, my research got past the quick fact or tip someone is likely to find in their spare time versus wanting to really understand. It seems that many factors play into how much sleep you need. Many, many factors. There is no "magic number". Based off of this information, there are at least two options you may choose from.

• Get a sleep test
• Listen to your body a bit

The average cost of a sleep test is about $1000 to $5000. There has to be a better (as defined as less expensive) way! Before big machines that beeped and flashed, people got a good night's rest. They must have took a clue, and listened to their body. For instance one thing I read that gave me a pronounced "A-Ha!" was that your body knows about when the right amount of sleep is reached. Sometimes we push this and go back to sleep, sometimes we limit this and force ourselves up with an alarm clock or otherwise, but it knows. It tells us about it, too. Either way, have you ever had all the right elements line up so that you just woke up and just about jumped out of bed? I have, that looks like a good place to be.

How do we "take a hint?" One tip I read suggested a pretty easy approach: go to bed about 15 minutes earlier each night until you find yourselves waking up before your alarm feeling okay. This will probably work better once you've caught up on most of your sleep to eliminate that variable, but good idea. It seems to reason that our bodies will wake up up at 3am if we planned our sleeping schedule accordingly. This is great because once you find that general area, stick with it for a week or so and let everything balance out while you feel better and well rested. This is also great because you get to beat that annoying alarm clock.


(That's it for today, keep it periodical, the extra effort is generally worth the reward.)