I went to sleep last night at 10:15PM and got out of bed at 9:33AM, and I feel great. I awoke twice to go to the bathroom, but probably got 10 hours of actual sleep...for the first time this year, and since I can remember. Before moving into 15 Craigside I probably averaged something between 6 and 7 hours for most of my adult life. Here in this air conditioned room of quietude now I usually get an hour more per night.
However, sleeping is an adventure, and there have been a couple of nights over the past few years when I got almost no sleep. Once was incredibly stupid as I six years ago experimented with that tiny bottle of 5-Hour Energy, which is full of caffeine. Absolutely don't do what I did.
By now you know how much you should sleep and that you almost surely don't have enough. Here is the latest recommendation from the National Sleep Foundation:- Newborns (0-3 months): Sleep range narrowed to 14-17 hours each day (previously it was 12-18)
- Infants (4-11 months): Sleep range widened two hours to 12-15 hours (previously it was 14-15)
- Toddlers (1-2 years): Sleep range widened by one hour to 11-14 hours (previously it was 12-14)
- Preschoolers (3-5): Sleep range widened by one hour to 10-13 hours (previously it was 11-13)
- School age children (6-13): Sleep range widened by one hour to 9-11 hours (previously it was 10-11)
- Teenagers (14-17): Sleep range widened by one hour to 8-10 hours (previously it was 8.5-9.5)
- Younger adults (18-25): Sleep range is 7-9 hours (new age category)
- Adults (26-64): Sleep range did not change and remains 7-9 hours
- Older adults (65+): Sleep range is 7-8 hours (new age category)
Note that the older you get, the less sleep is recommended. As difficult as most old people have sleeping, we have a big advantage. We can take afternoon naps, which is, actually, rare for me. Anyway, the medical consensus is that short naps (less than an hour) DON'T count towards those 7-8 hours you need each night.
Apparently, if you sleep less than seven hours/night or more than eight hours/night your life expectancy drops by 17% to 24%. Taking the midpoint of 20.5%, that means a 65-year old would die at the age of 51.7. I find that hard to believe and will search further.
This same article indicated that if you took sleep medication, you would increase your mortality by a third. Not sure what this means, but if that is 33.3%, you can do your own calculation and stop taking sleeping pills.
I wondered about that lowered longevity if you averaged more than 8 hours/night, and found an article that people in this category sleep so much because they have medical problems like diabetes and heart disease, or are depressed or at the low end of socioeconomic scale. I'm okay there, plus, my BMI is in the high normal range (read my posting on OVERWEIGHT PEOPLE LIVE LONGER THAN NORMAL PEOPLE) and my sleep average is just below 8 hours/night. Those ten hours today were anomalous and fabulous.
There is a lot of science now to sleep, and here is an article that gets you into why you need to sleep and that there are four stages. Just lying in bed with your eyes closed does not count. I might have a follow-up posting someday on how best to go to sleep.
I might finally add that this pleasant state of euphoria I've now enjoyed for just about two months has changed my dream pattern. I now only have good dreams. Most of my life there have been way more bad (not real terrible nightmares, but losing luggage on a trip, for example, or sneaking around trying find something to wear). Apparently, according to a 2004 Gallup survey:
Here is a final bit of good news for older people (those in their 70's) from the author of this article, Pam Wright:
It's time to move on to dreams that are more pleasant. Here's a fun one that came as a surprise to me. Scientists are finding that dreams of a sexual nature may indicate a surge in creativity. Interestingly, while people of all ages have erotic dreams, they tend to occur more frequently as we age, psychologist Ian Wallace told The Daily Mail.
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