The Science Behind a Perfect Night’s Sleep [Infographic]

No matter what stage of life you are in or what your day-to-day activities are, getting a good night’s sleep is important for overall well-being. Consistently having too few hours of sleep over many years has been linked to both mild and serious health conditions.

Even having just a few nights of poor sleep can affect your memory, make you feel hungrier throughout the day, cause headaches and generally give you that brain fog feeling.

However, it is often only when our sleep pattern becomes disrupted that we realise just how important a good night’s sleep is. Getting a consistent amount of sleep every night is a challenge at the best of times, thankfully scientists have been concerned with sleep research for many years and the tips offered in the below infographic are based on years of research aimed at improving sleep quality.

But before we even consider how to get a good night’s sleep, it’s important to understand what a good night’s sleep is. The National Sleep Foundation recently explained exactly what a typical good night’s sleep is for an adult, with these four factors:

1. You take half an hour or less to fall asleep.
2. You wake up no more than once per night.
3. If you do wake up in the middle of the night, you fall back asleep within 20 minutes.
4. You’re asleep for at least 85% of the time you spend in bed.

If you are regularly meeting all four of these factors then, in general, you don’t have any problems with sleep. However, if you or your family are regularly failing to meet one of the factors then it is likely your sleep pattern has room for improvement.
For more information about the science behind a perfect night’s sleep check out the following infographic created by De Vere Hotels: