The folks over at Sleep​ Cycle put together a graph that records what an optimal night of sleep looks like. It starts with the subject being awake, before that line representing wakefulness drops precipitously below the line of Sleep and into the cavernous depths of Deep Sleep. From there, the chart fluctuates fluidly, revealing an up and down pattern in which subjects rise comfortably out of deep sleep into lighter sleep and back down again. Unfortunately, many peoples' sleep charts don't look anything like this. Instead of looking like softly rolling hills, there are many people out there whose nightly sleep looks more like the Andes mountains, with tremulous moments of deep sleep jutting into wakefulness before slipping into restless sleep, and that whole process repeating itself throughout the night in mountainous arcs.
While much of sleep remains something of an intangibility – why, for instance, do you still dream about being late to class 20 years after graduating college? – the consequences of not getting it are decidedly less mysterious. Without a good night's rest, your productivity at the office will suffer. More significantly, your long-term health will be impacted as well, with a YourLocalSecurity infographic pointing out that people who average between 0 and 5 hours of sleep a night are at a 45 percent higher risk for heart attacks, among other health scares.
As far as getting the best sleep possible goes, you've likely heard a lot of solutions – things like "Don't drink coffee after work" (definitely true) and "Go to bed earlier" (myth). But one thing that's most certainly overlooked is the position of your body during sleep. That's right – how you set your body for repose largely determines the quality of sleep you get. A Wall Street Journal infographic illustrates the best bodily arrangements possible to ensure optimal sleep:
- The neck: Give the neck all the support you can. Just don't go overboard, since excessive elevation of the neck via multiple pillows can put you in a bad position too. The best thing to consider with regard to neck placement is that it should be neutral in relation to the rest of your body.
- Shoulders: If you're experiencing shoulder pain on a particular side of your body, don't sleep on that side. This should seem like pretty intuitive advice, but you'd be surprised how many people don't heed it. If you think both shoulders are weak or susceptible to injury, take the strain off both of them by sleeping on your back.
- Back: Particularly for those working desk jobs, the back can quickly become the epicenter of all your bodily problems. Over time, the prolonged sitting and slumped posture that a computer-bound job causes will take their toll both on your stabilizer muscles and the deep muscles of your back. But some of these problems can be reversed while you sleep, as long as you're in the right position. To do that, avoid sleeping on your stomach, since this will only encourage the kind of hyperextending of the back that leads to problems. Instead, sleep either on your side with a pillow between your legs or on your back with that same pillow covering your low back.
- Feet: Your feet are two parts of your body that get worked ceaselessly, so don't make them do more work when you're sleeping. By placing your feet in a relaxed position and having similarly relaxed covers, you can avoid the inflammation that occurs when covers are too tight and therefore rubbing up against the feet.
Now that you have these tips, you may as well implement them immediately. Or, you know, you could sleep on it.
