Do You Really Need 8 Hours of Sleep Every Night? Body Stuff with Dr. Jen Gunter

From: TED

Sleep is so important.

We need it to live.

And when we can’t sleep, we’re desperate for help.

But lately, our fascination with sleep feels as if it’s taken on an urgency.

Do a quick internet search for sleep and you’ll find a slew of articles about how to make your sleep perfect.

New gadgets, fancy alarm clocks, stay away from blue light.

There are lots of services, products and advice columns that tell us we’re sleeping wrong.

Not enough, not quality sleep, wrong position.

Even worse, you might find scary messaging claiming that if you’re not sleeping right, your life is going to be shorter. You’re going to get all kinds of diseases.

One of the biggest worries we have about our sleep is that we’re not getting enough and that anything less than seven hours a night means that we’re doomed to bad health, everything from high blood pressure to Alzheimer’s disease.

But there are two flaws with this kind of messaging.

The first flaw is that it’s not completely accurate.

Seven to eight hours of sleep, while recommended for adults, is just an average.

And while messages have to be simplified for health communication to the public, sometimes important nuances get lost.

So yes, it’s true that not getting enough sleep in the long term is associated with health problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and depression.

But fixating solely on seven to eight hours ignores the fact that there’s a range of sleep that people need.

The duration of a good night’s sleep can be different for different people.

Some adults need eight, but some are just fine on six.

The second flaw with this kind of doomsday messaging is that it can be counterproductive, especially for people who do have trouble sleeping.

For instance, in 2019, it was estimated that 21 percent of adults in the US were wearing sleep tracking devices. And that number is probably growing.

And I get it.

It’s fascinating to see how much sleep you’ve gotten each night and to know what part of your night was spent in deep sleep or dreaming.

But having all of that sleep data is causing some people to become obsessed with it so much so that it’s leading to a condition some called orthosomnia - a preoccupation with the constant need to achieve perfect sleep.

And this condition, ironically, is causing more sleep problems.

Now orthosomnia might be an extreme example, but the anxiety of not getting enough sleep is keeping some of us up at night.

So here’s what some experts are saying. Stop fixating on the number because that can lead to unrealistic expectations of sleep.

According to Dr. Colleen Carney, a psychologist and the head of the Ryerson University Sleep Lab, the basic questions you should ask yourself are:

Do I feel reasonably well-rested during the day?

Do I generally sleep through the night without disturbances?

Or, if I wake, do I fall back asleep easily?

Can I stay awake through the day without involuntarily falling asleep?

If your answers are yes to all three, you probably don’t need to worry about your sleep.

And if you’re struggling with your sleep, instead of buying expensive blue light filters or fancy sleep trackers, try talking with your doctor to make sure there aren’t any medical conditions that need to be explored first.

Then try evidence-based recommendations laid out by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

What’s really cool is that there’s a highly effective therapy - called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I. It doesn’t have any medications involved. And it has a really low failure rate.

生词记录

desperate 非常需要的，（因绝望而）拼命的，不顾一切的

fascination 入迷，着迷

gadget 小装置，小器具

column 列，专栏

scary 吓人的，恐怖的

doomed 注定失败（毁灭，灭亡）的

Alzheimer 老年痴呆

nuances 细微差别

cardiovascular 心血管

depression 抑郁症

diabete 糖尿病

fixate 使固定，使痴迷，依恋

doomsday 世界末日

counterproductive 事与愿违的，适得其反的

preoccupation 当务之急，全神贯注

ironically 具有讽刺意味地，出乎意料地，令人啼笑皆非地

keep sb up 耽误睡觉

psychologist 心理学家，心理医生

disturbance 干扰，打扰，骚乱，暴乱，暴力事件，障碍，失调

involuntarily 不由自主地，无意识地

insomnia 失眠