How much sleep do you need

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need to Feel Rested?

Sleep needs change across a lifetime and vary among individuals

Keri Peterson, MD, is board-certified in internal medicine and operates a private practice, Age Well, in New York City.

We’ve all been told that we should get 8 hours of sleep per night, but this information is an average and might not be a perfect fit for everyone. Some people may need more sleep and others less, and our needs may actually change through the years. Thus, the oft-recited advice that every person needs exactly 8 hours of sleep a night is a myth.

Short Sleepers vs. Long Sleepers

Everyone has a sleep need that is likely determined by genes, or genetic information. This need is the amount of sleep our body requires for us to wake up feeling refreshed. It differs from one individual to another. This difference likely occurs across a spectrum, with «short sleepers» needing less than average ( 9 hours).

Changing Needs Across a Lifetime

The average amount of sleep needed changes over our lifetime, especially during childhood and adolescence. Although there are averages, there will be individuals who fall both above and below these needs, including the following groups of people:

Sleep Debt

What happens if we don’t meet our sleep needs? By not getting enough sleep, we accumulate a sleep debt that we usually have to «pay off.» This pay-off might involve extra sleep by napping, going to bed early, or sleeping in to catch up. If we sleep less than our body needs to feel refreshed and don’t catch up we might experience:

These symptoms may compromise our health and well-being.

How Can I Determine My Sleep Needs?

There is an easy way to determine how much sleep you need. Follow these steps:

Effects of Sleep Deprivation

It is extremely important that your body gets the sleep it needs. Chronic, or long-term, sleep deprivation is linked to a variety of problems that impair your health, safety, productivity, mood, and more. Here are some possible repercussions secondary to sleep deprivation:

Oftentimes, people who experience chronic sleep deprivation write off their condition as a «normal» experience, and chalk their fatigue up to the stress of life, work, and kids. These people don’t realize that not getting enough sleep is very unhealthy, and they can go on for years without correcting the problem or seeking help.

A Word From Verywell

If you struggle to meet your sleep needs, make a conscious effort to prioritize sleep and protect your bedtime. Ensure that you have sufficient hours in bed, on a nightly basis. Keep your sleep schedule consistent, even through the weekend. Enroll the support of your friends and family. For those who need more advice, consider participating in a cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTI) program or visit with a board-certified sleep physician.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

What are your nightly sleep needs? What does sleep do for your health? By understanding your body’s needs, you can improve your sleep schedule and the quality of your waking life.

The importance of sleep

The quality of your sleep at night directly affects your mental and physical health and how well you feel during the day. Sleep impacts your productivity, emotional balance, brain and heart health, immune function, creativity, vitality, and even your weight. No other activity delivers so many benefits with so little effort!

When you’re scrambling to meet the demands of a busy schedule, though, or just finding it hard to sleep at night, getting by on less hours may seem like a good solution. But even minimal sleep loss can take a substantial toll on your mood, energy, mental sharpness, and ability to handle stress. And over the long-term, chronic sleep loss can wreak havoc on your mental and physical health.

Sleep isn’t merely a time when your body shuts off. While you rest, your brain stays busy, overseeing biological maintenance that keeps your body running in top condition, preparing you for the day ahead. Without enough hours of restorative sleep, you won’t be able to work, learn, create, and communicate at a level even close to your true potential. Regularly skimp on “service” and you’re headed for a major mental and physical breakdown.

The good news is that you don’t have to choose between health and productivity. By addressing any sleep problems and making time to get the sleep you need each night, your energy, efficiency, and overall health will go up. In fact, you’ll likely get much more done during the day than if you were skimping on shuteye and trying to work longer.

Myth: Getting just one hour less sleep per night won’t affect your daytime functioning.

Fact: You may not be noticeably sleepy during the day, but losing even one hour of sleep can affect your ability to think properly and respond quickly. It also compromises your cardiovascular health, energy, and ability to fight infections.

Myth: Your body adjusts quickly to different sleep schedules.

Fact: Most people can reset their biological clock, but only by appropriately timed cues—and even then, by one or two hours per day at best. Consequently, it can take more than a week to adjust after traveling across several time zones or switching to the night shift at work.

Sleep needs

There is a big difference between the amount of sleep you can get by on and the amount you need to function optimally. According to the National Institutes of Health, the average adult sleeps less than seven hours per night. In today’s fast-paced society, six or seven hours of sleep may sound pretty good. In reality, though, it’s a recipe for chronic sleep deprivation.

Just because you’re able to operate on six or seven hours of sleep doesn’t mean you wouldn’t feel a lot better and get more done if you spent an extra hour or two in bed.

While sleep requirements vary slightly from person to person, most healthy adults need seven to nine hours of sleep per night to function at their best. Children and teens need even more. And despite the notion that our sleep needs decrease with age, most older people still need at least seven hours of sleep. Since older adults often have trouble sleeping this long at night, daytime naps can help fill in the gap.

The best way to figure out if you’re meeting your sleep needs is to evaluate how you feel as you go about your day. If you’re logging enough sleep hours, you’ll feel energetic and alert all day long, from the moment you wake up until your regular bedtime.

