Sleep Enough

How much sleep do you need? This is a question that gets asked a lot. Mostly, we hope that the answer would be something near to what many of us are actually getting. But unfortunately, our bodies are not designed to function on the amount of hours of sleep which I am sure many of us are getting by on. Generally, the human body has not adapted to sleep just a few hours of sleep a night.

Worldwide, sleep time has been in constant decline for the past 20 years at least. The reasons behind this are mostly to do with the increasing demands of modern jobs, more and more people taking on 2 or more jobs, too much entertainment distractions, studies, and just plain old peer pressure. In general, people from the younger age group tend to go to bed later and sleep less.

Things are not so clear cut though. The number of hours of sleep we need per day depends on several factors. These are age, and current state of health. If we want beneficial sleep, those hours of sleep must be quality sleep or else you’d still feel irritable, and not refreshed, even if you have gotten the recommended amount of sleep per night. So, the quality of sleep is still more important than the quantity of sleep, but both are needed still.

The longest hours of sleep required are by babies. Babies spend the majority of their time sleeping. It is during sleep that they grow. Newborn babies usually sleep for about 4 hours at a stretch, and get up for feeding afterwards. Then they go back to sleep for several hours before repeating their feeding time. Each day, newborn babies spend about 14-18 hours sleeping, and almost half will be REM sleep.

As parents of newborns will attest, waking up in the night to get fed is all part of a newborn’s natural biological cycle. Only when a baby is around 3-6 months old, will he or she sleep through the entire night without waking up, but nonetheless, babies will still be sleeping some 10-15 hours per day until they are about 3 years old.

Surprisingly, children and even teenagers still require about 9-10 hours of sleep a day. But what is common knowledge is that teenagers don’t get this amount of sleep these days. Previously, some attributed this sleeping requirement among teens as laziness, but research has shown that it is more physiological than anything else. More sleep seems to be required due to all the growth and hormone changes taking place during the teenage years.

Adults (including elderly folks) need about 8 hours of sleep, but as most adults would admit, they are usually only getting around 6 hours of sleep (or less). This reduction of sleep time among the adult population seems to be a worldwide phenomenon, with the resulting problems on the rise. Pregnant women should add about 3 hours more to their normal sleep time.

Sleep deprivation is not something to take lightly. If you’re driving, your reflexes may be slower than usual, hand-eye coordination gets impaired, and you may drift off into “micro sleep,” which is your body’s way of trying to get the sleep it needs. You may even find yourself hallucinating. If you did no get enough sleep, consuming alcohol is going to make it worse, because alcohol actually helps you to “knock off.”

The way to know if you’re getting enough sleep is if you wake up each day feeling refreshed, and energized to live it in a productive way, and get the most out of your day.