Picture the scene; you arrive home, bedraggled and haunted by a long, exhausting day’s work. Your gym class was arduous. Your commute was delayed. Your dinner is yet to be cooked.
A single consolation glimmers through the banal fog of pain; “at least I’ll sleep well tonight,” you tell yourself.
Falling asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow has long been hailed as the ideal sleeping sitch, and seen as a sign that you’ve toiled hard enough to earn the supposedly perfect night’s kip.
But recently, NPR revealed that regularly conking out as soon as your back hits the mattress could be a sign of bigger problems.
What?
Yep ― you really can fall asleep too quickly, Rebecca Robbins, sleep scientist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said.
“It’s a myth that a good sleeper would be able to hit the pillow and fall asleep right away,” the expert told NPR, “because sleep is a process.“
It should actually take about 15-20 minutes to fall asleep, she shared. And if you take much less time than that, it could be a sign you’ve overworked yourself or are otherwise in a constant state of exhaustion.
This is especially true if you find yourself falling asleep anywhere and everywhere, including in uncomfortable places like on the train or at your desk.
“If you were starved for food and sat down at any opportunity to eat a huge meal and ate voraciously, that would probably be a sign you’re not getting enough nutrition,” she pointed out.
“It’s the same thing with sleep.”
So, if you’re one of those people who ‘can sleep anywhere, anytime,’ you might want to make sure you’re getting enough sleep at night (a minimum of seven hours, Robbins says).
And if, like me, you find yourself trudging rather than falling asleep, you can at least be comforted ― provided it doesn’t take too long to nod off, you’re probably resting well.