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Common knowledge dictates that you should get at least eight hours of sleep per night if you want to be operating at your peak during the waking hours of the day. However, scientists who conducted a massive experiment have countered that narrative while revealing a “sweet spot” they say most people should aim for.
Most people will devote around a third of their lives to sleeping, and those periods of rest are an essential aspect of being a functioning human being.
Anyone who’s found themselves dealing with exhaustion is very aware of the ramifications of failing to get enough shut-eye (there’s a reason sleep deprivation is widely viewed as a form of literal torture), and while you can attempt to stave off the effects by slamming caffeine, that only does so much to delay the reckoning you’ll eventually have to grapple with.
There are some people who are able to function on an amount of rest that the average person would view as unhealthy, which includes the “sleep hackers” who’ve attempted to harness unorthodox patterns in an attempt to maximize productivity.
Eight hours a night is commonly cited as the ideal target, but new evidence suggests you might be doing yourself a favor if you’re falling slightly short of that goal.
How much sleep should you really get each night? A new study asserts this is the window to aim for
The notion that people should get eight hours of sleep each night is a relatively modern phenomenon that some experts argue can be traced back to the working schedules that formed during the Industrial Revolution. That number emerged as a popular target in the 19th century, and that’s remained the case while sparking plenty of debate about its merits.
There have been countless studies that have attempted to determine how much sleep the average person should actually get, including one that asserts people who rest for seven hours live longer than those who sleep for longer or shorter periods of time.
Now, we’ve gotten a new one courtesy of a paper that was recently published in the scientific journal Nature, which chronicles the results of a study of approximately 500,000 volunteers that was conducted with self-reported data compiled by the UK Biobank.
The study was led by Dr. Junhao Wen, who serves as an assistant professor of radiology at Columbia University. He and his team attempted to link sleep with the aging of various organs in the body, and after crunching the numbers, they determined people who hit the “sweet spot” of between 6.4 and 7.8 hours of sleep each had better-functioning immune systems and healthier brains and hearts.
The study noted there was a slight difference between men and women (the former had optimal brain health when averaging 7.7 hours of sleep, while the latter achieved the same at 7.82 hours), and the researchers noted the results were primarily derived from data concerning people of White European descent.
At the end of the day (or, perhaps more accurately, night), your body should be able to tell you how much sleep it really needs, but having some guidance like this probably isn’t going to hurt.