The Importance of Getting Enough Sleep (and What Happens If You Don’t)
According to Scientific American, if you live to be eighty, you’ll spend approximately twenty-six years of your life sleeping—assuming you get enough sleep. How much is enough? Many doctors believe that most people need between seven and eight hours each night. Too little sleep has consequences, including lapses of attention, delayed reaction time, headaches, and accidents. There’s even evidence that sleep loss may increase the risk of obesity and diabetes.
Making matters worse in the view of many sleep professionals is the prevailing myth that you can make up for lost sleep by sleeping later over the weekend. It seems that extra sleep on the weekend isn’t adequate to eliminate the cumulative effects that sleep debt from the workweek has on a person’s health. In experiments on sleep debt, "recovery" sleep didn’t fully reverse declines in performance, especially for test subjects who had been forced to sleep only three to five hours a night. And cognitive impairments lasted until a week later, even among those who reported no sleepiness.
Unfortunately, though, it’s hard to know whom to believe. Research on one million people contradicted those findings with data suggesting that if you sleep five hours, you’re better off than if you sleep eight. Furthermore, there is no statistical health-related reason to sleep longer than six and a half hours per night.
Still, there is no "magic number" of hours of sleep that’s best for everyone. Sleep needs are individual; you and a coworker of the same age and gender may need different amounts of sleep to function at your best. Furthermore, the amount of sleep you need varies over the course of your lifetime depending on your age, activity level, general health, lifestyle habits, and the stresses you face on a day-to-day basis.
By the way, the idea that we should sleep in eight-hour chunks is relatively recent. Research suggests that relieved of the responsibilities of daily life, our bodies would naturally settle into a split sleep schedule. This is known as biphasic sleep, referring to having two sleep cycles, such as from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and then 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
This type of sleep schedule isn’t exactly practical for most people, but it certainly helps to make the case for napping. The more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, but an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore our brain power. Some managers view napping during the workday as a productivity buster and a sign of laziness, but many others are gradually accepting that napping can help recharge a tired mind, boost energy, and increase overall productivity. Just ask Dilbert’s coworkers.
