We all know getting quality sleep is crucial for the health of your body—but a lack of sleep, or irregular sleep schedule, can harm your mental health and make it impossible to focus on tasks during the day. Sleep can affect everything from your energy levels to your memory and can even increase anxiety and stress.
How much sleep do you need?
Is 5 hours of sleep enough?
A 2018 study published in the journal Sleep found that “cognitive performance, measured using a set of 12 well-established tests, is impaired in people who reported typically sleeping less, or more, than seven to eight hours per night.” Even scarier, “a self-reported typical sleep duration of four hours per night was equivalent to aging eight years,” according to the study.
Is it better to get 6 or 8 hours of sleep?
It’s definitely better to get at least seven hours of sleep per night. Any amount of sleep less than seven hours can have long-lasting impacts on your health. Continued lack of sleep may have a direct impact on your heart health, mental health, and more.
Following an all-nighter, how much sleep should you get?
All-nighters are extremely disorienting, and you’ll probably feel the negative effects of pulling one immediately. If you want to get back on your sleep schedule after staying up all night, the best way to do so is to aim to resume your regular sleep schedule right away.
Deep sleep, also known as “slow-wave sleep,” is the most restorative stage of sleep and should account for about 75% of the time you spend sleeping at night. Unlike rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, deep sleep slows down your heart rate, breathing, and eye movement.