Ideal sleep duration: how many hours should you sleep?

What is the ideal sleep duration?

There Sleep duration varies from person to person. There National Sleep Foundation, an American organization that encourages the public to understand sleep and its disorders, established in 2017 ideal sleep durations according to age, validated by a scientific committee. “This work gives good landmarks to find out how much sleep you need according to age, but of course, these are just averages: some of us are satisfied with less, while others need more hours of sleep“, emphasizes Dr. Royant-Parola. So there’s no need to stay in bed if you wake up naturally and feel rested. Similarly, don’t struggle with falling asleep at night if you feel your eyes starting to close.

What is the average sleep time?

6:42. This is the time that adults sleep on average per night, on weekdays according to Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin (BEH) of Public Health France. More than a third of French people (35.9%) sleep less than 6 hours a night and more than a quarter (27.7%) are in sleep debt, which corresponds to a sleep time that is less than their needs. If more than a quarter (27.4%) manage to take a nap to compensate for this debt, insufficient sleep remains a public health problem. However, numerous epidemiological studies indicate that sleeping less than 6 hours is associated with a higher risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and accidents. Not to mention the risk of being less vigilant during the day, of being more irritable and thus of altering one’s quality of personal and professional life.

Short or heavy sleeper: what does it mean?

We are unequal when it comes to sleep. “A little sleeper is a person who sleeps little, but who is satisfied with his sleep. On the other hand, people in sleep deprivation or insomniacs cannot be considered light sleepers. Other people need a lot of sleep (up to 10-11 hours a night) to feel rested, this is called heavy sleepers“, explains the sleep specialist. The ideal is to have adequate sleep.

Why do we sleep less?

“We see that internationally, people sleep less and less. It is a global trend which is not specifically French“, would like to immediately restore Dr. Sylvie Royant-Parola, psychiatrist and doctor specializing in sleep. “This decline in sleep is probably due to overstimulation we face every day. It can be noise or light from screens. However, we know that the invasion of screens (smartphones, tablets, computers and abundance of cultural and entertainment offer via these tools) at any time of the evening and even of the night delays the moment of falling asleep and disturbs the time devoted to sleep”, regrets the psychiatrist. “But there is also the fact that we tend towards a society where stopping or taking the time to rest is completely outdated. We are more in a 24-hour operation than in an activity/rest cycle. In other words, sleep is sometimes experienced as “wasted time” and in fact, people cut back on their sleep time to do other activities. As a result, sleep time is gradually reduced“, explains the sleep specialist. It is therefore in a context of technological developments “faced with an acceleration of rhythms where everyone wants to be present in the world and connected at all times“, that the duration of sleep changes. The night work – which concerns about 4.3 million French people – theincrease in the average commuting time between home and workas well as noise pollution (noise from planes, motorized two-wheelers or even café terraces in town) are also part of the causes of sleep decline.

What are the benefits of sleep?

“The problem is that sleep is undervalued. In effect, sleep is associated with “optional time, “inaction” and therefore unproductivity“, laments the doctor. However, sleep is not “just to recover from the form”, it is essential to preserve your immune system, clean your brain of cellular waste stored during the day, stimulate and consolidate learning, strengthen memory phenomena, allow cell regeneration, participate in the proper functioning of the heart and in general, regulate your metabolism (appetite, stress, irritability, etc.) and your emotions. And if you don’t sleep enough or badly, these different mechanisms cannot be done correctly.

Is sleeping in on the weekend a good idea?

Sleeping longer on the weekends can make up for the lack of sleep during the week a little bit. “But sleep time lost during the week is never fully recovered, because on the one hand, what is not done the same day is irretrievable and on the other hand, what we call fat mornings is in fact light and not deep sleep. But it is deep sleep which is the most restorative“, indicates the specialist. Then, sleeping much longer on weekends than on weekdays promotes the introduction of a break in rhythm on the chronobiological level. “This break in rhythm is acceptable if it is 1h30/2h, on the other hand, if it goes beyond, it can harm the metabolism (reinforce the risks of diabetes or obesity, lower the immune defenses for example) and even create additional fatigue.”

Are you getting enough sleep? The good qquestions to ask!

To determine your ideal sleep duration, you must pay particular attention to your mood, your energy and your state of health after a “good night’s sleep”, and after “a bad night’s sleep”. For example, you can write down these observations in a notebook and write down the number of hours you slept, as well as the time you went to bed and when you woke up. Then you have to ask yourself the right questions. For example :

• Am I productive, attentive, in a good mood and rested when I sleep 7 hours? Or on the contrary, do I need 8 or 9 hours of sleep?
• Am I tired when I wake up?
• Am I irritable when I sleep 6 or 7 hours?
• On weekends or during holidays, after how many hours of sleep do I wake up spontaneously?
• Do I need a nap to recharge my batteries during the day? If yes, for how long?

Depending on the answers to these different questions, it will be easier for you to assess how much sleep you really need, in other words “how much sleep do you need to be fit the next day?”.

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Thanks to Dr. Sylvie Royant-Parola, psychiatrist and sleep specialist.