One Very Good Thing that’s happened after knee surgery is that I am sleeping like sleep is my superpower again. Before surgery, I was waking up three or four times a night with knee pain.
Just check out these numbers. They’re from my Garmin watch. My average sleep duration is 8 hours and 4 minutes. I feel like a sleep rock star.
Oh, but it does turn out that I lie about my sleeping hours. I say 10 pm to 6 am, but that’s off by about an hour. My actual hours of sleep are more like 11 pm to 7 am. Fine!
I wake up most days feeling pretty rested. But there is one thing I can no longer do. I used to be able to have the occasional night where I slept a lot less, say five hours instead of eight, and everything would be ok. Twenty years I go I could still pull the occasional all-nighter. No more! Now if I even miss a few hours sleep it takes a few days to recover. I can’t just power through. I’ve always liked my sleep. Now I need it.
Another good thing about my sleep is that it’s pretty consistent. I might be deluded about what that time is but it does look like I regularly go to bed and get up at the same time.
A recent story in the New York Times talked about the heart health risks of inconsistent sleep.
“New research affirms what doctors have long advised: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day for big health benefits.”
See How a Consistent Sleep Schedule Might Protect Your Heart
Here’s more:
“Researchers examined a week’s worth of sleep data from 2,000 adults over 45 and found that those who slept varying amounts each night and went to bed at different times were more likely to have hardened arteries than those with more regular sleep patterns.
People whose overall sleep amounts varied by two or more hours from night to night throughout the week — getting five hours of sleep on Tuesday, say, and then eight hours on Wednesday — were particularly likely to have high levels of calcified fatty plaque built up in their arteries, compared with those who slept the same number of hours each night.”
