You may have heard that eight hours is the most appropriate sleep time for a person. But in fact, your body’s needs change throughout your life. When it comes to rest, your age, health, and even your job can affect how many hours of sleep you need each night.
The US National Sleep Foundation’s guidelines are broken down by age, but it’s important to remember that these numbers are advisory only; While your age is a good indicator of how much sleep you need, you should also consider your personal situation.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults ages 18 to 64 get seven to nine hours of sleep each night. This period decreases slightly for adults over 65, and the recommended sleep time is reduced to between seven and eight hours per night.
However, it is worth noting once again that age is not the only determining factor here. People who are sick or have physically demanding jobs may need more than the recommended hours.
A chartered psychologist, neuroscientist, author, and sleep expert, Dr. “We make antibodies while we sleep, so if you’re sick you’ll need more sleep. If you’re not well, forget the recommendations and get as much sleep as you need,” says Lindsay Browning.
Similarly, those who spend their days physically active through work or other exercise are likely to need more sleep. Dr. “The more physically active we are, the more we need to repair our bodies,” says Browning. “The deeper you sleep, the more refreshed you will feel.”
While it’s no secret that teenagers can sleep very deeply, it’s not because of laziness. They’re just doing what their bodies instinctively tell them to do. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that teens ages 14 to 17 need about eight to 10 hours of sleep per night.
Research shows that teenagers need more sleep than adults to support their learning, memory, attention and cognition processes during these formative years. Their brains and bodies are maturing and developing rapidly, and sleep helps them strengthen their health, regulate their emotions, and stay on top of their schoolwork.
Dr. In addition, Browning adds that teens’ sleep can be affected by excessive caffeine and alcohol intake, which their bodies are not used to processing.
The reason we usually need less sleep as we get older is because our bodies stop growing and our brains aren’t processing as much new information as they did when we were younger.
Dr. “When you sleep, you produce growth hormone, and your body can grow physically,” explains Browning.
“Likewise, when we are learning new things, we need more sleep to process those learnings. For a baby just moving his hand can be a new feeling, while for children learning languages, learning math, identifying things like trees . . . usually we already know everything we need.”
Dr. Browning adds that as we get older, our sleep becomes lighter, meaning it becomes easier for us to wake up. While it’s normal to wake up during the night, we’re more likely to remember these awakenings as we get older because they can become longer and more frequent: “You may be thinking that your sleep is suddenly of really poor quality, but generally speaking, that’s not true; you’re just more aware of these breaks in your sleep. ”
Dr. First, Browning recommends practicing some rest time before bed, just as you would as a child: “As adults, we do complex work projects in the evenings, watch exciting TV shows, argue with our spouse, and hope to go to sleep right away. Of course, that doesn’t happen; that’s unreasonable.”
Light is also seen as an important factor. The light emitted from screens tells your brain that it is daytime, so limiting your device use close to bedtime will help you keep your body’s rhythm in check.
Likewise, it’s a good idea to make sure you’re getting enough sunlight. As biological beings, we’re designed to see sunlight during the day, so we need to go out at lunchtime and tell our brains it’s the middle of the day. Then when evening comes our brain may say, ‘Okay, we need to sleep now. Using a wake-up light on darker mornings can also help.
Also consider the environment of your bedroom. “You shouldn’t use your bedroom for anything but sleep and your relationship,” says Dr Browning. “So your brain associates your bedroom with rest, but we need to balance that with real life.”
Dr. Browning adds that your bedroom shouldn’t remind you of things you haven’t finished yet, otherwise your brain might be too distracted to sleep.
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