Now We Know The Secret Of People Who Sleep Less But Stay Healthy

A recent study suggests that individual perception of sleep quality holds a higher significance to personal well-being than what is indicated by sleep-monitoring devices, according to research spearheaded by the University of Warwick.

The study engaged more than 100 individuals between 18 and 22 years of age over a fortnight, requesting them to maintain a nightly sleep journal. This covered their bedtime, the time they prepared for sleep, the duration taken to fall asleep, their waking time, when they left the bed, and their overall satisfaction with their sleep.

Throughout the day, the study asked the participants five times to gauge their positive and negative feelings and their contentment with life. Participants also wore a wrist actigraph throughout the study to provide an estimated measurement of their sleep patterns and resting cycles.

The research team then compared the data collected from the actigraph with the participants’ perceptions of their sleep and feelings during the subsequent day. The aim was to understand how variations from usual sleep patterns and quality correlated with mood and satisfaction with life on the following day.

Dr. Anita Lenneis, the primary author of the study from the University of Warwick’s Psychology Department, said, the revealed: “how young people evaluated their own sleep was consistently linked with how they felt about their well-being and life satisfaction..”

She added, “For example, when participants reported that they slept better than they normally did, they experienced more positive emotions and had a higher sense of life satisfaction the following day. However, the actigraphy-derived measure of sleep quality which is called sleep efficiency was not associated with next day’s well-being at all.”

This indicates a disparity between sleep quality measured by actigraphy and personal perception of sleep quality in their relation to an individual’s well-being appraisal.

Professor Anu Realo, also from the Psychology Department at the University of Warwick, stated, the findings of the study “are consistent with our previous research that identified people’s self-reported health, and not their actual health conditions, as the main factor associated with their subjective well-being and especially with life satisfaction.”

The study, published in the journal APA’s Emotion, posits that a positive perception of your sleep could lead to an improved mood the next day.

Dr. Lenneis noted that “Even though a sleep tracking device might say that you slept poorly last night, your own perception of your sleep quality may be quite positive. And if you think that you slept well, it may help better your mood the next day.”

Conversely, if the sleep tracker indicates good sleep but your personal experience disagrees, this discrepancy could lead you to reassess the quality of your sleep.

The sleep tracker provides data about your sleep, typically inaccessible during sleep itself, which might improve your perception of the previous night’s sleep, subsequently improving your overall well-being the next day.

Image Credit: Shutterstock