Just like REM sleep, the amount of deep sleep you need varies from person to person. It will depend on what you did during your day, on your age and other factors. For adults, deep sleep is approximately 15 to 20% of total sleep. Elderly people experience a shorter duration.

Here are best tips to achieve high quality and a restorative deep sleep.

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Get to know your sleep habits

The periods of deep sleep are the most abundant and most regenerative at the beginning of your sleep. So the goal is to fall asleep in less time possible to spend the most time in a deep sleep.

There are a lot of trackers such as the Circular Ring that you can use to know your sleep habits, the evolution of your sleep cycle and compare your nights.

Sleep every day at the same time 

By doing so, it will allow you to program your subconscious and prepare your body for falling asleep. As with everything, it will take time for your body to adapt (a few nights for most people). Once calibrated, your body will naturally warn you every night when it is time to go to bed.

Be smart about what you eat and drink

Your nutrition has a big impact on your sleep quality. Minimizing caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine before sleeping seems logical. But less known, avoid having heavy and late dinner. Eat a light dinner, avoiding very sweet foods and red meat which are the foods that take the longest time to digest.

Do not eat within four to six hours of the time you want to sleep.

Be physically active

The more you do sport the more your body will have to spend time in deep sleep to regenerate. It has been proven that daily exercise allows people to sleep better and stay longer in deep sleep. Do 20 to 30 minutes of exercise a day. However, exercising just before bed could interfere with your sleep schedule. Try to exercise daily at least three hours before you go to bed.

Write your day

You can keep a daily journal by briefly describing before sleeping what happened during your day. When you write your day down, you make your brain lighter in order to enter Deep sleep faster. This will facilitate the work that is done during your REM sleep and leave more room for your deep sleep.

Avoid blue lights

Turn off the TV, smartphone, tablet, computer at least 2 hours before sleep. Or even better, keep all of your electronics outside the bedroom. The light that these devices emit stimulates the brain, suppresses the production of melatonin (the hormone that encourages to fall asleep), and interferes with your body's biological clock.

Magnesium and Melatonin intake

Recent studies have shown that taking magnesium and melatonin with a dosage appropriate to your body can increase the duration of deep sleep. See this with your doctor.

How to track how much Deep sleep you are getting?

You can use your Circular ring to know exactly how much Deep sleep you get each night. The app gives you the details of your sleep cycle including the portion of Deep sleep according to your cycles, but also the amount of Deep sleep in percentage and duration of your total sleep. You can also compare your Deep sleep from night to night to monitor your evolution and compare your last night with your own average to understand your sleep.

You can also read our article on Sleep better and fall asleep faster. The tips described there also applied to increasing its deep sleep.

If you wish to improve your REM Sleep you can also read Tips to increase your REM sleep.