Restful Sleep

Neil was a Taiwanese I had lunch with in Hsingchu last Wednesday. He has a philosophy that sleeping is time wasted. So he sleeps 4 hours a day. My eldest, B1 had the same thinking when he was young, from toddler to primary school. Sometimes B1 falls asleep in the afternoon. The moment he wakes up, he would check with me or Mummy how long has he slept. Then the immediate reaction is he wasted that amount of time. So he will stay up as late as possible perpetuating another nap cycle the next day.

Whereas for me, I need my eight to nine hours of beauty sleep. I sold sleep studies equipment before. Besides the length of time sleeping, it must be restful i.e. oxygen must be able to get into your body. Oxygen saturation of blood should not reach below 90%. Sleep apnea is when you stop breathing while sleeping. This is a very common problem. While you are concious, no matter how long you hold your breath, you will be desperate for air if your oxygen saturation go below 95%. I tried this experiment myself. However, when we are asleep, oxygen saturation level with reach 89 to 91% before the body stirred and then take a deep breath. You will not know this. Hence if you wake up feeling tired, it is usually due to poor oxygenation of your body when you sleep.

How do I know all these? I did sleep study on myself to learn about the equipment I sell. I was a little concern that I have a few hundred episodes of sleep apnea at night. The doctor who specialises in sleep studies told me not to worry. He is only concern with patients with more than thousand episodes. My several hundred episode is "normal".

For Neil who sleep very little, he must have lots more awake time to do the things he like to do.