Young adults should aim to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night, as recommended by the National Sleep Foundation. While 6 hours of sleep is technically adequate, research shows that not getting enough sleep can have a negative impact on your ability to communicate, solve problems, and remember information. This means that if you usually go to bed only six hours before the alarm clock goes off, you are not living your best life or getting the full benefits of sleep. Sleeping pills are fine for occasional use, but over time they can lose their effect and you can become dependent on them for sleep. Studies have shown that those who slept eight hours a night performed the best on average.
Interestingly, subjects who showed a decline in cognitive performance after 10 days of sleeping six hours a night did not seem to be aware of the changes, according to their “sleepiness ratings”.Your body needs time to relax and slow down in order to achieve a deeper, more restful sleep. To determine if you are getting enough sleep, pay attention to how you feel. Consider turning off your phone, dimming the lights, and reading a book before bed to help your mind drift off. Subjects in a laboratory sleep study who were allowed to sleep only six hours a night for two weeks at a time performed as poorly as those who were forced to stay awake for two days at a time. The six-hour sleep group did not rate their sleepiness as bad, even when their cognitive performance was declining.
This is concerning because this is the time when the body eliminates waste from the brain, which may be why too little sleep is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. Not surprisingly, those who slept the recommended eight hours a night had the highest performance ratings. Sleep deprivation can also affect the body's ability to regulate essential functions such as appetite control, the immune system, metabolism, and body weight. In one study published in the journal Sleep, 48 adults were restricted to a maximum of four, six or eight hours of sleep per night for two weeks; an unlucky subset were deprived of sleep for three days in a row. It is important to note that how much sleep you need may vary depending on how long it takes you to fall asleep, how often you wake up during the night, how rested you feel the next day, and how much time you spend in different stages of sleep. Therefore, it is essential that you pay attention to your body's needs and get enough restful sleep each night.
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