Today’s fast-paced society, it is normal to sleep less than 7 hours. Especially, for college students like us, usually sleep less than a few hours before the test or a big assignment. I think that is the only option that we can choose because we need more time to do things that are assigned to us. However, if we want to keep our bodies healthy, sleep is really important for us. Just like diets and exercises, sleep is also an important factor which can help us to keep the healthy condition.
According to the National Institutes of Health, the average adult sleeps less than 7 hours per day. They suggest us to sleep 7.5 hours to 9 hours per day to keep the healthy condition of our bodies. Children and teenagers need more sleep compare to the adult and even older people need to get at least 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep per day. A little nap time can help us to fill recommended sleep hours.
Some people may feel fine after they only slept less than 7 hours. That is maybe because of the gene that enables people to do fine with just 6 hours of sleep per day. However, according to the National Institutes of Health Researchers at the University of California, this gene is really rare, less than 3% of the population have this gene. So, most of us need to sleep at least more than 7.5 hours to keep our bodies in shape.
Still, we need to make a choice to sleep less than recommended sleep hours because we have things to be done before the due. However, I think keep recommended sleep hours when it is possible can help us to have better conditions of our bodies.
IMAGE : http://www.sleepinglittledreamers.com/
: http://www.evolvingwellness.com/essay/sleep-aware-series-part-3-how-much-sleep-do-we-need
Although this chart is very helpful I also think it is important to point out that you can not make up lost sleep time during the weekend. On the bright side though, if you do get seven hours of sleep it is also a very helpful contributor to good grades, even for college kids it correlates with almost a full letter grade higher than those who sleep less than seven hours.
It’s funny, I literally just made a post about how, using different sleep cycles, humans can potentially only need to sleep 2 to 4 hours a day. The type of sleep you are talking about, monophasic sleep, involves one sleep while polyphasic sleep, multiple sleeps in a day, can be much more efficient but very difficult to uphold.
http://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/12/03/sleep-cycles-and-you/
After reading this blog, I was thinking a lot. Because I found that college students cannot get enough sleep during the mid-term exams and the final exam weeks. Also, college students have lot’s of assignments to do depend on different instructors. For me, personally, only get 6 hours sleep for two nights, that’s definitely not enough. So I’m now feeling so tired to comment here.
College students should learn to manage their time and schedules in order to get enough sleep. Because failing to manage the time will make the life disorder and messed up.
After reading this, I found out that I didn’t sleep the standard hours a 18 years old people should have. This is because of my plan of my schedule. And I’m considering to schedule my time better next semester.