How much sleep is good for health?
Adults should sleep 7 or more hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health. Sleeping less than 7 hours per night on a regular basis is associated with adverse health outcomes, including weight gain and obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and stroke, depression, and increased risk of death.
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.
People should aim for 7–9 hours of sleep each night. However, the best times to go to sleep and wake up will vary among individuals. Many different factors, including a person's age, work schedule, and sleep patterns, affect the ideal sleep time.
How Much Sleep Is Too Much? Sleep needs can vary from person to person, but in general, experts recommend that healthy adults get an average of 7 to 9 hours per night of shuteye. If you regularly need more than 8 or 9 hours of sleep per night to feel rested, it might be a sign of an underlying problem, Polotsky says.
We often say that people need 7-9 hours of sleep, but some people require more sleep to feel rested. “Long sleepers” are people who regularly sleep more than the average person their age. As adults, their nightly length of sleep tends to be 10 to 12 hours. This sleep is very normal and of a good quality.
There are many reasons why you might be waking up too early. They include external factors, such as environmental disturbances like temperature, light, and noise. They also include internal factors, like your circadian rhythm, sleep disorders like sleep apnea, and/or medical issues, like heartburn.
The Best Time to Wake Up Depends on You
They're going to bed at 8 PM to get adequate sleep, or they're running on fewer hours than required. A 4 AM wake-up time will be good for you in the same way that an 8 AM wake-up time is. As long as you get enough restful sleep, you shouldn't worry about the best time to wake up.
A good night's sleep is when you fall asleep quite easily, do not fully wake up during the night, do not wake up too early, and feel refreshed in the morning. Regularly having difficulty falling asleep or sleeping through the night is not normal for healthy people of any age.
Try waking up daily between 6:30 to 7 am, said Dr Bhavsar. “Waking up before/with the sun provides you with energy, positivity and all things beneficial for your mental and physical health as it brings balance in one's constitution.
If you're oversleeping
If you consistently need to sleep more than 8 or 9 hours a night, you may be oversleeping. This can be caused by a number of conditions, including depression, thyroid conditions, and heart disease. Some medications may also cause oversleeping.
Why am I always tired?
Many possible factors cause chronic fatigue, such as underlying medical conditions, nutrient deficiencies, sleep disturbances, caffeine intake, and chronic stress. If you're experiencing unexplained fatigue, it's important to talk with your doctor to find the cause.
Research bears out the connection between too much sleep and too little energy. It appears that any significant deviation from normal sleep patterns can upset the body's rhythms and increase daytime fatigue.

'Speculative' Results? There was a 65% higher death rate for people who regularly slept less than 5 hours on all nights, compared with people who regularly slept 6 to 7 hours per night. There was a 25% higher death rate for people who averaged 8 hours or more of sleep on all nights.
In October of 2017, Wyatt Shaw from Kentucky fell asleep for 11 days. He was just seven years old and doctors ran several tests with no conclusive explanations.
For adults, getting less than seven hours of sleep a night on a regular basis has been linked with poor health, including weight gain, having a body mass index of 30 or higher, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and depression.
If your school or work schedule requires you to be up between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m., these are the suggested bedtimes: School-age children should go to bed between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. Teens should try to go to bed between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. Adults should try to go to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m.
People who go to bed late and wake up late can often experience health problems because their body clock does not align with the regular rhythms of modern society. However, a new study suggests that a few easy routine adjustments could go a long way for night owls.
Sleeping 5 hours or fewer every night could put you at risk of multiple chronic diseases: study. A new study using data that spans 25 years has found that getting just five hours of sleep or fewer every night is associated with a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with multiple chronic diseases.
Is 5 hours of sleep OK? 5 hours of sleep is not OK. Studies show getting five hours or less sleep puts you at greater risk of having two or more long-term health conditions.
Recommended Hours of Sleep by Age
Older adults require seven to eight hours of sleep per 24-hour period. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers less than seven hours per night to be short sleep. cdc.gov , which means for most people, six hours of sleep is not enough.
Is 5 hours it sleep enough?
Sometimes life calls and we don't get enough sleep. But five hours of sleep out of a 24-hour day isn't enough, especially in the long term. According to a 2018 study of more than 10,000 people, the body's ability to function declines if sleep isn't in the seven- to eight-hour range.
Older adults need about the same amount of sleep as all adults—7 to 9 hours each night. But, older people tend to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier than they did when they were younger. There are many reasons why older people may not get enough sleep at night.
For most people, 4 hours of sleep per night isn't enough to wake up feeling rested and mentally alert, no matter how well they sleep. There's a common myth that you can adapt to chronically restricted sleep, but there's no evidence that the body functionally adapts to sleep deprivation.
Age Group | Recommended Hours of Sleep Per Day | |
---|---|---|
Newborn | 0–3 months | 14–17 hours (National Sleep Foundation)1 No recommendation (American Academy of Sleep Medicine)2 |
Adult | 18–60 years | 7 or more hours per night3 |
61–64 years | 7–9 hours1 | |
65 years and older | 7–8 hours1 |
If you nap in the morning, the sleep consists primarily of light NREM (and possibly REM) sleep. In contrast, napping later in the evening, as your sleep drive increases, will comprise more deep sleep. This, in turn, may disrupt your ability to fall asleep at night. Therefore, napping late in the day is discouraged.
This is because our brain is constantly forming new connections while we are awake. The longer we are awake, the more active our minds become. Scientists believe that this is partly why sleep deprivation has been shown to reduce symptoms of depression. However, there are negative outcomes of this, too.
It boils down to your biological sleep need. Seven to nine hours may be the gold standard for a solid night's kip, but your personal requirements are determined by genetics. A handful of bright-eyed outliers benefit from a mutated gene, hDEC2, which allows their body to thrive after just four hours between the sheets.
Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep each night. Here are some tips to help: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends. Find ways to relax before bedtime each night.
The longest recorded time without sleep is approximately 264 hours, or just over 11 consecutive days. Although it's unclear exactly how long humans can survive without sleep, it isn't long before the effects of sleep deprivation start to show. After only three or four nights without sleep, you can start to hallucinate.
- Stick to a sleep schedule. Set aside no more than eight hours for sleep. ...
- Pay attention to what you eat and drink. Don't go to bed hungry or stuffed. ...
- Create a restful environment. Keep your room cool, dark and quiet. ...
- Limit daytime naps. ...
- Include physical activity in your daily routine. ...
- Manage worries.
How many hours does Elon Musk sleep?
He says he likes getting around six to six-and-a-half hours of sleep per night. Sleeping in is not an option for him, saying it affects his performance more than if he sleeps less. After getting up, he showers, dresses, and enjoys a morning cup of coffee.
Having trouble getting that ideal 8 hours of sleep? So is everyone else. But there's some good news — you may only need 7 hours of it. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society (SRS) have issued a new recommendation, saying seven is the magic sleep number for most healthy adults.
Not surprisingly, test subjects who slept the recommended eight hours a night had the highest performance ratings. Those who slept six hours a night did fine until nearing the end of the study, around day 10, and those functioning on just four hours of sleep were noticeably worse each day.