To determine how much sleep you need, it’s important to assess not only where you fall on the “sleep needs spectrum,” but also to examine what lifestyle factors are affecting the quality and quantity of your sleep such as work schedules, work schedules and stress. Sleep is a vital indicator of overall health and well-being.
How Much Sleep Do We Really Need: Revisited
The National Sleep Foundation released the results of a world-class study that took more than two years of research to complete – an update to our most-cited guidelines on how much sleep you really need at each age
- Eighteen leading scientists and researchers came together to form an expert panel tasked with updating the official recommendations.
Improve Your Sleep Today: Make Sleep a Priority
Like good diet and exercise, sleep is a critical component to overall health.
- To pave the way for better sleep, follow these simple yet effective healthy sleep tips: Stick to a sleep schedule, even on weekends, sleep on a comfortable mattress and pillows, and avoid hidden sleep stealers like alcohol and caffeine.
How Much Sleep Do You Need?
Though research cannot pinpoint an exact amount of sleep need by people at different ages, our new chart, which features minimum and maximum ranges for health as well as “recommended” windows, identifies the “rule-of-thumb” amounts experts agree upon.
- Nevertheless, it’s important to pay attention to your own individual needs by assessing how you feel on different amounts of sleep.
Sleep Time Recommendations: What’s Changed?
The NSF has committed to regularly reviewing and providing scientifically rigorous recommendations.
- A new range, “may be appropriate,” has been added to acknowledge the individual variability in appropriate sleep durations. The recommendations now define times as either (a) recommended, (b) may be appropriate for some individuals, (c) not recommended.
