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Author: Sylvia Liebenberg
You’ve been staring at your screen for… how long has it been? What were you doing before you lost track of what you were doing? Oh wait, you were going to get another cup of coffee. But caffeine doesn’t even help anymore, you just feel continuously tired and drained. If this is you, then you are probably not getting enough sleeping time each night. But how many hours of sleep are needed? Glad you asked! Sleep expert Sylvia Liebenberg spoke to The Mattress Warehouse about why you need sleep and how much of it you need. So if you feel like you’re not getting enough sleep (or maybe too much) keep reading for some great sleep tips.
Sleep is the body’s natural rest cycle. The onset of sleep is triggered by the release of a complex sequence of hormones, notably melatonin, a hormone that plays a role in governing your circadian rhythm (24-hour cycle). Quality sleep consists of four sleep stages that are repeated a couple of times per night. During each sleep stage, certain body functions take place, like memory consolidation, muscle repair etc. More on that in a bit.
The simple truth is that we can’t live without sleeping. Our 24-hour cycle helps regulate the course of our body functions. Some functions take place during the day, and others at night, while you sleep. But if you don’t sleep, these functions don’t occur sufficiently and that could lead to health problems.
Think about it like this; if you don’t drink water, you’ll become dehydrated, which may lead to health complications if it happens too often. Likewise, if you don’t eat enough, your body becomes malnourished, once again leading to health issues. Similarly, if you don’t get enough sleep, you become sleep deprived, and if it becomes a regular thing, it may bring about some health problems.
Here are some reasons why your body needs sleep:
If your metabolism functions well, your immune system is fully operational and your brain is clear, your quality of life is significantly better than if the inverse was true.
To better understand what happens when you sleep, let’s take a look at the various sleep stages.
As we’ve already mentioned, sleep experts distinguish between four different stages of sleep. The first three stages are known as non-Rapid Eye Movement, or non-REM sleep and consist of light- and deep sleep. The final stage is REM sleep, where your brain activity differs from the other three sleep phases.
Phase one is not actual sleep, but a feeling of drowsiness. During this sleep stage, you will experience a transition from wakefulness to sleep. Due to the nature of the first sleep stage, you spend by far the least amount of sleeping time in the drowsiness phase.
Not a lot of physiological processes take place during light sleep. However, it is already difficult to wake someone from stage 2 sleep. Light sleep is part of the resting phase and as such, contributes to restfulness. About 50% of your sleeping time is light sleep.
When you look at your total sleep time, you should spend about 20% to 25% in deep sleep. During deep sleep, your body gets rid of all the built-up waste products in the brain. During this sleep stage, your body bolsters your immune system and fights inflammation. Moreover, you also release critical hormones and neurochemicals like serotonin (the feel-good chemical in your brain), growth hormone, and testosterone during deep sleep.
If you do not get enough deep sleep, muscle recovery will be slower, and you may likely be more susceptible to illness.
Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM) is essential for your cognitive functions. During REM sleep, your brain basically defragments and processes information. Your brain sifts through what happened during the day, organising and storing information in your memories. During REM sleep, your brain also discards useless information. For instance, you don’t need to remember how many green traffic lights you encountered throughout the day and so to free up memory space for important matters, your brain discards that kind of info during the final sleep stage.
REM sleep is very important for your concentration and your memory – you need REM sleep to remember and you need REM sleep to forget. Without enough REM sleep, you won’t be able to focus and make critical decisions during the day.
You should spend roughly 20% of your sleeping time in REM sleep.
Interesting tidbit: A lot of children that are diagnosed with ADHD are only suffering from poor quality sleep as sleep deprivation and ADHD symptoms present quite similar.
What do these symptoms look like?
Some effects show after one bad night, whereas others only present over time. Let’s take a look.
It is important to note that with babies and children, sleep is a fairly complex matter, and sleep disorders can’t be as easily diagnosed as with adults. Before diagnosing a sleep problem in kids, a comprehensive medical exam must be conducted to ensure that there are no underlying problems. Sleep studies are much more indicative in adults than in children; that is why, at the Sleep Clinic, we focus more on adult sleep therapy.
Inside your brain, there are differently shaped receptors for various neurotransmitters to bind to – almost like a keyhole where only a specific key fits. So specific receptors bind to specific chemicals. Caffeine binds to the same receptors as adenosine – an important chemical for sleep. And if caffeine is already bound to a receptor, adenosine can’t bind there. So the more caffeine you drink the less adenosine will bind to the receptors and hinder the onset of sleep. That is why dieticians recommend that you avoid caffeine too close to bedtime.
As you age, you need less and less sleep. Babies need a lot of sleep to grow and develop, whereas fully-grown adults can get away with a bit less sleep.
From 6 months on, healthy babies should be able to sleep 6 to 7 hours at a time because they don’t need to feed so often.
Once you stop growing, some medical sources recommend 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night, whereas others recommend 7 to 9 hours. However, these are just guidelines and not a set rule. You have to experiment and see what total sleeping time per night works best for you.
Too much sleep is a very difficult thing to measure. Some people spend too much time in bed but do not necessarily sleep too much. Others sleep too long because of sleep disorders such as sleep apnea which take away from their ability to get good quality sleep. So they just end up with a lot of sleeping time, of which most is light sleep, and very little is restful deep sleep.
Interestingly, the symptoms that you see in people that sleep too much are similar to the symptoms you would see in people with insomnia. It also overlaps with some of the signs you’re not getting enough sleep. For instance, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.
People who sleep too much because they enjoy sleep or just spend too much time sleeping, lose their potential to sleep.
What do we mean by the potential to sleep?
During the day you need to be physically and mentally active to build up your sleep potential. Basically, the more productive you are during the day the more likely you are to have a good night’s rest. On the other hand, if you sleep too much, you decrease that potential (you are not tired enough) and end up spending less time in deep sleep and REM sleep. The end result is the development of symptoms that go along with a lack of deep sleep and REM sleep, even if you sleep for ten hours on end.
Here are some sleep tips to help you get the right amount of sleeping time every night.
You can now effectively identify if you get enough sleep and if you don’t… Well, then you have some great sleeping tips that you can try out. And if that doesn’t work, visit the Sleep Clinic for an expert consult and perhaps some sleep tests. For more sleep tips, visit our Blog.
Sylvia holds a B.Sc (Human Physiology and Psychology) from The University of Johannesburg and a B.SocSci(Hons) in Psychology with a specialisation in neuropsychology from The University of Pretoria. She is also qualified as a neurofeedback therapist and EEG Technician. Sylvia believes that the effects of sleep are one of the most visible examples of how our physical and mental health is intertwined. She has been at the Pretoria Sleeplab for twelve years, where she’s gained extensive knowledge and experience in a variety of different sleep disorders.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of The Mattress Warehouse.
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