Queen
06-11-2008, 10:33 AM
Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hours or more, or less than 6.5 hours, they don't live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hours. Sleeping 8.5 hours might really be a little worse than sleeping five.
One of the reasons I like to publicize these facts is that I think we can prevent a lot of insomnia and distress just by telling people that short sleep is OK. We've all been told you ought to sleep eight hours, but there was never any evidence. A very common problem we see at sleep clinics is people who spend too long in bed. They think they should sleep eight hours or nine hours, so they spend eight or nine hours in bed, with the result that they have trouble falling asleep and they wake up a lot during the night. Oddly enough, a lot of the problem [of insomnia] is lying in bed awake worrying about it. There have been many controlled studies in the United States, Great Britain and other parts of Europe that show that an insomnia treatment that involves getting out of bed when you're not sleepy, and restricting your time in bed, actually helps people to sleep more. They get over their fear of the bed. They get over the worry, and they become confident that when they go to bed they will sleep. So spending less time in bed actually makes sleep better. It is in fact a more powerful and effective long-term treatment for insomnia than sleeping pills.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080610/hl_time/howmuchsleepdoyoureallyneed
One of the reasons I like to publicize these facts is that I think we can prevent a lot of insomnia and distress just by telling people that short sleep is OK. We've all been told you ought to sleep eight hours, but there was never any evidence. A very common problem we see at sleep clinics is people who spend too long in bed. They think they should sleep eight hours or nine hours, so they spend eight or nine hours in bed, with the result that they have trouble falling asleep and they wake up a lot during the night. Oddly enough, a lot of the problem [of insomnia] is lying in bed awake worrying about it. There have been many controlled studies in the United States, Great Britain and other parts of Europe that show that an insomnia treatment that involves getting out of bed when you're not sleepy, and restricting your time in bed, actually helps people to sleep more. They get over their fear of the bed. They get over the worry, and they become confident that when they go to bed they will sleep. So spending less time in bed actually makes sleep better. It is in fact a more powerful and effective long-term treatment for insomnia than sleeping pills.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080610/hl_time/howmuchsleepdoyoureallyneed