7.5 Good Sleep Versus Poor Sleep

Expert Perspective: What Is Good Sleep?

Video Transcript

Paying attention to how you feel will help you identify how much sleep is best for you. If you often feel tired during waking hours, then you may not be getting enough sleep. Or, it may be that the sleep you’re getting isn’t good quality sleep; how long you sleep isn’t the only indicator of whether or not your sleep is good. Sleep quality refers to how:

• deeply you sleep during sleep sessions,
• rested you feel after sleep, and
• satisfied you are with your sleep overall.

Thus, the most important indicator of whether or not you’re getting good sleep—and enough of it—is how you feel and function during your awake time.

What Constitutes Poor Sleep?

It’s helpful to consider what is meant by poor sleep in order to more fully understand the concept of good sleep. In the research literature, poor sleep quality is typically defined by one or more of the following measures:

• Duration of sleep
• Sleep latency
• Sleep efficiency
• Number of awakenings throughout a sleep session

Sleep latency refers to the amount of time it takes to fall asleep. Sleep efficiency is the ratio of how much time you actually sleep to how much time you spend in bed. For example, if you are in bed for eight hours but you really only sleep for six of them, then your sleep efficiency is 75%—six divided by eight.

In addition to these objective measures, studies typically include self-reported ratings of subjective indicators such as depth of sleep, how well rested one feels upon waking, and general satisfaction with sleep.