Studies suggest that some people can function on very little sleep, but it is unclear whether these people would function better if they allowed themselves to get more.
Getting thee hours or less is not going to allow people to function as best as they good. These people may be getting by, but studies reveal getting by and functioning are two completely different things.
Dr Robert Basner, Director of the sleep centre at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Centre said: "We don’t have a lot of data on what exactly the best amount of sleep for a person is, but it’s most certainly individual.”
He said a good way to know what you need is to ask yourself how much sleep you normally had when on vacation or when an alarm clock was not waking you up because of work or other obligations.
Dr Basner said the number from such an exercise would be higher than in reality because most people were always chasing lost sleep.
Philip Gehrman, clinical director of the behavioural sleep medicine program at the University of Pennsylvania said we don’t have a test to see if people are getting enough sleep. He said he told his patients if they didn’t feel fully rested during the day then they probably need more sleep.
He said there were people who could get by on 6 hours or a bit less and these were known as short sleepers.
He noted that when many people who claim not to sleep during the night are observed in a sleep lab, parts of their brain shut down, so although they are no longer fully conscious, they might believe they are.
Therefore, Gehrman said if people claim to be sleeping one or two hours and they were functioning well they were probably sleeping longer.
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