I am often asked what’s normal in terms of sleep duration — how much sleep is normal
and how much sleep we need.
The short answer is that we all have an individual sleep requirement and the body will always
give us — at the very least — the minimum amount of sleep we need.
For the longer answer, keep watching, and I’ll talk about this some more in today’s
video!
Hi, I'm Martin Reed.
If you have insomnia, I offer sleep coaching programs that will give you all the skills
and support you need to enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life.
You can learn more at insomniacoach.com
Now, you’ve probably heard that we should all be aiming for something like eight hours
of sleep.
And, if you have chronic insomnia, that can be quite concerning since it can make you
think there’s something seriously wrong and that your health might be at risk if you
regularly get less than eight hours of sleep.
The fact of the matter is that we each have an individual sleep requirement, just as we
each have an individual shoe size, and this requirement can actually change from day to
day, just as the number of breaths we take can change from day to day.
So, the best way to think about sleep duration is that it’s something the body takes care
of all by itself.
The body will always give us the minimum amount of sleep we need.
Now, that’s not to say that we should be satisfied with getting, say, five hours of
sleep each night if that leads us to feel drained, exhausted, and lethargic.
However, if we can learn to trust our body’s natural ability to sleep and remove any effort
to sleep, we create the right conditions for more sleep to happen.
In other words, if we try to control sleep, or if we have a lot of sleep-related worry,
it can be very difficult to get more than the bare minimum of sleep and to start enjoying
the luxury of additional bonus sleep.
Now, did you notice that I mentioned it’s OK not to feel satisfied with five hours of
sleep each night if five hours of sleep leaves you feeling drained, exhausted, and lethargic?
Well that’s because, for some people, five hours of sleep is enough.
Some people can feel great after five hours of sleep and that’s all the sleep they need.
For someone like this, trying to get more than five hours of sleep would be a completely
fruitless endeavor — their body just will not consistently generate more than five hours
of sleep because they do not need more than five hours of sleep and their body would not
benefit from more than five hours of sleep.
Many people live happy, productive, and energetic lives with five hours of sleep each night.
Others with six.
Others with seven.
Others with eight.
A real difficulty I have when people ask me how much sleep they should be getting is that
it’s impossible to know for sure!
The most accurate answer to this question is that the amount of sleep you need is the
amount of sleep you get when you wake feeling refreshed and energetic enough to enjoy a
productive day.
This is, of course, very subjective — and that’s because sleep itself is very subjective!
If you feel you’re sleeping well, then you are almost certainly sleeping well — regardless
of how many hours of sleep you’re getting.
Now, let’s share some numbers — probably the real reason why you’re still watching
this video!
But first, it’s important to make a few points here — the first being that sleep
duration recommendations are typically aimed at people who are intentionally depriving
themselves of sleep!
So, when you see messages that tell you to aim for seven or eight hours of sleep, these
are aimed at people who are not giving themselves the opportunity to get seven or eight hours
of sleep — they might be working late into the night, getting out of bed really early,
and intentionally depriving themselves of sleep.
For these people, messages that encourage more sleep can be helpful.
But unfortunately, many people reading these messages are people who are giving themselves
a lot of opportunity for sleep and are placing a lot of importance on sleep.
This usually leads to sleep effort and worry, and this immediately makes sleep more difficult.
Secondly, it’s important to bear in mind that people who sleep well pay very little,
if any, attention to how much sleep they get.
So, when asked, they’ll typically think of when they go to bed at night, when they
start their day, and report the difference between the two times as the amount of sleep
they get.
This, of course, means that people without any concern about sleep typically report getting
more sleep than they are actually getting since people don’t fall asleep as soon as
their head hits the pillow and remain completely asleep throughout the entire night until the
second they get out of bed!
One study found that people who reported getting an average of roughly seven hours of sleep
were actually getting an average of six hours of sleep.
So, when your friends or family members tell you how much sleep they get, consider that
not only is their sleep requirement likely to be different to yours but that they might
also be overestimating the amount of sleep they actually get by as much as an hour!
It’s also important to note that all sleep duration numbers are based on averages — and
there will always be healthy, happy people who exist outside of these averages.
Although the World Health Organization puts the average height of a woman at 163 cm and
the average height of a man at 176.5 cm this does not mean that women taller or shorter
than 163 cm or men taller or shorter than 176.5 com have anything to worry about!
Additionally, just as a woman who isn’t 163 cm or a man who isn’t 176.5 cm won’t
find it very helpful to try to make themselves shorter or taller, someone who sleeps for
more or less than any published average sleep duration probably isn’t going to find it
very helpful to try to make themselves get more (or less) sleep to match that average!
Finally, it’s important to understand that our sleep changes as we get older.
We do not need (or get) the same sleep at the age of 70 that we got at the age of 20.
As we get older, we typically get less sleep and we typically get lighter sleep.
Now, that’s not to say we need to be satisfied with poor sleep as we get older — just that
our sleep changes as we get older.
So, it can be helpful to avoid the temptation to evaluate your sleep or to hold it to the
same standard as the sleep you got 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago!
So, with all that in mind, when sleep is measured objectively, for example in a sleep lab, we
often see sleep durations far closer to six hours than eight hours.
Although the National Sleep Foundation recommends that young adults and adults get between seven
and nine hours of sleep and older adults get between seven and eight hours of sleep, they
emphasize that those recommendations are not guidelines for those with a sleep disorder
such as insomnia and they also point out that for adults between 26 and 64 years of age,
six hours of sleep may be appropriate and for adults 65 and over as little as five hours
may be appropriate.
Ultimately, sleep duration is something we don’t have any control over.
Although we can deliberately deprive ourselves of sleep we can't deliberately generate more
sleep.
The body will always give us — at the very least — the minimum amount of sleep we need.
The less pressure we put on ourselves to sleep and the less effort we put into sleep, the
easier sleep becomes — and that’s when we give ourselves the opportunity to get more
sleep if the body wants it and needs it.
So I hope you found this short video helpful.
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I do try to share a new sleep snippet video each week.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or suggestions for a future video, please
leave a comment below or you can email me directly.
My email address is hello@insomniacoach.com.
Thanks for watching, and — as always — I'd like to leave you with this important reminder.
You can sleep!