Think six hours of sleep is enough?

Think again. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that some people have a gene that enables them to function well on six hours of sleep a night. This gene, however, is very rare, appearing in less than 3% of the population. For the other 97% of us, six hours doesn’t come close to cutting it.

The importance of deep sleep and REM sleep

It’s not just the number of hours you spend asleep that’s important—it’s the quality of those hours. If you give yourself plenty of time for sleep but still have trouble waking up in the morning or staying alert all day, you may not be spending enough time in the different stages of sleep.

Each stage of sleep in your sleep cycle offers different benefits. However, deep sleep (the time when the body repairs itself and builds up energy for the day ahead) and mind and mood-boosting REM sleep are particularly important. You can ensure you get more deep sleep by avoiding alcohol, nicotine, and being woken during the night by noise or light. While improving your overall sleep will increase REM sleep, you can also try sleeping an extra 30 minutes to an hour in the morning, when REM sleep stages are longer.

Signs that you’re not getting enough sleep

If you’re getting less than eight hours of sleep each night, chances are you’re sleep deprived. What’s more, you probably have no idea just how much lack of sleep is affecting you.

How is it possible to be sleep deprived without knowing it? Most of the signs of sleep deprivation are much more subtle than falling face first into your dinner plate.

Furthermore, if you’ve made a habit of skimping on sleep, you may not even remember what it feels like to be truly wide-awake, fully alert, and firing on all cylinders. Maybe it feels normal to get sleepy when you’re in a boring meeting, struggling through the afternoon slump, or dozing off after dinner, but the truth is that it’s only “normal” if you’re sleep deprived.

You may be sleep deprived if you…

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How to get the sleep that you need

Whether you’re looking to resolve a specific sleep problem, or just want to feel more productive, mentally sharp, and emotionally balanced during the day, experiment with the following sleep tips to see which work best for you:

Rule out medical causes for your sleep problems. A sleep disturbance may be a symptom of a physical or mental health issue, or a side-effect of certain medications.

Stick to a regular sleep schedule. Support your biological clock by going to bed and getting up at the same time every day, including weekends.

Get regular exercise. Regular exercise can improve the symptoms of many sleep disorders and problems. Aim for 30 minutes or more of activity on most days—but not too close to bedtime.

Be smart about what you eat and drink. Caffeine, alcohol, and sugary foods can all disrupt your sleep, as can eating heavy meals or drinking lots of fluids too close to bedtime.

Get help with stress management. If the stress of managing work, family, or school is keeping you awake at night, learning how to handle stress in a productive way can help you sleep better at night.

Develop a relaxing bedtime routine. Avoid screens, work, and stressful conversations late at night. Instead, wind down and calm your mind by taking a warm bath, reading by a dim light, or practicing a relaxation technique to prepare for sleep.

Postpone worrying. If you wake during the night feeling anxious about something, make a brief note of it on paper and postpone worrying about it until the next day when it will be easier to resolve.

Authors: Melinda Smith, M.A., Lawrence Robinson, and Robert Segal, M.A.

Last updated: April 2021

Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Understanding-Sleep

How Does Sleep Affect Your Heart Health? | cdc.gov. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/sleep.htm

Shi, G., Xing, L., Wu, D., Bhattacharyya, B. J., Jones, C. R., McMahon, T., Chong, S. Y. C., Chen, J. A., Coppola, G., Geschwind, D., Krystal, A., Ptáček, L. J., & Fu, Y.-H. (2019). A Rare Mutation of β1-Adrenergic Receptor Affects Sleep/Wake Behaviors. Neuron, 103(6), 1044-1055.e7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.07.026

Spadola, C. E., Guo, N., Johnson, D. A., Sofer, T., Bertisch, S. M., Jackson, C. L., Rueschman, M., Mittleman, M. A., Wilson, J. G., & Redline, S. (2019). Evening intake of alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine: Night-to-night associations with sleep duration and continuity among African Americans in the Jackson Heart Sleep Study. Sleep, 42(11), zsz136. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsz136

The association between alcohol consumption and sleep disorders among older people in the general population | Scientific Reports. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62227-0

Watson, N., Buchwald, D., Delrow, J., Altemeier, W., Vitiello, M., Pack, A., Bamshad, M., Noonan, C., & Gharib, S. (2017). Transcriptional Signatures of Sleep Duration Discordance in Monozygotic Twins. Sleep, 40(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsw019

“Sleep-Wake Disorders.” In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. DSM Library. American Psychiatric Association, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596.dsm12

Get more help

Improving Sleep – A guide to a good night’s rest. (Harvard Medical School Special Health Report)

Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep – Sleep benefits and sleep needs, dreaming, circadian rhythms, sleep cycles and stages, and sleep disorders. (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke)

Your Guide to Healthy Sleep (PDF) – Why sleep matters, the stages and cycles of sleep, the dangers of sleep deprivation, and dealing with common sleep problems. (National Institutes of Health)

How Much Sleep Do We Really Need? – Research on sleep needs and sample sleep requirements in different age ranges. (The National Sleep Foundation)

All About Sleep – Figure out if your child is getting adequate sleep and learn about the sleep needs of different age groups. (KidsHealth)

How Much Sleep Do You Need? Details the most recent recommended sleep times by age group. (Berkeley Wellness)

Consequences of Insufficient Sleep – Articles and videos on the consequences of sleep deprivation and chronic lack of sleep, including its impact on driving, judgment, and disease risk. (Harvard Healthy Sleep)

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Updated March 5, 2022

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When you’re struggling to drop off, or if you’re battling the demands of work and home life, you can find yourself wondering how much sleep you can get away with. Is it okay to have just four or five hours or must you get a solid eight or nine hours every night?

