The best-tested treatments for sleep problems tend to be very data-focused: what time you go to bed, number and length of naps, how long it takes you to fall asleep, number of times you awake in the night, and so forth. But one less familiar number is especially important: sleep efficiency.

Sleep efficiency is the percentage of time you're in bed that you're actually asleep. For example, if you were in bed for 10 hours and slept for seven hours, your sleep efficiency would be 70%.

You can calculate it by determining how long you were in bed and subtracting:

In our earlier example, you might have taken an hour to fall asleep, been awake for an hour in the night, and laid awake in bed for an hour in the morning.

A high sleep efficiency impacts your nightly sleep in many important ways.

If you're having serious and persistent problems with sleep, don't hesitate to seek therapy with a sleep expert. The best-tested treatment is called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I).

References

Muench, A., Vargas, I., Grandner, M. A., Ellis, J. G., Posner, D., Bastien, C. H., ... & Perlis, M. L. (2022). We know CBT-I works, now what?. Faculty Reviews, 11.

Reed, D. L., & Sacco, W. P. (2016). Measuring sleep efficiency: What should the denominator be?. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 12, 263-266.

QOSHE - 7 Ways Better Sleep Efficiency Can Fix Your Broken Sleep - Seth J. Gillihan Phd
menu_open
Columnists Actual . Favourites . Archive
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close
Aa Aa Aa
- A +

7 Ways Better Sleep Efficiency Can Fix Your Broken Sleep

28 0
25.03.2024

The best-tested treatments for sleep problems tend to be very data-focused: what time you go to bed, number and length of naps, how long it takes you to fall asleep, number of times you awake in the night, and so forth. But one less familiar number is especially important: sleep efficiency.

Sleep efficiency is the percentage of time you're in........

© Psychology Today


Get it on Google Play