This seems interesting, but I don’t know enough about sleep architecture to know if this is an unmitigated “win”. @Guywholikessleep
Source: https://x.com/TheDrMAWZ/status/2009622195358843260?s=20
I think this might be interesting for a bunch of mental reasons like if dreams are tamed then a longer duration would increase any therapeutic benefits of dreams for longer, or maybe create new step function increase for certain effects.
There might be some really weird effects and unlike anything by such supraphysiological levels of REM throughout the night, where the effects are at a threshold no one had before.
Curious that the chart in the first image doesn’t graphically differentiate between deep and REM sleep. It appears that shows more time awake during the nine hours.
Does it thereby get more REM sleep at the expense of deep sleep?
I can find no studies that indicate or prove that REM time of 40% of sleep time is of any benefit.
FWIW: ChatGPT 5.2
I’m not aware of any good human evidence showing that pushing REM up to ~40% of total sleep is “better” (health, cognition, mood, longevity) than the usual adult range of roughly ~20–25%.
What the literature supports is more nuanced:
Large normative polysomnography datasets and reviews generally put REM at about ~20–25% of total sleep time in healthy adults (with age-related variation).
There’s solid work linking REM to emotional processing and certain aspects of memory integration.
But those findings don’t imply that maximizing REM percentage (e.g., 40%) improves outcomes.
In fact, at least one recent study found that a lower REM/NREM ratio and longer REM latency were associated with better self-reported wellbeing measures (energy, stress, restfulness). That doesn’t prove “less REM is better,” but it’s a reminder that the relationship is not monotonic.
A REM fraction around 40% is unusually high for typical adult sleep and can occur in contexts that aren’t necessarily desirable, such as REM rebound (after REM suppression, sleep deprivation, withdrawal from REM-suppressing substances/meds, etc.).
Also, higher REM% has been linked with vivid dreams (which some people like, but it’s not inherently a health benefit).
“Furthermore, a higher REM/NREM ratio in the first 180 min of sleep was associated with lower morning energy and worse self-reported sleep quality”
Ref1
Ref2
