Even if one sleeps only an hour and a half less than necessary, attention during the day is reduced by about one third. Excessive sleepiness during the day impairs memory, the ability to think and process information, and contributes to an increased risk of workplace injuries. Getting enough quality sleep protects against stress, infections and diseases, including heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Quality sleep strengthens mental abilities and improves the ability to make the right decisions.
How much sleep does a person need?
Although many factors influence how much sleep a person needs, the usual recommendation is eight hours. For some people, only five and a half hours of sleep is enough, and there are also those who sleep up to nine and a half hours a night. Among the factors on which the need for sleep depends, the most important are genetic inheritance, sleep hygiene, sleep quality and daily rhythm. It is also necessary to take into account factors that have a great influence on the length and quality of sleep, for example smoking, alcohol consumption, intense exercise, habits of eating or watching television in bed, the length of time a person spends exposed to intense light (working, for example, on computer until late at night), etc.
All of this together determines how much sleep is needed for a person to wake up refreshed and rested. It is interesting to mention the way in which the need for eight hours of sleep was determined. A classic study involved researchers placing a volunteer subject in a windowless room where the light source could be controlled. The light was on for 16 hours and off for eight hours, but the subject could also turn it on and off when he wanted to.
Before conducting the experiment, the subject usually slept six and a half hours a night. On the first experimental night, he slept eight hours, the second 10, the third 12, and the fourth 14 hours. Over the next seven nights, the length of sleep slowly decreased, to stop at eight hours and 13 minutes. This experiment was repeated many times, in which different groups of people were examined, but the results were always similar, and thus the need for eight hours of sleep per night was established. But, as already mentioned, individual sleep needs vary considerably.
How to determine how much this individual need is?
First you need to consider the bank account, but this time it's about the dream bank, and see if there is any debt that needs to be settled. During the day, eight hours are deducted from that account, which represents a debt. During the night, this debt is settled, but if a person sleeps, for example, only six and a half hours, the debt of one and a half hours remains outstanding.
If the same thing happens five nights in a row, one whole night of sleep is lost! It will then take the next few nights for the debt to be paid back. A simple test can be used to determine whether someone is getting enough sleep or not. Starting from Sunday, you should refrain from consuming alcohol, caffeine and cigarettes, and go to bed at approximately the same time every night and sleep for seven to eight hours without interruption for the next six nights.
On Saturday morning, you should not set an alarm, but continue to sleep until you wake up spontaneously. If the sleep extends beyond the waking time during the previous week, it means that the sleeping time was insufficient, that is, that a debt was created in the sleep bank.
What affects good sleep?
The consequences of disturbed sleep are most felt after waking up, which is accompanied by fatigue, drowsiness and a hangover.
Four general areas are important for sleep hygiene: circadian rhythms, the aging process, psychological factors that cause stress and increase the number of awakenings during the night, and common social or recreational drugs such as nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol. The daily rhythm is the cycle of day and night that lasts 24 hours and has a great influence on when, how and how much a person sleeps. The more stable the daily rhythm, the better the sleep.
Various factors can affect the change of the daily rhythm, such as sleeping during the day, the time when you go to sleep at night, exercise, and especially exposure to light, which includes everything from traveling through different time zones to the previously mentioned working on the computer until late at night. Aging also plays a role in sleep and sleep hygiene. After the age of forty, there is a change in the rhythm of sleep, and a greater frequency of waking up at night than in youth.
The more often a person wakes up at night, the more likely he will wake up tired and sleep-deprived in the morning. Psychological factors that cause stress, such as deadlines and crises at work, exams or marital discord, make it difficult to fall asleep or cause you to wake up during the night.
It is important to know that it takes some time for a person to relax after daily activities. If until the moment when one goes to sleep a person is working or thinking about what happened to him during the past day or planning the next day's activities, it is not possible to simply "switch off" and fall blissfully asleep in the same second.
It is very important to come up with a ritual before going to sleep that will break the connection between everything that causes stress and the moment you go to sleep. This may be especially important when dealing with children. The ritual can last from ten minutes to an hour, and its purpose is relaxation, which can be achieved, for example, by reading a light book, meditating or taking a warm bath, after which the sleep will certainly be better.
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