Sleep quality and sleep comfort - how is it related?
All you need is a smartwatch or an app, in order to receive valuable insight into your own sleep pattern. Here we´ll tell you why you should care about your sleep, how to understand the sleep apps and what to do with the results you get. We have asked Jensen Beds´ own sleep expert and naprapath, Truls Hotvedt.
«When you check your sleep monitor app, you might discover that you have been awake more than 10 times. That´s totally normal. Usually, you don´t remember these periods of being awake, because it is irrelevant information for the brain to store”, Truls Hotvedt explains. He is the specialist within anatomy and sleep comfort at Jensen Beds.
There are many reasons why you wake up during the night. Your bedroom might be too warm or too cold, have the wrong humidity, snoring, medications, alcohol, nicotine, sleep apnea, urination and last but not least you might sleep in a bed not suitable for your body and needs.
«If you sleep in a bed that is too hard, your brain will signal a need to get out of the deep sleep, in order to move your body and change an uncomfortable position. For example positional paresthesia, where your arm falls asleep because you´re putting pressure on it, and you wake up because it´s unpleasant.”
A consequence of not lying comfortably during the entire night, is that you might not get enough time in the various phases of sleep, and you wake up feeling tired.
You sleep in cycles
The sleep process is cyclical, several times during the night. When you go to bed, the body starts a process of two various types of sleep. REM and NON-REM (NREM). REM is an abbreviation for Rapid Eye Movement and describes the classic, rapid eye movements in this phase. When you are in the REM sleep phase, you dream the most. When you are in the NREM phase you shift between the two phases in each cycle.
In a sleep cycle it´s usual to move from light sleep to deep sleep, back to light sleep and then to REM-sleep. This is repeated throughout the night, with slight variations in sleep patterns. A sleep cycle starts from you fall asleep, and lasts till the end of a REM-phase. During the first half of your sleep, the deep phase is prioritized, and when morning is approaching the time lapses between REM sleep phases become longer.
How well do I sleep?
Your body is supposed to go through all the sleep phases. It is simply not possible to stay in deep sleep 4 hours in a row, because your body needs both light and REM sleep to carry through biological processes in body and brain during the night. For a normal, grownup person the sleep phases are distributed like this:
REM: approx. 20-25%
Light sleep: approx. 50%
Deep sleep: approx. 20-25%
Awake: As little as possible
«It is as mentioned totally normal to be awake several times a night, but if you feel tired with a lack of energy over time, you should probably see your doctor.»
Sleep quality with Jensen – «It’s not just sleep. It’s Jensen sleep»
«When we develop a bed, we bring extensive experience and knowledge into the process, both about anatomy and how the surface facilitates undisturbed sleep», says Truls Hotvedt.
Jensen´s Zone System is included in all Jensen beds, being important for sleep comfort, since it gives your body the best support and relief all night. Then your brain doesn´t have any need to wake you up because of an unpleasant position or too hard mattress, and your sleep quality gets better. You will discover that your sleep is quiet and calm, which in the end improves your ability to rest.
«When we develop our mattress toppers, we really go into depths to find which materials give the best possible pressure relief, simultaneously providing the best “climate”. We know that an optimal temperature is vital for deep sleep», says Truls Hotvedt.
You can rely on materials and fabrics used in all Jensen beds being sustainable and as a result of the latest innovation, developed to assist your body transporting heat and humidity and creating an optimal temperature.
«In a bed without these technical abilities, you might experience to wake up several times, because your body becomes too warm or too cold», Truls says.
If it is difficult to maintain a regular body temperature, you might consider a Jensen Tempsmart mattress topper. This innovative textile technology adapts to your skin temperature by absorbing, storing and releasing redundant heat.
Behind the process of developing a Jensen bed is an entire team of experts. The team is continuously updated on everything concerned with anatomy and sleep research, and apply this in all phases of the development of products.
That´s why you get what you deserve when you buy a Jensen bed – quality sleep!