A study published this year by the Brain and Mind institute Western University in Canada tracked a massive number of people – over 40,000 to track their sleep over a three-day period and then to undergo a series of cognitive and neurological tests.
What made this study different than other sleep studies is that the sleeping was not done in a sleep lab, but in real world conditions – in people’s own bedrooms in their own homes. So the results presumably are also more realistic. And most sleep studies do not engage such a huge number of people – a total of about 44,000 people participated in this.
So what was the bottom line? The Bottom line is not a big surprise: 7-8 hours is what you need to be cognitively most alert and efficient.
THE SHOCKER:
But there is something surprising that came out of this as well. The researchers said this “those who exceeded the maximum (8 hours) of suggested sleep time were equally, as impaired as those who slept too little…” . It turns out that too much sleep is just as bad as too little sleep. So the study defines a narrow window of 7-8 hours as being the optimal number of hours you need. Don’t get less than 7 hours, and don’t get more than 8 hours, or your thinking ability will suffer.
Why is getting too much sleep just as bad as getting too little sleep – the researchers don’t have an answer. But future scientific studies should answer that question.
The average US adult gets about 6.8 hours of sleep a night, not quite the minimum. But a full 40% of us get no more than 6 hours. No wonder we are so damn grumpy.
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