How do I count sleep cycles?

[Marie_Hgl]

The graph is super helpful on seeing how much light, deep and REM I am getting, however, I am completely confused when it comes to sleep cycles. I am trying to figure out when to go to bed and am getting this:

9:00 PM (6 cycles, 9h of sleep) - recommended for long-sleepers,

10:30 PM (5 cycles, 7h30m of sleep) - recommended for average-sleepers,

12:00 AM (4 cycles, 6h of sleep) - recommended for short-sleepers

But I have no idea how many cycles I get a night. Do I count the peaks? The dips? I hope someone can shed some light. Thanks!

Moderator edit: subject for clarity

[WilsonFitbit]

Hello @Marie_Hgl, welcome to the community forums! Thank you for the information! 

Your body doesn’t just hit each sleep stage once a night, nor does it spend an equal amount of time in each of them. In fact, it cycles through all of these stages multiple times a night. Each cycle lasts, on average, 90 minutes, but some cycles can be as short as 50 minutes and some can be as long as 100 minutes or more.

Cycle 1: During light sleep you’ll dip into stage one and transition into stage two. Then you’ll move quickly into deep sleep, where you’ll stay for a while before going into 10 minutes or so of REM. “It’s very hard to wake up from deep sleep, which is why your body tries to get it over with as quickly as possible. 

Cycle 2: You’ll get slightly more light sleep, still a lot of deep sleep (but less than before), and a little more REM.

Cycle 3: You’ll probably log a lot more light sleep, a little bit of deep sleep, and more REM.

After this, during the second half of the night, the cycles mostly break down as your body alternates between light sleep and REM for the rest of the night.

Let's see an example: 

On average, light sleep will take up about 50 to 60 percent or more of your night. Whether you get more or less light sleep isn’t really going to affect how you feel too much, because it’s just whatever time is left that’s not spent in deep sleep or REM. 

Deep sleep, on the other hand is likely to take up 10 to 25 percent (depending on your age) of your sleep.

REM makes up about 20 to 25 percent of your nightly sleep and mostly takes place in the second half of the night. 

I also recommend visiting this link under How do I use the sleep stages benchmark?

Hope this information can help! Let's see if other users can share their inputs too! 

[Marie_Hgl]

Yes, I understand, however I am asking how this information translates into hypnograms so that I can see how many stages I hit on average. People can vary as is shown in my original post. Can you help with that?

[WilsonFitbit]

@Marie_Hgl, thank you for your reply! 

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding! I'd like to let you know that at this time we only counts with the available options from the Fitbit App to see Sleep data or Sleep stages. There isn't actually an option that will help to translate this information into hypnograms. 

At night, your body cycles through different Sleep Stages. It usually moves from light sleep to deep sleep, back to light, then into REM, through sleep cycles very naturally. The information is then displayed as the image below. 

On a side note, note that there is also a Fitbit Premium Sleep information and it actually helps to analyze your Sleep schedule, Analysis of Deep and REM sleep stages, Analysis of Sleep duration, Analysis of sleeping heart rate and restlessness. For details, please click here. Other information that could help is also included here. 

See you around. 

[Marie_Hgl]

Thank you for your answer. Yes, I have Fitbit Premium. The sleep stages, or the graph that is shown in Fitbit when you click "Deep and REM" as you posted above, IS a hypnogram by definition. So, I was curious how to read how many cycles you go through a night. What constitutes ONE cycle? Is it your wake times into deep? Or wake to wake? Or deep to deep? Seems this may not have been where to go for an answer but I thank you for giving it a shot!

[WilsonFitbit]

@Marie_Hgl, thank you very much for your reply! 

I appreciate your understanding! Looks like there isn't an available option to read the Sleep cycles like the way you've mentioned. While this isn't yet available, I'd recommend to post this idea in the Feature Suggestions board so our developers can take it into consideration for new updates or product development. Our team strives to improve the Fitbit experience based on our members feedback. 

See you around.