magine what else you could do with the hours you spend unconscious each night. Oh, the things you could accomplish! But if you’re trying to claw back more of your personal time, sacrificing sleep is not where to start. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society both a minimum of seven hours a night to maintain optimal health.
If you regularly sleep less than that, “you’re going to experience physical, psychological, and social consequences,” says Joe Dzierzewski, vice president of research and scientific affairs at the National Sleep Foundation. There are two exceptions to this advice. Older adults typically need less sleep than people who are younger, says Lynelle Schneeberg, a sleep psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale Medicine.
For instance, someone who slept eight hours a night in their 40s might be able to function well with 6.5 hours a night in their 70s. Older people produce less of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, and they tend to have more medical conditions that can interfere with sleep.
In addition, a have a genetic mutation that allows them to function on less than 6.5 hours of sleep per night with no apparent consequences to their health. This genetic mutation is quite rare, with experts that it only affects around one in 25,000 people.
But for everyone else, here’s the bottom line on how low you can go: seven hours is the minimum for your regular sleep schedule, anything between five and seven hour.