If you’re suffering from insomnia or just the demands of a newborn baby, you may be wondering – how much sleep do you need?

No matter what your circumstances, we’ve answered that question and given you all the information and facts you need to make sure you get the right amount of sleep every night.

How Much Sleep Do You Need on Average?

This is a difficult question to answer as the amount of sleep a person needs depends on a lot of different factors like age, health and lifestyle.

Many people think staying up through the night to get work finished or to meet a deadline means they are being more productive but the science shows the opposite is true.

Without enough sleep, you are sluggish and impaired which means you work slower and make more mistakes. So, next time you’re struggling on a project, take yourself to bed and get some sleep. You’ll wake up refreshed and more creative – producing better work in the long run!

There is also a difference between the amount of sleep you actually need and the amount that is recommended for you to work at your best. While you can survive on fewer hours sleep, that is only a short-term solution and you should aim to get the optimum amount.

You might be able to carry on with only six or seven hours sleep for a few days but over time this will take its toll and you should be spending more time resting.

Some inherited factors like your genes can also affect how many hours of sleep you need to function at your best.

Why is Sleep So Important?

The simple fact is the quality and length of your sleep can affect your day to day life. Have you ever felt yourself feeling “fuzzy”? Or struggling to remember things and carry out technical tasks? Instead of searching for an elusive cure, try setting yourself a challenge to get more sleep and see if that works.

A lack of sleep can affect your mental and physical health. It can stop your immune system working properly, put pressure on your heart and even affect your emotions.

Sleep isn’t just a time to rest your muscles, it gives your brain time to work. Rather than “switching off” your brain uses this rest time to carry out vital functions and oversees the maintenance of your body. Think of it like a car, you’d give it a service every now and then to make sure it is running at top condition so that is the same with your brain and your body.

Without enough hours of sleep, your brain won’t be able to maintain your body properly and things will start to change. You might find your motor skills become impaired and you aren’t feeling as creative as usual.

Prolonged periods of no or little sleep can lead to serious mental health problems and you could find yourself breaking down mentally as well as physically.

Not getting enough sleep can cause health issues and heightens the risk of obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.

How Much Sleep Do You Need by Age?

Sleep time does vary from person to person but it also varies by age. If you have a newborn baby you will know this amount can fluctuate wildly. While you may have a friend whose child sleeps for 17 hours a day you could be struggling with a child that takes several catnaps and only sleeps for about 12 hours.

Healthy adults need between seven to nine hours to be at their best as described above but how much sleep do we need as we grow and get older?

A newborn baby should be getting at least 14 and up to 17 hours of sleep per day. This is often broken up into smaller chunks due to the needs for feeding and changing.

As a baby gets older, at four months old they will start sleeping for slightly shorter times. Between four and 11 months, your child should be sleeping between 12 and 15 hours a day.

The tricky thing with children is that sometimes they might start sleeping for 14 hours as a newborn and actually need more sleep as they grow. It is not an exact science!

A child between the ages of one and two years old should be getting about 11 to 14 hours sleep. This is a good time to introduce an afternoon nap and then try to get your baby to sleep through for eight to ten hours overnight.

At three to five years old, your baby needs ten to 13 hours sleep. Again, they might be still happy to sleep overnight and then take a nap in the afternoon. As they start school, the amount of sleep they need could increase as they are challenged physically and mentally.

At six to 13 years old, your child should be getting just a little longer than the average adult at nine to 11 hours.

A teenager should be aiming for eight to ten hours. You might find teenagers sleep a little longer than this!

All adults should be getting their seven hours or more per night but as you get into retirement age you might find it harder to sleep for longer.

A person aged over 65 only really needs seven or eight hours sleep but sometimes a nap in the day can help make up some missed hours if it is difficult to sleep overnight.

How Much Sleep Do Humans Need?

You might see your dog snoozing away all afternoon or think your pet cat seems to spend most of their time napping and wonder what the exact amount of sleep a human needs is.

While I’m sure many of us would happily stay in bed if we didn’t have the pressures of work or childcare, the average adult only gets about seven hours a night.

This might seem a lot but over time you will be missing out on vital relaxation and repair time. On average, a human needs between seven and nine hours of sleep a night.

Through evolution, humans have evolved to need less sleep than any other primate. The trick with humans is although we sleep for a shorter time than our ape cousins, our sleep is deeper.

The move from sleeping up in the tree canopy to sleeping on the ground has also aided this deeper, more restful sleep. I mean, it makes sense considering we wouldn’t have to stay alert to falling from trees.

