How Many Hours of Sleep Do We Really Need?

Last Thursday, if you remember – we talked about some tips to getting a peaceful night’s sleep.  Now, let’s focus on how long you need to sleep!

We grew up believing the magic 8-hour sleep myth as what we should observe in order to have optimum health and to properly function everyday. In reality, the amount of sleep necessary varies from one person to another.

Scientific findings on a number of researches showed that people who spend too little time on sleep have as much health risks as those who sleep too much. That is, sleeping about only 4 to 5 hours a day could be as equally unhealthy as having more than 10 hours. But how do we actually quantify the actual number essential to each one of us? One thing we could try is by varying the number of hours we sleep in a week. If you are not too busy and feel like dozing off as much then do so. Examine on which days you feel dandy enough and could function to the fullest.

Infants need as much as 18 hours of sleep daily to develop, decreasing in number as their age increases. Adults on the other hand would do fine at 7 to 9 hours to facilitate better alertness, memory and health in totality. Other studies have shown however that 6 to 7 hours is enough and have maintained that people who were conducted the research upon have lived longer than those who have been sleeping more than this number. It could actually seem like a trial and error experiment but let us also take into consideration other factors like occupation, lifestyle, disorders, and as mentioned, age.

As to the actual effects brought about by lack of sleep, it was said that it could actually lead to weight gain, hypertension, and diabetes. Excessive sleeping’s adverse effects, besides the higher mortality rate (as on lesser sleep) it poses on individuals investigated on, though have not been ascertained yet.

So with this in mind, could we be stopping now and asking ourselves if we are getting enough sleep then. One thing is for sure though, that it might not hurt to be deprived of sleep once in a while and it is of course unavoidable and we could not as well help from oversleeping at times. Well if the 8-hour myth is not as effective as the experts say, then we can leave it at an old phrase than too much or too less is not enough.

Tagged as: Health, Sleep Disorders