Experts agree that “the quality of rest depends on whether you go to bed at the time when your body is ready to sleep”

When you read the question “what time should you go to bed?” He usually waits for a number, a specific time, a recurring pattern to do as the day ends. Bad news. What research has discovered is that the ‘perfect time’ for going to bed is with parents.

That is, genetics (chronotype) and a handful of other things.

That’s why it’s time to see what the experts say.

The time to go to sleep. These days, there are some statements from dr. Celia García Maloneurologist specializing in Sleep Medicine and co-director of the Madrid Clinic CISNe in which she explains that the quality of rest does not depend only on the number of hours. On the contrary, it often depends on sleeping at a time when the body is biologically ready for it.

This is interesting because it shows a paradigm shift in global sleep science.

That moment matters, yes (but not that much). In 2021, Nikbakhtian and his team reviewed sleep routines of more than 100,000 adults. The interesting thing about this study is that they did not use self-reported responses, but rather what a week of wrist accelerometer data said. Their conclusions were clear: going to bed between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. was associated with a lower cardiovascular incidence.

It was bad news for Spain, the European country that takes the longest to go to bed. However, the details are important: it was not a question of ‘the earlier you go to bed the better’ (because going to bed before 10pm was also a problem); It was about finding the appropriate moment for each society, country or culture.

And that’s where the surprises begin. Because what we are discovering is that regularity is the key. In this case, the Windred team reviewed data from six years of life of about 60,000 people. Their conclusions were that the most regular quartiles showed between 20% and 48% less mortality from all causes compared to the most irregular ones.

This is because, we now believe, genetic variants are associated more with schedule than with duration and quality of the dream. The researchers’ thesis is that when we find a stable time to go to bed, the rest of the pieces begin to organize themselves.

What does all this mean? For us mortals who just want to sleep, there are a handful of consequences:

• There is no magic hour. What we have to do is look for a stable window: if we find a time to go to bed, the rest of the system tends to adapt.
• However, chronotypes exist. It’s a good idea to find out which one is ours and “negotiate with it.”
• Take care of your dream. Although we sometimes insist on sleeping at a certain time, we often forget that sleep hygiene (and, above all, light) is one of the most important things to sleep well.

Image | Annie Spratt

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