Humans spend the most time in a deep sleep which means they sleep deeper than any other primate. This is what makes us able to survive on shorter periods of sleep compared to other primates.

How Much Deep Sleep Do You Need a Night?

It isn’t just the amount of time you spend in bed that is important, it is the quality of the sleep you’re getting while you’re tucked up.

There are different stages of sleep which are all needed to help you rest fully and feel prepared for the day ahead. But deep sleep is the most important as it is this time when the body repairs itself and builds up energy.

Deep sleep is defined as the period of sleep where your heartbeat and breathing is at its slowest. Your body completely relaxes and your hardly move at all. This is the point of your sleep where you don’t dream at all, your brain is busy repairing and maintaining parts of your body!

It is also known as delta sleep or slow wave sleep. It is the last stage in your sleep cycle and the most important. If you find yourself waking up sluggish even though you’ve been in bed for seven or eight hours you may not have had enough deep sleep.

A newborn baby can affect the quality of your sleep as becoming a new parent can make you hypervigilant! This can lead your body to only allowing light sleep in case you need to be on hand for your child.

Why Do We Sleep Longer in Winter?

Have you ever found yourself struggling to get out of bed on a cold, dark winter’s morning? Most people identify with the feeling of “just five more minutes” as you pull the duvet over your head.

It isn’t just the cold that keeps us under the blankets though, your brain is actually preparing for sleep earlier.

As the amount of sunlight we see during the day decreases, your brain starts to produce more of the hormone melatonin. This is the hormone that regulates your body’s sleep cycle.

This means as the sun sets earlier, your body starts to prepare you for sleep earlier. You might find yourself yawning or feeling sleepy a good few hours before your usual “bedtime”.

At the opposite end of the day, it can be hard for your body to wake up when it is still dark outside as your brain is convinced it is nighttime and you should be asleep!

Lack of sunlight through the winter can also cause SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)

It’s not just the lack of natural light; the cold does have something to do with your sleepiness.

Heating can change the way you sleep. When you’re cold, the production levels of melatonin in our bodies slows down, which can then cause us to feel exhausted and become more susceptible to colds and flus.

Another thing that affects our sleep patterns in winter is our eating habits. It is easy to reach for stodgy, carbohydrate rich foods to fill us with warmth.

But eating too much sugary, fatty or calorific foods can disrupt your body’s supply of leptin which is another hormone that regulates sleep.

How Much Sleep Do I Need to Lose Weight?

Scientists have long studied the link between a lack of sleep and weight gain. There are several reasons behind why people who don’t get the right amount of hours every night will put on weight, but the most common is another hormone.

Not getting enough sleep increases the level of cortisol in your bloodstream. This hormone increases your appetite making you feel hungry all the time.

The less sleep you have, the higher the concentration of this hormone and the more you feel like you could eat and eat!

You might have been on diets, taken up exercise and still find it hard to lose weight. It can be particularly highlighted if you and a friend are following the same diet and fitness regime but seeing different results.

While different people’s genetics and metabolism affect the way they lose weight, it might be worth checking your sleep patterns.

Not having enough sleep makes it harder for you to lose weight so after you hit the gym you should follow these steps to make sure you are giving yourself the best chance at weight loss.

Some steps:

How Much Sleep Do You Need to Survive?

While this article is based on making sure you get the right amount of sleep to help you perform at your best at work and home, it might be difficult for you to actually get the recommended amount.

So just how much sleep do we need to stay alive? Scientists have tested how long humans can survive without air (about three minutes), how long a person can go without water (three days) and even how long someone can last without food (three weeks).

But when it comes to sleep, not as much research has been done.

Even one night of no sleep can have the same effect on the human body as being drunk. The longest anyone has ever stayed awake was about 11 days which was done for a school project (really!) in 1965.

Despite all the health problems listed above, no human has ever died from not having enough sleep alone. The problems are when someone develops other health complications through a lack of sleep.

A pretty horrible experiment on rats in 1999 did actually see the creatures die after two weeks of being kept awake.

Even people with sleep disorders manage to get a few hours every night.

How Much Sleep Do I Need During Pregnancy?

Pregnancy takes it out of you physically and mentally. So you might find yourself needing to sleep more often or for longer.

Expecting a baby affects every woman differently, while some “glow” in their first trimester others can be left drowsy, nauseous and facing exhaustion.

The rising progesterone in a woman’s body can lead to fatigue and many women find they are needing a nap mid-afternoon.

In the first trimester, there is also a drop in the quality of sleep. Women get less time in their “deep sleep” part of the cycle which can lead to exhaustion.

The general recommendation is for a pregnant woman to get an extra 45 minutes to an hour of sleep per night. Plus, you should be getting prepared for a few years of sleepless nights once baby arrives!

Some tips include:

How Much Sleep Do Babies Need by Age?

Babies need a lot more sleep than adults, as we explained above but what are the affects of not having enough sleep?

Even just missing 30 minutes of sleep can negatively impact your child as they are at a critical stage of their development.

Have you ever heard the expression “overtired”? Well this is when a baby tends to become more awake and alert instead of drowsy as an adult would be.

