Sleep is not a competition
“The biggest misunderstanding about sleep is that it should be perfect,” says Van de Laar. “Many people think that for ‘good sleep’ they have to fall asleep within ten minutes and have to sleep on a piece. But it is completely normal to wake up occasionally or to lie awake for a while.” So it’s not about good sleep but about a good night’s sleep. “It is very normal to be awake up to twenty percent of the time.”
Certainly for women, who more often suffer from insomnia, it is important not to panic when you are awake at night, the sleep scientist explains. “Lying awake is not necessarily bad. It’s about how you deal with it. As long as you do something that you are relaxed, this has no negative effect on your night’s sleep.”
Smartwatches
More and more people are trusting smartwatches to analyze their sleep. A smartwatch is a smart watch that, in addition to displaying time, offers functions of a smartphone such as reports, fitness measurements and apps. It can therefore also analyze your sleeping behavior. “People often want to know things and think:” Measuring is knowing. ” The moment you measure something, you think you have control over it, but in theory measuring is not always accurate. ”
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A smartwatch mainly measures movement, heart rate and breathing, but according to Van de Laar the different sleep phases cannot distinguish well. During a night you go through four to five sleep cycles, with light sleep, deep sleep and brake sleep. Most smartwatches do not measure brain activity, so it says little about how deep or how well you really sleep. “And yet they often give a sleep score … as if it is an objective truth. These scores are based on unknown algorithms and do not take into account how you really feel.
Sleep scores
What does a score of 82 mean? And why would you experience your whole day differently based on that? The problem is that people can unconsciously adapt to those figures. You can literally make a low score tired. “
There is also a lot of individual variation asleep. “There are people who are in a deep sleep fifteen percent of the night and feel top fit, but there are also people who are still tired of 35 percent with a deep sleep. Such a smartwatch does not know what your personal sleep needs is. That makes it very difficult to be able to trust the scores it gives.”
What does help then?
Those who want to sleep better will advise a sleep diary than a smartwatch, advises Van de Laar. “With that you look at your own experience of sleep. And that turns out to be much better together with how fit you feel during the day.”
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In addition, stress, screen time, nutrition and exercise are important factors. “A lot of stress during the day causes a ‘body’ at night. You can see your sleep as a mirror of how you felt during the day. Also lie in bed for too long in the morning, just to get more sleep, you can have the opposite effect. This will make you notice that you are less sleepy in the evening and later sleep. That this is fine as long as you don’t read work emails or actively triggers. “
‘The perfect night’
The most important advice: stop striving for the perfect night. “Sleep is not a performance but a moment to let go of everything. If you notice that it causes your stress, or that you sleep poorly because you want to do it so well, it is really better not to attach that much value to it.”
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