How much sleep do we need?
Seven to eight hours a night of unbroken sleep is something the majority of us dream about. Should we worry if we’re not getting that? Surely five hours is ok and we can catch-up over the weekend?
It is becoming more apparent from research that good quality sleep is imperative to living a longer, healthy life. Every major system in the body suffers when sleep becomes short. Matthew Walker wrote an entire book entitled “Why we sleep” in which he describes twenty large studies that report the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. He asserts that well-known diseases like dementia, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer all have causal links to a lack of sleep. Even when various other risk factors like smoking, exercise and BMI were taken into account, a lack of sleep still on its own has a significant effect. For example, in one study adults who were forty-five years or older who slept less than 6 hours a night are 200 percent more likely to have a heart attack or stroke during their lifetime compared to those sleeping seven to eight hours.
Are you getting the right amount of sleep? How easy or difficult do you find it?
Link to Matthew Walker's book:-