Sleep (2024)

FAQs

Sleep? ›

Q: How much sleep do I really need? A: The answer varies considerably across age groups—and from person to person. For most adults, 7 to 8 hours a night appears to be the best amount of sleep. However, infants generally require about 16 hours of sleep per day, while teenagers need about 9.

Good sleep improves your brain performance, mood, and health. Not getting enough quality sleep regularly raises the risk of many diseases and disorders. These range from heart disease and stroke to obesity and dementia.

Language switcher. Experts recommend that adults sleep between 7 and 9 hours a night. Adults who sleep less than 7 hours a night may have more health issues than those who sleep 7 or more hours a night.

Sleep needs vary by person and are affected by several factors. However, for most adults, 7–9 hours per night is the ideal amount. Pay attention to how you feel during the day to determine whether you're getting the right amount for you. If you're sleeping enough, you should feel awake and energized during the day.

If you skip the night's sleep, nerve function and mood will decline significantly the next day. If the nature of work makes you often stay up late, sleep less, lack of sleep, you should sleep at least 2 hours. This will be more beneficial to your health than not sleeping.

Experts recommend adults get at least 7 hours of sleep per night for better health. Consistently getting less than 5 hours of sleep can have adverse effects on physical and mental health. Inadequate sleep can impact memory, mood, concentration, immunity, and overall quality of life.

Adults should stay awake no longer than 17 hours to meet the CDC's sleep recommendation. People tend to experience the adverse effects of sleep deprivation within 24 hours. In this article, we explore how long a person can go without sleep and look at the effects of sleep deprivation over 72 hours.

Sleep deficiency can cause problems with learning, focusing, and reacting. You may have trouble making decisions, solving problems, remembering things, managing your emotions and behavior, and coping with change. You may take longer to finish tasks, have a slower reaction time, and make more mistakes.

“If you wake up and feel good and this is part of your routine, you don't have to stop,” said Dr. Marjorie Soltis, a sleep medicine specialist and an assistant professor of neurology at Duke University School of Medicine. “But I think 30 minutes is a good threshold.”

How much sleep do I need by age? ›

The bare minimum of sleep needed to live, not just thrive, is 4 hours per 24-hour period. Seven to 9 hours of sleep are needed for health, renewal, learning, and memory.

Generally speaking, six hours is not enough sleep for the average person. The amount of sleep adults need is shaped like a bell curve, and the vast majority of the population falls in the middle between seven and nine hours, Dr. Bhanu Kolla, a sleep physician and psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, tells TODAY.com.

“If you need a break from running around all week or are even feeling down about something and want time to process your emotions, by all means, listen to your feelings and your body. Staying in bed all day every once in a while isn't going to do much harm.”

While some people regularly function on short periods of sleep, research mostly agrees that six hours of sleep is not enough for most adults. Experts recommend that most adults need at least seven hours of sleep every night.

Get up for a short time.

If you've been lying awake for a while, get out of bed and do something relaxing that might make you feel drowsy — like reading, listening to quiet music, using a meditation or sleep app, or doing gentle yoga.

Ideally, you should try to get more than 90 minutes of sleep. Sleeping between 90 and 110 minutes gives your body time to complete one full sleep cycle and can minimize grogginess when you wake. But any sleep is better than not at all — even if it's a 20-minute nap. For more sleep support, check out our sleep shop.

Feeling fatigued or lethargic throughout the day, yawning frequently. Feeling irritable. Change in mood including feeling depressed, anxious, stressed, paranoid or experiencing suicidal thoughts. Low motivation.

It can vary from sleep masturbation to sexual moaning and vocalizations, to fondling and full sexual intercourse with a bed partner.

To establish a more restorative sleep pattern, try going to bed later. Estimate from your diary how much sleep you actually get each night. If you get six hours and you need to wake up at 6 a.m., then don't go to bed until midnight — even if you feel sleepy before then.