Can't Sleep? > How much sleep do we need?

How much sleep do we need?

This depends mainly on how old we are.

Babies sleep for about 17 hours each day.
Older children only need 9 or 10 hours a night.
Most adults need around 7-8 hours sleep each night.
Older people need the same amount of sleep, but will often only have one period of deep sleep during the night, usually in the first 3 or 4 hours, after which they wake more easily. We also tend to dream less as we get older.

There are also differences between people
of the same age
Most of us need 7-8 hours a night, but some (a few) people can get by with only 3 hours a night. It's not helpful to regularly sleep more than 7-8 hours each night.

The short periods of being awake feel much longer than they really are. So it's easy to feel that we are not sleeping as much as we actually are.

Having enough sleep means going about one's business until the end of the day without feeling drowsy. If you push the snooze button of your alarm clock every morning, you may require additional minutes (hours?!) of sleep.

Remember:
If we are not getting enough sleep, we find our brains struggling to cope, our memory slipping, our concentration below par, our muscles fatigued, our skin dull and our eyes lack-lustre.