This is what makes it so hard to tell if your baby is sleepy because they seem more awake than ever. Children may pretend they are not tired, fight sleep and get more and more hyperactive.

Sometimes ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is wrongly diagnosed when in fact this is a child that has not had enough sleep.

Some recent research has shown children can suffer from sleep apnea – where a person wakes up briefly several times through the night as they struggle to breathe.

If your child is struggling to get to sleep, try moving their bedtime to 30 minutes earlier and using this as “quiet time” to stop looking at screens and have a bath or a bedtime story before going to bed.

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need to Work Productively?

There are so many articles out there claiming that you can be super productive and get more done by cutting out sleep.

With the average adult sleeping for 24 years in their lifetime, it can seem attractive to cut this down and get some more exciting things in rather than sleeping.

Sleep researcher Daniel Kripke says most happy, productive people sleep between 6.5 and 7.5 hours every night. He says sleeping for too long can be just as damaging as not sleeping enough.

We’ve all been told that eight hours is the right amount of sleep, but it is actually more important to sleep between seven and nine hours and listen to your body.

Some people will be at their best with an exact seven hours sleep while others may need every second of nine hours to feel like they can face the day. There is no wrong or right answer, make sure you get at least seven hours and then pay attention to how your body reacts.

How Much Sleep Do You Need to Be Healthy?

A 2010 experimental sleep study proved that forcing yourself to stay awake for longer than 24 hours and the exact same results as someone who had a BAC (blood alcohol level) of 0.1, which happens to be way above the legal limit in regards to driving while under the influence. That just goes to show, staying awake for longer than a day can have life threatening consequences.

So sleeping for short periods, or not at all, could lead you to crashing your car in the short term and over a longer periods it could cause health problems.

How Much REM Sleep Do You Need to Get a Night?

When we hit the bed each night, our minds and bodies don’t just fall into a state of sleep and stay that way until we awake. There’s actually several different stages that our bodies have to go through before we enter the really deep rest we need. And the way we go through this process will determine the quality of rest you get.

Once we go to bed, after about 60-90 minutes afterward, we begin to enter into what’s called REM (Rapid Eye Movement). This is usually the time when we are in a super deep sleep and we begin to dream vividly. Basically, it’s the part when our bodies are completely asleep, we’re totally unconscious, yet our brains are still quite active. Hence the dreaming.

Most people go through at least 3-5 sessions of REM each and every night. That means, once a period of REM is done, the whole cycle begins again. This is when we’re easily woken up in the middle of the night, when the cycle is resetting.

If you’re finding yourself short on REM sleep, you can have an extra 30 minutes in the morning as this is the time when REM sleep is usually longest.

Getting enough REM sleep boosts your mood and also helps your mind.

How Much Sleep Do You Need Before a Test?

Staying up all night cramming for an exam can seem like a tempting idea. Surely, you’ll remember it better and do well if you’ve spent all night awake reading the subject?

Well actually the opposite is true. Sleep is as important to learning as exercise is to stamina. Without sleep, your brain has no time to process the new information and make sense of it properly.

Taking time to sleep before an exam can actually improve your grades and put you in the right mindset for the test.

You should make sure you get at least seven hours of solid sleep before an exam and put the revision down in plenty of time before bed.

Take time to:

How Does Temperature Affect Our Sleep?

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night in a scramble to tear the blankets off and release some of the heat trapped within the sheets? That’s’ because our bodies are programmed to sleep better with a certain temperature.

That’s right. The temperature in your room plays a major part in the quality of rest you get each night. Too warm or too cold can throw it all off.

Usually, for most, a nice temperature range of 60-67 degrees Fahrenheit is the ideal. This will keep your body’s core temp at a nice, comfortable level all night long and won’t pull you out of the dream world.

But why, you ask? Why is that we need to be cooler during the evening in order to get a good night’s rest? Because our bodies naturally lower our temperatures as we sleep. It keeps decreasing as you float through the different phases of deep rest. So, if you’re too hot, you’ve got too many heavy blankets, or your room’s thermostat is up too high, your body won’t be able to lower itself into that rest-mode.

Conclusion

So hopefully this list has now answered once and for all how much sleep you need. Next time you’re setting your alarm for the next morning or lying awake trying to get some rest, hopefully the tips in this article will come in useful.

Remember you need all stages of sleep to feel healthy and around seven to nine hours is the best length of time to sleep.

For children, babies and older people this differs but the most important thing is to listen to your own body.

If you’ve got any more tips, please comment below and don’t forget to share this article.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Published on September 30, 2014

This is a guest post written by Daniel Pardi.

As a sleep researcher and sleep educator, the most common question I get is, “How do I know how much sleep I need?” It’s a tricky question because the benefits of sleep are only partially determined by sleep duration. When people ask this question, what they really mean is, “What are the things I need to do in order for me to get all the physiological and behavioral benefits of a perfectly managed sleep-wake practice?” This article will help you answer that question, and one component of that question is understanding how much time you need to spend in bed per night. First, we need to review important fundamentals of sleep and wake regulation, otherwise the guidance here won’t make much sense.

