How Much Sleep Do You Need Depending On Age Factor

Are you sleeping for enough time? Is your sleep healthy and has quality in it? How to get a night of quality sleep? What if I don’t have quality sleep?

If these are some of the questions that may arise in your mind and confuse your head then you are at the right place. Today we’re going to discuss some major aspects of sleep and see how many hours of sleep scientists and researchers recommend to us. 

Sleep is the most essential part of our day. It helps the mind to relax and give complete rest to the body. But as the world is growing at a fast pace, the number of work hours has also increased although most of the process nowadays is automatic and instant. Even the noodles we consume today, just need a couple of minutes to get ready.

Days are gone when people used to sleep at 9 PM, even if you go to bed at 11 pm people think it’s too early which is not. 

That’s why we’ll be discussing the benefits of healthy sleep, the number of hours that you should sleep, and various other topics related to it. 

Why Healthy Sleep Is Important? 

Before sharing some important facts and figures with you let’s have a glance that why healthy sleep is important for your mental and physical health. Remember, we are discussing the following point by keeping a reference that you are getting a “Healthy Sleep”. 

1.    Helps To Maintain Body Weight.

We won’t be discussing that whether it can decrease your body weight or not but the thing that you should know is a Quality session of sleep can help you to get a healthy body weight. On the other hand, if your sleep cycle is highly disturbed then it may lead to gaining an unhealthy mass in the body, which you will never want to have, Right?

2.    Increase Concentration and Productivity

Yes, it is true. Many researchers have tested this, benefit of sleep and found that sleep helps you increase your concentration and span. And if you have a long and good concentration power then it is also obvious that you would be more productive. Ultimately, you would be also able to extract the best from your day and can also become the best version of yourself. 

3.    Improves Your Immune System.

There is a connection between the sleep and immune system.

The concept is simple that when your body works properly and adequate rest, the inner organ system works properly and performs all the processes in a good manner that helps to improve the immune system also. It is as simple as that, if you Google it you may find dozens of answers on it but the core idea is the one mentioned above. 

4.    Happier Mood and Relaxed Mind

If you ever feel tensed or feeling pressure on yourself due to any reason, just sleep for a while and just notice the impact. Sleeping helps one to get relaxed and boost his mood by calming the mind giving a relaxation period to the other parts of the body. 

In the feeling of frustration and exhaustion, you can try it out and check for the effects. It will help you to get back to the work with a light, calm and relaxed mind. This the reason, why you can work more mindfully after a nap or sleep. 

5.    Reduce Irritation 

Do you know? Sleep not only helps in calming the mind but also our whole nervous system and many other parts of the body. This helps in self-awareness and also removes any possible chance of irritation or loose attitude towards anyone.

Hence, it also enhances your social life and behavior towards your peers.

Is Age Is An Important Factor In The Sleep Cycle? 

According to many scientists and doctors, the number of hours you should sleep depends on your age. There are a certain number of hours to sleep for a particular age group. 

Accordion to doctors and biological experts a normal person must follow the given table. 

• 0-3 months: 14-17 hours
• 4-11 months: 12-15 hours
• 1-2 years: 11-14 hours
• 3-5 years: 10-13 hours
• 6-13 years: 9-11 hours
• 14-17 years: 8-10 hours
• 18-25 years: 7-9 hours
• 26-64 years: 7-9 hours
• 65+ years: 7-8 hours

Although these are not the “Must follow” rules but they give a rough idea about your sleep duration. Although it is also considered that, someone who is above 12 years can also take a sleep of 6-8 hours and many doctors suggest this. 

Best Time to Sleep  

There are some specified times to go to bed for different age groups. These times are stated while keeping the idea at the back of the head that what are going to be their activities when they’ll wake up and what were their daytime activities.

So, let’s have a look at them -:  

• It is prescribed by the doctor that small babies should sleep at 7-8 pm.
• For preschool children, it is from 8-9 pm and
• For teenagers, it is 9-10 pm ;
• While adults are advised to go to bed roughly at 10-11 pm. 

Tips to Get Quality Sleep 

So, far we have discussed a lot about quality sleep but what that mean? And how to achieve this?

 All of the benefits and that we have disused above are only achievable when we have quality sleep. It is far better than being asleep for 10 hours.

So, this was about quality sleep but how to get it or achieve it? Here are 5 simple tips that you must follow while going to bed and before it.

1.    Never Use Screens before Bed

First thing first, what does screen means here?

Screen refers to any device that has a screen like mobile, laptop, pc or any other device. It can’t be felt but this screen gives a neurological message to your subconscious mind that, this is not a time to sleep or the content that you are consuming can also excite your mind which will not help you to sleep.

2.    Don’t Overeat

Many experts believe in the fact that overeating at the night can not only increase the weight but also affect the quality of sleep and the next morning, it makes you feel lazy and can also cause a mild headache.

So, we should always have a light dinner and avoid oily dishes at night and especially non-veg. It has been also proved that we should at least have our dinner 2 hours ago before our sleeping time. It helps in digestion as well as in achieving quality sleep.  

3.    Wash Your Feet

A much-underrated practice to get quality sleep is washing your feet. You should understand the effect of cleaning your feet before going to bed it makes the body and mind calm which is the basic necessity of quality sleep.

Apart from the calmness it also makes you feel good and hygienic, even many experts also claim that it can also give you some better dreams while you’re sleeping and the next day you’ll be up in a happy mood.

4.    Read Books

Reading books is also known as the best activity before going to sleep. The basic concept behind this is to engage your mind in some activity. And no matter you’re a school-going kid or a 50-year-old employee everyone feels bore to read them and this thing or feeling helps you to sleep and parallel, you are also grabbing some knowledge and feeding to your mind.

5.    Take a Shower.

Taking a shower is one of the best things that you can do before going to bed. It cleans your body and makes it relax. And also set it free from any kind of stress and depression that you have faced in your daytime. That negative thoughts and feelings flow out from the body with that water and make you feel lighter and happy from inside.

Frequent Asked Questions 

1. How much one should sleep? 

Well, it depends from person to person and his/her day-to-day activities. You can easily choose the best duration time that fits you the most but the key rule is, it should not be less than 6 hours, this is the minimum time that your brain takes to function properly, and on the other hand, it should also not exceeds the limit of 8 hours. 

2. Do men and women have different sleep durations? 

 It’s not, sleep is just a practice that one does to relax his/her body, mind, and soul and there is nothing related to gender. As mention above, your sleep duration totally depends on the work you do. 

Maybe someone needs a sleep of just 5 hours because he/she can be a busy person or they must be getting quality sleep. And their relaxation and resting requirement can be fulfilled in just 5 hours. 

Conclusion  

As a concluding note, you should never compromise with your sleep. There countless benefits of sleeping and after all, it helps our body to rest and mind to relax. So, always keep in mind that there is nothing important than your health and you should look after it.

I hope this article helps you to understand the importance of healthy sleep and cleared all your doubts related to sleep.

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