The sleep rewuirement for each person depend on many factors, including age. For example, in general:
- Infants require about 16 hours a day
- Teenagers need about 9 hours on average
- Most adults need 7 to 8 hours at night for the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 5 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day
- Women in the first 3 months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual
However, experts say that if you feel drowsy the day, even during boring activities, you haven’t had enough sleep.
The amoung of sleep a person needs also increases if he or she has been deprived of sleep in previous days. Getting too little sleep creates a “sleep debt,” which is much like being overdrawn at a bank. Eventually, your body will demand that the debt be repaid. We don’t seem to adapt to getting less sleep than we need, while w may get used to a sleep-depriving schedule, our judgment, reaction time, and other functions are still impaired.
NREM: 75% of night*
Stage 1 – Light sleep; between being awake and entering sleep
Stage 2 – Onset of sleep; becoming disengaged with the environment; breathing and heart rate are regular and body temperature goes down.
Stage 3 & 4 – Deepest and most restorative sleep; blood pressure drops; breathing slower; energy regained; and hormones are released for growth and development.
REM: 25% of night – first occurs about 90 minutes after falling asleep and increases over later part of night; necessary for providing energy to brain and body; brain is active and dreams occur as eyes dart back and forth; bodies become immobile and relaxed; muscles shut down; breathing and heart rate may become irregular; important to daytime performance and may contribute to memory consolidation. *Time spent in these states and stages of sleep varies by age. As we sleep, we pass through different states and stages of sleep – more likely to be experienced with continuous sleep. This “sleep architecture” follows a predictable pattern of REM (rapid-eye movement) and NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep throughout a typical 8-hour period. Each of these states alternates every 90 minutes. Both states are important to experiencing quality sleep. Again, getting the right mix and enough of both REM and NREM sleep will help you mantain your natural sleep architecture and have restful and restroative sleep.
Sleep deprivation, a sleep disorder characterized by having too little sleep, can be either chronic or acute. Long-term sleep deprivation causes death in lab animals. A Chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight gain. Generally, lack of sleep may result in:
- aching muscles
- dizziness and nausea
- headaches
- hallucinations
- hand tremors
- irritablilty
- memory lapses or loss
- obesity
- yawning
- temper tantrums in children
- symptoms similar to: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) and psychosis
In addition, studies show that lack of sleep can have long lasting negative effects on growth, the healing process and can have the same hazardous effects as being drunk.
Sleep is as essential to you as food, air, and water. Yet sometime in your life you may experience difficulty in sleeping ( about one in three adults report some degree of insomnia at any one time). If you have trouble sleeping, several changes in lifestyle can help you regain a satisfactory sleep pattern. Experiment with these helpful strategies offered here.
1. Never oversleeep
Never oversleep because of a poor night’s sleep. This is the most crucial rule. Get up at about the same time every day, especially on the morning after you’ve lost sleep. Sleeping late for just a couple of days can reset your body clock to a different cycle — you’ll be getting sleepy later and waking up later.
2. Set your body clock
Light helps start your body clock to its active daytime phase. So when you get up, go outside and get some sunlight. Or it that’s difficult, turn on all the lights in your room.
3. Exercise
Keep physically active during the day. This is especially important the day after a bad night’s sleep. When you sleep less, you should be more active during the day. Being less active is one of the worst things an insomniac can do. Strenuous exercise (brisk walking, swimming, jogging, squash, etc) in late afternoon seems to promote more restful sleep. Also, insomniacs tend to be too inactive a couple of hours before bed. Do some gentle exercise. A stretching routine has helped many people.
4. Don’t nap
Do not take any naps the day after you’ve lost sleep. When you feel sleepy, get up and do something. Walk, make the bed, or do you errands. While studying, get up regulary (every 30 minutes, or more often if necessary) to walk around your room. Do a gentle stretch. That will increase the flow of oxygen to your brain and help you to be more alert.
5. Set a bedtime schedule using these two steps:
First, try to go to bed at about the same time every night. Be regular. Most people get hungry at 7 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. because they’ve eaten at those times for years. Going to bed at about the same time every night can make sleep as regular as hunger.
Second, go to bed later when you are having trouble sleeping. If you’re only getting five hours of sleep a night during your insomnia peroid, don’t go to bed until just five hours before your wake-up time. For instance, if you’ve been waking up at 7 a.m., don’t go to bed until 2 a.m. No naps! Make the time you spend in bed sleep time. Still some insomnia? Go to bed proportionately later. Then, as your time in bed becomes good sleep time, move your going-to-bed time back 15-30 minutes a night and do that for a week or so.
This is the opposite of what we want do do: we want to go to bed earlier to make up the lost sleep. Learn to do what many sleep laboratories tech — go to bed later the night after losing sleep.
6. Develop a bedtime routine
Stop studying and don’t get into any stimulating discussions or activites a half hour or hour before bed. Do something that’s relaxing — read “light” material, play your guitar, listen to music that is quiet, catch a mindless TV show. Some people sleep better in a clean neat environment, so they like to straighten and clean their room just before going to bed. Find your own sleep-promoting routine.
7. Warm bath, yes; shower, no
Take a long, hot bath before going to bed. This helps relax and soothe your muscles. Showers, on the other hand, tend to wake you up. Insomniacs should avoid showers in the evening.
8. List “gotta do’s”
Keep a pad and pencil handy. IF you think of something you want to remenber, jot it down. Then let the thought go. There will be no need to lie awake worrying about remember it.
9. Stretch and relaxation
Some people find that a gentle stretching routine for several minutes just before getting to bed helps induce sleep. Others practice relaxation techniques. Libraries or bookstores have books on developing stretching or relaxation routines.
10. To eat or not to eat
Some sleep centers recommend a light breakfast and lunch to help you stay alert during the day. They advise you to make the evening mean the major meal of the day. Schedule it a least four hours before bedtime so your digestive system will be reasonably quiet by the time your’re ready to sleep.
11. Warm milk?
It helps some people to have a glass at bedtime. Milk has an essential amino acid, trypophan, which stimulates the brain chemical serotonin, believed to play a key role in inducing sleep. A piece of wheat bread will help the tryptohpan to be absorbed.
12. Avoid caffeine and tyrosine-rich foods from late afternoon on
Caffeine, a chemical in coffee, colas, tea, chocolate, etc., causes hyperactivity and wakefulness. Some sleep laboratories encourage people to avoid such tyrosinladen foods as fermented cheeses (cheddar is about the worst; cottage cheese and yourt are OK), ripe avocados, some imported beers, and fermented meats )bologna, perpperoni, salami). Also red wines, especially chianti.
13. Cut down on alcohol
Alcohol might help you get to sleep, but it results in shallow and distrubed sleep, abnormal dream periods, and frequent early morning awakening.
1. Sleeping pills
Reaons to avoid sleeping pills include disturbed sleep patterns, short-term amnesia, and impaired motor skills. Research shows that benzodiazepine hypnotics, the most commonly prescribed sleeping pills, impair short-term memory, reaction time, thinking, and cisual-motor coordination (such as driving)