How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Last two weeks, I had been in discussion [+/- argument] with some friends doing Medicine and Surgery, about how much sleep do we need.Most of them said 8 hours...and they were really surprised when I said that I usually only sleep for 5 hours, most of the days.I tried to argue with them by saying that 8 hours are the amount needed by a baby, but today I just found out that I was totally wrong.Being conscious with the amount of time I spent for sleeping, I browsed some webs just to find out the truth about one of the most pleasant activities in our lives: Lets reveal the truth!


1. The eight hour myth is just a myth! That is just an average amount for adults, generally.


2. Either we are short sleepers or long sleepers, our genes determined that!


3. Changes need across a lifetime

·                        Infants (3-11 months) need 14-15 hours

·                        Toddlers (12-35 months) need 12-14 hours

·                        Preschoolers (3-6 years) need 11-13 hours

·                        School age (6-10 years) need 10-11 hours

·                        Adolescents (11-18 years) need 9.25 hours

·                        Adults need an average of 8 hours

·                        Elderly adults may need less

(which category do I fall in to???)

4. By not getting enough sleep, we accumulate sleep debt! A debt needs to be paid off!Or, we end up being:

·                        Daytime sleepiness (not really..just in some boring lectures)

·                        Fatigue (Yes, but only on Monday and Friday, the blues..:P )

·                        Difficulty concentrating (Perhaps? Susah betul nak ingat ni!)

·                        Poor thinking (Definitely! I know the answer, I just couldn't think of a way to get there!)

·                        Increased risk of accidents (Never happened yet, alhamdulillah)

·                        Other health complications (Depression?)

5.Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, California, has conducted a study in 2002,where he compared death rates among more than 1 million American adults who, as part of a study on cancer prevention, reported their average nightly amount of sleep:

Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don't live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.

Morbidity  is also "U-shaped" in the sense that both very short sleep and very long sleep are associated with many illnesses—with depression, with obesity—and therefore with heart disease—and so forth.

(Ermm...I won't live quite as long and I am associated with many illnesses, particularly depression and obesity)

Okay, need to sleep now, time left - only for 6 hours sleep.Will discuss more later.Even calling mak is postponed for tomorrow!