You’ve heard of the importance of personalizing your diet. But what about your sleep? #optimumsleep #sleepcycle

While we don’t know that a single purpose for sleep exists, we do know that many important things take place during that period of time between when you shut your eyes at night and when you open them again in the morning.

In Dr. Borbely’s model, he described that the regulation of these states is based primarily upon the combination of two different processes occurring simultaneously. To understand how to get the sleep you need, let’s explore those two processes further.

Process 1 – Sleep Pressure

The first process of the professor’s 2-Process Model is sleep pressure. From the moment you wake up in the morning, a pressure for sleep mounts continuously until you sleep again. At night, the built-up sleep pressure helps you 1) fall asleep, and 2) stay asleep until the next morning. During sleep, this pressure decreases, and after a night of complete sleep, you start the next day with low sleep pressure. Later in the article, I’ll talk about the concept of “sleep debt,” which happens when you don’t wear down all your sleep pressure before starting the next day.

If sleep pressure builds from morning to night, why don’t we become increasingly sleepy from the moment we wake up? That’s where the second process of the 2-Process Model comes into play.

Process 2 – Wake Drive

This second process is called “wake drive.” You can think of it as the result of multiple brain systems working together—a wake network—to produce an alerting signal that increases in intensity to counteract mounting sleep pressure. The result? While sleep pressure builds from morning to night, wake drive also builds from morning to night, and your alertness stays relatively even across the day (with some within-day oscillations). This process raises another question: If wake drive is high during the night, how do we fall asleep? To understand the answer, we need to discuss how sleep pressure and wake drive differ.

For instance, assume someone typically wakes up at 7 a.m. and goes to bed at 11 p.m. and that his or her wake rhythm is stable and fixed to this time frame. Under these conditions, their wake drive initiates at 7 a.m., builds all day to counteract mounting sleep pressure, reaches its peak at 10 p.m., and plummets at 11 p.m., descending to its lowest point across a 24-hour period. At 7 a.m. the next morning, it begins to build back up all over again.

This rhythm repeats day after day—you awake at the same time and feel sleepy at the same time, on a daily basis. Importantly, the timing of the rhythm can be shifted forward or backwards. In a second example, imagine the wake rhythm is shifted two hours forward: wake drive starts at 9 a.m., builds all day, reaches its peak at midnight, plummets at 1 a.m. to its lowest level, and then builds back up again around 9 a.m. the next morning. It is easy to see that the timing of this rhythm is crucial for daytime alertness and quality night-time sleep. Let’s explore what sets the timing of our daily wake rhythm.

Imagine you live in San Francisco and travel halfway around the globe to Rome, Italy. When you arrive, your internal rhythms are still synced to San Francisco. At the beginning of your trip, you’re awake at night when everyone in Italy is sleeping and sleepy during the day when everyone else is fully awake. But slowly, over the course of multiple days, your body starts to adjust to this new time zone. What signal is the body responding to in order to adjust the timing of its internal rhythms to be in sync with the environment? The primary signal that sets our 24-hour body rhythms, including the timing of our wake rhythm, is light entering the eye.

There is an incredible amount of information regarding this topic, but I’ll get to the bottom line. To set the timing of your wake rhythm, your brain wants to coordinate the timing of your wake signal to daytime. It does this by measuring the intensity and hue of light entering the eye. Indoor light is far less intense than outdoor light and, more than ever in human history, we spend much of our day indoors.

Essentially, by having light enter the eye at night when the brain should be getting exposure to darkness, we are again telling the brain that it should shift the timing of the wake rhythm forward. So, living in the modern world causes a double-whammy—too little light during the day and too much light at night—shifting our wake rhythm forward.

What is one implication of having your wake rhythm shifted forward? Let’s say you need to get up at 7 a.m. and want to go to bed by 11 p.m. Remember, you start to build sleep pressure as soon as you wake up. Not a problem if your wake rhythm starts at 7 a.m. too. Everything works really, really well when these systems are coordinated. But, when your wake rhythm is shifted forward, say, to 9 a.m., now you have a mismatch between sleep pressure and wake drive. There is a gap between the intensity of these two counteracting forces, and that gap is maintained all day.

What do you experience when this happens? Day-long sleepiness and impaired alertness (and a host of other cognitive issues). But it doesn’t end there. Let’s look at what happens to sleep at night. In this scenario, you want to go to sleep at 11 p.m., and you’ve been sleepy all day, but since your wake rhythm is shifted forward, it’s at its most powerful at the time you want to go to bed. This can cause insomnia or it can make the first phase of sleep shallow. Incidentally, the first phase of sleep should be the deepest, and this depth of sleep corresponds with the fastest reduction of sleep pressure. If you don’t wear down sleep pressure efficiently, you have to sleep longer to do so. But if you don’t sleep longer, instead waking by an alarm as most people do, you wake the next day with “sleep debt,” which, as I described earlier, means you carry some of yesterday’s unresolved sleep pressure with you into tomorrow. So, a mistimed wake rhythm can either shorten your sleep by making it harder to go to bed at night or disrupt the depth of your sleep, either of which will cause sleep debt. What this means is that seven hours of sleep will feel more like six the next day. Conversely, you could get nine hours of sleep (which might be a lot for you) and still not feel well rested.

