As we get older, we generally get less sleep - average sleep durations fall to around six-and-a-half hours between the ages of 55 and 60, while a healthy 80-year-old will typically sleep around six hours each night, according to the IQWiG (Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care).Īll sleep duration guidelines and recommendations are based on averages - and, by definition, this means that there will always be people who are outside these averages and still living happy and healthy lives. Typical sleep cycle patterns change throughout our lives, too. An expert panel has since then backed the idea of the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep based on reviewing research studies about sleep duration and key health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pain and depression. One theory is that it may have come from the idea that a day should be split into thirds - one-third is to be spent working, one-third is to be spent on recreation, and the remaining third is reserved for sleep. Nobody knows where the suggestion we should all be aiming for eight hours of sleep came from. Yes, some people might need eight hours - but they would be in the minority. Some of us might only need five hours of sleep. We all have an individual sleep requirements. You probably don’t need eight hours of sleep. That’s why staying asleep throughout the night is key to getting the REM sleep you need. The initial REM sleep phase lasts only about 10 minutes, but the ones that follow become longer and longer. So if you sleep 8 hours every night, approximately 2 hours of those are REM sleep. On average, about 20-25% of our sleep is REM sleep. However, our body needs less deep sleep as we age. So if you sleep 8 hours every night, 1-2 of those are deep sleep (around 20-40 minutes in every sleep cycle). On average, about 10-20% of our sleep is deep sleep. On average, we spend 60% of our sleep between stages 1 and 2. Light sleep makes up the largest stretch of the sleep cycle. When sleep pressure is low, we are more likely to wake and not fall back to sleep, because that drive to sleep is no longer as intense as it was at the start of the night. Sleep pressure builds the longer we are awake. Very few of us fall asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow - and if we do, this suggests that we are excessively sleepy. A typical adult can expect to fall asleep somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes after getting into bed. Being awake is part of sleep tooįalling asleep isn’t the equivalent of flicking an off switch - we don’t suddenly go from being awake to being asleep, and when we are asleep we aren’t “switched off”. Since we are cycling between lighter and deeper sleep throughout the night, it makes sense that we are going to wake a few times during the night - often during the lighter stages of sleep. In other words, the body is able to compensate for sleep loss all by itself. This is probably why we can be remarkably productive and reasonably energetic after a day (or more) of very little sleep. When we are sleep deprived, the body will prioritize deep sleep and REM sleep.
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