How much sleep do you really need? Experts reveal the truth
How much sleep we really need in our dailylife ? Most of us spend a third of our lives sleeping, but you may need more or less than eight hours a night. The number of hours needed changes throughout your life, with babies and kids needing more sleep and people 65 and older able to function on slightly less than seven to nine hours.
sleep in our dailylife ; How much sleep we need changes
The amount of sleep we need changes throughout our lives. Newborns need the most — somewhere between 14 to 17 hours.
“Definitely when we’re babies and children, because we are growing so rapidly, we do need a lot more sleep,” Atwood said.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends most adults between 26 and 64 get between seven to nine hours of sleep. People who are 65 and older can get slightly less, and young adults between ages 16 and 25 can get slightly more.
Humans cycle through sleep stages roughly every 90 minutes. In the first portion of the night, Atwood said that more of the cycle is slow wave sleep, or deep sleep, which is essential to repairing and restoring the body. It’s also when “growth hormone” is released.
In the latter hours of the night, more of the sleep cycle is spent in rapid-eye movement sleep, or dream sleep, which is important for learning and memory consolidation, or the process in which short-term memory gets turned into long-term memory.
Kids get more “deep sleep,” with about 50% of the night in that realm, she said. That drops at adolescence, Atwood said, because our body doesn’t need the same kind of repair and restoration.
Something else interesting happens around puberty: Gender-based differences in sleep start to crop up.
Sleep quality over quantity
Sleep is still a mystery, despite how critical it is for our health.
“The reasons aren’t entirely clear, but it’s an essential thing that we all do,” said Dr. Rafael Pelayo, a sleep specialist at Stanford University. “Something remarkable happens when you sleep. It’s the most natural form of self-care that we have.”
Most of the population gets between seven to nine hours — and that particular category has the lowest association with health problems, said Molly Atwood, a behavioral sleep medicine clinician at Johns Hopkins.
Once people either dip into less than six hours of sleep or get more than nine hours on average, the risk of health problems inches up, Atwood said, but everybody is different. When you’re trying to figure out how much sleep you need, it’s important to think about the quality of it, Pelayo said: “What you really want to do is wake up feeling refreshed — that’s what it’s about.”
“If somebody tells me that they sleep many hours but they wake up tired, something is wrong,” Pelayo said. “You shouldn’t leave your favorite restaurant feeling hungry.”
Do women need more sleep than men?
Research doesn’t show that women need more sleep — but women do get slightly more sleep on average than men, Atwood said.
It starts at a young age. Though they have the same sleep needs, teenage girls seem to get less sleep than teenage boys, Pelayo said. Additionally, teenage girls tend to complain of insomnia more frequently.
When women become first-time mothers, they often care for newborns throughout the night more frequently, which means less sleep, said Allison Harvey, a clinical psychologist and professor who studies sleep at UC Berkeley.
Hormones may also impact women’s sleep quantity and quality during pregnancy and menopause.
“With menopause in particular, women can develop deterioration in their sleep with an increased number and duration of nighttime awakenings,” said Dr. Mithri Junna, a Mayo Clinic neurologist who specializes in sleep.
Atwood said women may also need more sleep right before their menstrual cycle.
“There are definitely times that your body’s telling you that you need more sleep,” she said. “It’s important to listen.”
How can you track sleep quality?
How can you better understand the factors likely contributing to your sleep quality? One way is to keep a sleep diary where you track and record your sleep.
Every day, record the time you went to bed, how long it took you to fall asleep, whether you had any nighttime awakenings (and if so, how long you were awake), and at what time you woke up. Also, keep track of how you feel upon awakening and at the end of the day.
“After a week or two, review the information to see if you can identify certain patterns that may be affecting your sleep quality, then make adjustments,” says Zhou.
For example, if you have trouble falling asleep, go to bed half an hour later than usual but maintain the same wake-up time. “It is common for people struggling with their sleep to try to get more sleep by staying in bed longer, but this disrupts their sleep patterns and diminishes their sleep quality,” says Zhou.
Three key strategies to support the quality of your sleep
Other strategies that can help support good sleep quality include:
maintaining a consistent wake time, especially on weekends
limiting daytime naps to 20 to 30 minutes, and at least six hours before the desired bedtime
being physically active.
When it comes to sleep quality, consistency is vital. “People with good sleep quality often have a predictable sleep window where their sleep occurs,” says Zhou. “Good sleepers are likely to sleep around the same number of hours and stay asleep through the night.”
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