You can see why it’s difficult to directly answer the question, “How much sleep do I need?”

The big lesson you should learn here is to anchor your wake rhythm by maintaining smart light habits throughout the day, evening, and night. To do this, get at least 30 minutes of outdoor light exposure during the day. In the evening, dim all lights and reduce blue or full-spectrum light in your environment. At night, while you sleep, maintain a very dark room.

Determining Your Ideal Sleep Duration

Given that the timing of your wake rhythm can shift, and that this shift can then influence sleep duration ability and needs, sleep duration is an important part of the puzzle.

A series of early studies put subjects in a stimulation-free environment for 14 to 24 hours per day and then monitored daily sleep quantity. Each day for the first two days, subjects slept up to 12 to 20 hours! Then, on subsequent days, daily sleep times reduced until each subject arrived at a consistent daily sleep amount. Most people settled at an average of eight hours per night, although some settled closer to nine and others closer to seven. Once each subject settled at his or her stable daily average, after they had the chance to wear down additional sleep pressure, this average likely approximated their actual daily sleep requirement.

One way to interpret these findings is to assume that subjects entered these studies with extra sleep debt that built over time and could be attributed to less-than-optimal nightly sleep before they entered the study. When given way-more-than-normal time for sleep in the study, this built-up pressure caused long sleep periods in the first few days, and decreased over time to settle at a unique average for each person. Interestingly, although the volunteers reported feeling perfectly normal when they entered the study, after they reduced this extra sleep pressure, they had notable improvements in mood and energy levels.

What If I Can’t Sleep past 7 A.M.?

Baseline Reaction Time Score (3-Day average): 283 ms

Now that you have an idea of your average time in bed each night, add 30 to 60 minutes to that time by going to bed earlier. Try not to wake by an alarm during this experiment. Do not spend too much effort in evaluating how you feel during this three-week period. Instead, evaluate how you feel after three weeks have passed. The goal of the Dan’s Plan Restorative Sleeper concept is to wake refreshed and feel alert all day. How do you feel? Noticeably different and better? Also, do another three days of morning reaction time tests at humanBenchmark.com and see if your scores differ from your baseline. If you do see improvements, you’ve identified that you benefit by getting more sleep than your previous “normal.”

If you didn’t sleep any longer and don’t feel much different, then you may be getting all the sleep you need on a regular basis. Either way, you’ve added knowledge to your own sleep practice and can then make corresponding adjustments if need be.

I track my sleep nightly to help nudge me to do the behaviors necessary to get the sleep I need. Here is a screenshot of my last year of sleep data, indicating that I put my money where my mouth is.

Complete Sleep

This is a term I created to describe your ideal sleep duration. When trying to determine how much sleep you need, you also must understand that your own sleep needs can change from day to day, depending on factors like fighting an infection, recovering from a higher-than-normal level of physical activity or stress, and more. So, even if you were to determine a number you felt was representative of your ideal, the reality is that your sleep need can change night to night. My recommendation is the same: allow for more time in bed than sleep you need. If you need eight hours of time in bed, plan to spend 8.5 hours in bed so you can wake under your own volition and not by an alarm clock. If your body needs a bit more sleep that night, you’ll have planned for this to happen. Give your body the chance to get all the sleep that it wants to get, and you will be doing yourself a favor. Wake up on your own volition and not by external means. It’s fine to set an alarm as a stopgap but you should aim, on average, to wake naturally.

My view is that the reality of the modern world requires you to counteract its forces that impair health, and this is very true for sleep. Try the recommendations covered here and leave a comment reporting your findings after you’ve had the chance to let your experiment run for a few weeks.

End Note

This article does not address the all contingencies—especially sleep disorders and other conditions that disrupt sleep—that can alter what I discussed above. Additionally, the actual science is far more complex than what I presented here, but the message this article conveys, and the guidance it confers, is useful to help you view sleep in a healthy way, and ultimately, to maintain a healthy sleep practice throughout life.

How Much Sleep Do You Need? (Recommended Hours by Age)

Certified NeuroHealth Coach, specializing in Stress Management and Integrative Wellness Lifestyle for Work-Life Balance Read full profile

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” This seems to be a popular mantra amongst the go-getters of the world. In fact, I’d be willing to wager you’ve heard of at least one highly successful person who prides themselves on their ability to consistently crush goals with as little as three or four hours of sleep per night. [1]

You might have made a similar statement yourself at times when life feels too chaotic or exhilarating to even think of cutting into productive wakeful hours to catch up on some Zzzzs. If others are succeeding with minimal sleep, then perhaps you can, too. Yet, you may continue to wonder, “how much sleep do I need to maintain high-achiever status without snoozing my life away?”

The key to answering this question is to find your own personal sweet spot that factors in your optimal restorative sleep duration, current lifestyle, and sustainable level of daily function.

