Wakey wakey!

How do you like to be woken in the morning? Being lovingly gazed upon by George Clooney on D. Porthault bed linen, listening to Riva boats ferry the rich and beautiful between the shores of Lake Como? Or is that just me?

How we wake, or how we choose to be woken can have a big impact on the relative success of the day ahead. I'm not suggesting this happens all the time, but I'm confident we've all been there.

The methods by which people choose to wake will be many and varied. Us separate sleepers have the luxury of not only choosing the method, but changing it whenever and 'why-ever' we want.

I have written before about the app that I use called Sleep Cycle. This app monitors my sleep patterns throughout the night (I am still COMPLETELY addicted to reviewing them first thing every morning - 75 days after the purchase) and wakes me gently, and caringly, depending on which stage of the sleep cycle I am in. As well as being totally taken by seeing what I got up to during the night, I like the fact that I can snooze a criminal number of times, before my phone eventually says "Enough" and starts vibrating.

(Admission - I can sometimes be heard talking to my phone when it stirs me for the 10th time with it's gentle 'Forest glade' alarm sound. Unilateral conversations of "yeah, yeah", "alright, I heard you", "I know it's time to get up" and "oh shut up" are not uncommon on the mornings of sub-7-hour sleeps.)

So what do the couples who share a bed do when they don't have the same desires when it comes to being aroused from slumber?

I had a boyfriend who wanted to be woken by TripleM on the radio every morning. For the non-Australian readers, click the link and the stories adorning the front page should give you a pretty good indication of the station's target audience. As I link through this evening, here's what's on offer....

If you like naked women and women kissing other women, then you have arrived at your dream radio station. But I digress. The main issue I had was that it is a hard rock station, on which a lot of "great rock hits from the 80s, 90s and now" were played. Quite simply, I kinda hate great rock hits from most eras. For the record, I mostly listen to Triple J - for mine, it's just a little more cerebral and interesting.

So back to the sleeping and the waking..... I can't tell you how many times I was wrenched from my sleep by a mid-40s, gravelly male voice, screaming unintelligible lyrics. I hated it. I would be cranky, and even more so, when I knew the boyfriend took perverse pleasure in knowing it annoyed me. This is just one of the myriad of reasons he is a past tense person.

Some folk wake up in the morning and bound into each day with a vim and vigour that is admirable. I am at the other end of the scale - hence arguing with an app on my phone - and I know there are others like me, who like to gently mosey on in to the day, quietly gathering their thoughts about the adventures awaiting us.

When you sleep with someone who has a different approach to greeting each new day, it can be a struggle to arrive at a mutually accepted method of waking.

So for those who may be struggling with their choice of wakening devices, consider this great app. And the bonus is, it comes with a funky gadget.

Before watching the video of the device in action, check out the great 'Sleep Tip' video the designers of the app have made. This one is #6 - The Cranky Girlfriend.

The app is the Lark alarm and sleep monitoring system. Click here to check out all the deets - or enjoy the YouTube video with at least better acting than the differently weighted duvet videos.

(Was v excited to see some Ikea cushions on the bed that I have too - the brown spotty ones.)

Is this the solution you have been looking for?

Until the morning then, I bid you a good night.

Feeling appy?

I have a chapter in my (yet to be finished, picked up by a publisher, or printed) book about the science of sleep.

Part of the chapter explains why us human folk will sometimes wake up feeling just grand and sometimes waking up feeling like a grand piano has landed on us (and may still be there). It's all to do with body clocks, circadian rhythms, sleep cycles, and goes something a little like this.

We all have a sleep cycle that we move through each time we close our eyes to rest. There are five stages to the sleep cycle; each cycle lasting approximately 90 minutes. Four stages are non-REM (rapid eye movement) and one stage is REM sleep, when we do most of our active dreaming and our eyes tend to move – hence the name.

Getting good, restorative sleep is not just a matter of spending enough hours in bed. The amount of time you spend in each of the stages of sleep matters. A normal adult spends approximately 50% of total sleep time in light sleep, 20% in REM sleep, and 30% in the remaining stages, including deep sleep.

Each stage of sleep in the sleep cycle offers benefits to the sleeper. However, deep sleep and REM sleep are particularly important.

The most damaging effects of sleep deprivation are from inadequate deep sleep. Deep sleep is a time when the body repairs itself and builds up energy for the day ahead. It plays a major role in maintaining general health, stimulating growth and development, repairing muscles and tissues, and boosting your immune system. In order to wake up energised and refreshed, getting quality deep sleep is key. Being woken in the night during the deep sleep or REM stages can impact significantly on the quality of sleep had each night and can contribute to an increase in the symptoms experienced from lack of sleep.

After telling a friend about this aspect of sleeping, she shared with me that she has an app on her iPhone that monitors your sleep cycles and wakes you up at some point within a half-hour window, but at an appropriate pace and time to coincide with what part of your sleep cycle you are in. The app is called Sleep Cycle.

It's a reasonably priced app and I really quite like it. As well as having very calming sounds to wake me, it does do the whole 'work out where I am in my sleep cycle and wake me appropriately' thing, but best of all - you get a very cool graph of your sleep pattern each night, a record of how long you have slept, and an average sleeping time over the nights you use it.

Example of sleep graph

I'm not on commission to sell the app - just wanted to share with any like-minded geeks who think that seeing your sleep pattern and knowing how long you have slept each night (and average sleeping times) will add value to your life.

It is certainly keeping me 'appy at the moment.

BTW - avg sleeping time over 19 nights is 7hrs 22mins.