How Much Sleep Should I Be Getting Every Night?

Almost a third of our lives is spent in sleep, or at least it should be. In reality, our sleep habits can be shaped and impacted a lot by our careers and the habits we've developed while growing up. To get a better understanding, Anthony Hericks, DO, with the Avera Medical Group Pulmonology gives his insight on the intricacies of sleep and how it impacts our health.

How much sleep should I try to get every night?

Well, the ideal adult will need somewhere between seven and eight hours of sleep. There are a group of people that could get away with six hours and do just fine. Some people need closer to nine, but there has been some research studies that show if on average you get less than six hours of sleep or sleep more than eight hours a night you may have a shorter life expectancy.

Does it matter what time I go to bed?

It’s the length of the sleep cycle, everybody’s got a little bit different body clock that’s set internally and sometimes when that body clock doesn’t match up with our our typical sleep wake cycle, it can cause problems. For example the nurse that might have shiftwork where they’re working a night shift and trying to sleep during the day that that can throw things into a disorganized sleep rhythm and cause problems. So your bedtime might be that you’re comfortable going to bed at 11 and then you get your eight hours of sleep by waking up at seven in the morning, but my body clock may tell me that I need to be in bed by 9:30 and if I don’t get there then I run into problems. So our environment drives a lot of that which can override that sleep clock but the sleep clock is the main driving force so when bedtime and wake up time should be.

Can you oversleep? Is that worse than under-sleeping?

Yes, some studies have shown that those people that get more than eight hours asleep for whatever reason seem to live less longer lives and there’s no real good evidence to say why that is. Now it’s not that if you got 8 1/2 hours of sleep every night that you’ll be having trouble, but I think that those who it chronically push their sleep to nine or 10 hours routinely; it could be a body clock problem, but it seems to increase mortality.

What if I miss out on sleep? Can I get caught up with naps?

Yes! Sleep actually overtime we develop what’s called a sleep debt, now I don’t think in my lifetime I will ever be able to pay that debt back, but in the short term if you are sleep deprived, taking a nap or sleeping a little bit longer that will allow you to pay back some of that sleep debt and maybe make you feel better. A very good example is our adolescents, who nowadays are pushed. My son gets up between five and six every morning to be the football practice and then as school starts and he’s up till 10 or later doing homework, he needs more sleep than you and I do, but he gets short sleep during the week. So the old adage of getting your kids out of bed bright and early on Saturday or Sunday morning is not really what we should be doing because on the weekends when they sleep in, that actually allows them to repay back some of that sleep debt and I may improve how they feel and function and operate during the week.

When should I nap and for how long?

Naps are not a bad thing, if you’re sleep, deprived, per se. Meaning if you take a nap, depending on the duration of that nap, it may actually contribute to poor sleep at night. Again your body clock is set to say get that eight hours of sleep, but if you take a two hour nap in the afternoon, typical bedtime is at 10 o’clock now you’re not tired, now you stay up to midnight, you gotta get up at 7 o’clock in the morning to go to work, you now get short sleep which means you’re tired, which means you need a nap the next day. So they recommend limiting naps to 15 to 30 minutes if it all needed because that can distract from what your normal sleep/wake cycle is.

Is it bad to snack or eat too much before bed?

There are a couple different thoughts on that in the fact that if you eat before you go to bed at night and lay down, there might be a greater chance of reflux or regurgitation, which, theoretically, in certain people could increase the risk of pneumonia. Also, there’s some risk of weight gain and in slowing down to the body‘s metabolism when you sleep. Obviously getting a good nights, sleep, growth, hormone, and a lot of those things that will help build muscles and rebuild tissues and help with brain function or are there, but sometimes eating too late at night or eating in the middle of the night when you wake up contributes to obesity, which then can compound a lot of other health problems.

What is the best advice to getting better sleep?

In the Pulmonary business we call it sleep hygiene, so that means the cleaner you can make your sleep overall, the better you’re going to be. Going to bed at the same time every night, getting up at the same time every morning, avoiding being awake for more than 30 minutes when you lay down at night because that can contribute to poor feelings about sleeping insomnia. If you’re having frequent nocturnal awakenings where you wake up to urinate a lot or you just don’t feel like you’re a sound sleeper, talking to your primary care provider or getting a referral to sleep specialist to evaluate what could be going bump in the middle of the night. Obviously, if you are sleep deprived, try to avoid those things that require a lot of attention like driving or high-risk jobs cause that sleep deprivation decrease attentiveness and put you at risk of injury and harm. But really just cleaning it up, keeping the phones and the iPads and the TV out of the bedroom because if they are causing you to stay awake longer than you should, because that will contribute to poor sleep and in the end not feeling very well.