From Nich Woolf
Having been on call or rotating shifts for almost 40 years, I was interested in your Instant Expert on sleep, particularly the section on sleep cycles, to see how my coping mechanisms match current thinking (4 February).
I learned a long time ago that if you cannot have a whole night’s sleep, then having more than an hour but less than two will allow you to wake without feeling too drowsy. This fitted with your diagram showing all the phases of one sleep cycle occur in 1.5 hours.
Although waking from deep sleep, functions such as balance seem much better than if you wake part way through a cycle.
Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, UK