In this article, I’ll discuss a simple 3-step process to explore and discover how much sleep you need to achieve the deceptively elusive trifecta of high performance, happiness, and health.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Step 1: Determine Your Target

Sleep health resources, including the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and SleepFoundation.org, lay out basic tables of how much sleep you need with recommended hours by age. [2] [3]

The information varies ever so slightly from site to site, so for simplicity’s sake, I’ve decided to present it as follows:

These ranges may seem straightforward at first glance. However, when we attempt to integrate them into real life, they can end up feeling vague, which is less than helpful.

For example, let’s say you are an adult in the 18 to 64 age range. Your circumstances require that you get out of bed by 6 am each morning, so, according to these recommendations, you need to be asleep anywhere between 9 pm and 11 pm every night. Two hours difference might appear insignificant on paper, but when we are using this guideline to establish a sleep schedule, there’s actually quite a bit of wiggle room for personalized adjustment.

But how do you know what is the right bedtime for you?

When you are ready to be more deliberate and strategic with your sleep habits, there are some important questions to consider regarding your current bedtime. Do you choose according to a preconceived notion of what your bedtime should be? Do you decide based on how many tasks you could potentially complete during those two hours? Do you take a passive approach and just keep plugging away at to-dos until you start to doze off each night?

Next, ask yourself how well your existing routine (or lack thereof) has been working for you. Addressing this is the first step toward effective change. The following steps will help you to pinpoint your ideal number of sleep hours even further.

Step 2: Narrow Down Your Needs

Adding to the ambiguity of these sleep recommendation charts are the broad age ranges listed.

Like many people, I am more in-tune with my sleep needs now than when I was younger. In my 20s, life was all about making rent, partying with friends, and clambering to figure out my place and purpose in an adult world that I felt ill-equipped to navigate. Now, in my 40s, my lifestyle revolves around homeschooling a teen and tween, cultivating my gifts and skills to enhance my career, strengthening the bonds of a two-decade relationship with my partner, and learning how to master the advanced adulting skills I used to think were for “old people.”

Although I probably did need more sleep than I was getting in early adulthood, the stresses and responsibilities of my present lifestyle require even more intentional rest and recovery to thrive in all I do. If you take a moment to reflect, you might just find that the same rings true for you.

Consider all of the elements involved in your current stage of life. Do you still have children at home? Are they younger (and, therefore, highly demanding of your time and energy), or more self-sufficient?

Maybe your own kids are grown and now you’re a caregiver for your grandchildren. Perhaps you don’t have kids at all. You’re a caretaker for your aging parents, or you are one of the more than 10 percent of multigenerational caregiving adults in America who are responsible for the simultaneous care of your kids and your parents. Interestingly, this particular segment of the population is known to sleep almost a half-hour less each night than others in the same age group. [4]

Whatever’s left of your attention is probably scattered between personal and professional growth endeavors, working to create security for your family’s future, and deepening the relationships that matter most to you.

It may be tempting to look at all of these duties collectively as a valid reason to opt for less sleep. After all, it is often our busiest seasons that preclude us from having space in our schedules for rest, right? I invite you to look at this from a different angle. Getting adequate restorative sleep supports your physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual well-being. [5]

But you are not only responsible for that. Your well-being is paramount to sustaining the daily energy, performance, and patience required for showing up as your best self in every aspect of your life. When you consider the consequences of not getting sufficient sleep and assess honestly, it is easier to determine which end of the sleep range to aim for.

Step 3: Expose Sneaky Sleep Deprivation Symptoms

As you can see, guidelines are not always the rigid cookie-cutter rules we sometimes perceive or expect them to be. Instead, it can be beneficial to think of them as reference points that assist in creating your personal baseline.

With this in mind, how can you finetune even further? This is where a solid practice of self-awareness makes all the difference. Understanding how much sleep you need requires the ability to pay attention to your brain and body cues. These are sometimes extremely subtle. They can also be seemingly unrelated to sleep, so it takes commitment and a bit of patient curiosity to master.

Here are some signs that your current sleep regimen is not aligned with your needs:

If you struggle with any of these symptoms, this is a clear indication that your sleep needs are not being met. After taking the first two steps toward finding your ideal amount of sleep, it’s time to practice maintaining your decided bedtime and adjust as needed.

Keeping a sleep journal can help you to create clarity around any persistent symptoms. On a positive note, it can also spotlight improvements that are starting to develop. Either way, tracking is an important tool for dialing in your ideal amount of sleep.

Bottom Line

It is estimated that sleep-related problems affect 50 to 70 million Americans of all ages and socioeconomic classes. [6] These issues can range from major health disorders, like sleep apnea and chronic insomnia, to benign symptoms that we tend to accept as just a regular part of life as we age. However severe or mundane, these nuisances can negatively impact our productivity, mood, happiness, accomplishment, interpersonal skills, and overall quality of life.

By finetuning the professional guidelines in accordance with our own unique needs, we can ensure that we won’t succumb to the pitfalls associated with not getting as much sleep as we need.

Want to know one more perk to proactively crafting our optimal sleep routines? Adequate quality sleep supports our longevity. Thus, by releasing the misguided ideal of pushing off sleep for when we die, we can rest assured we’re helping to postpone that undesired state of eternal slumber for as long as possible.