If you don’t seem to be alert and awake after 12 hours of sleep, you might be getting too much. When you either don’t get sufficient sleep or get too much sleep you can feel dazed the following day and the cycle is likely to go on. For the most part individuals after sleeping extensive hours feel tired and groggy all day so they go to bed at 10 p.m. and sleep for another 12 hours.
Sleep Finding The Right Balance
Either way, a messed up sleeping pattern can affect your health. Experts for decades have been warning about not getting enough sleep. They have cautioned that not getting enough sleep can put you into a kind of drunken state. In this state individuals are incompetent of making decisions and have a higher chance of getting into car accidents and dying earlier.
It seems that nowadays few people are getting the recommended amount of sleep during the week so they try to catch up on weekends. It’s fine to do this but typically it doesn’t make the person feel a whole lot better. Now if you’re on the opposite side of the spectrum and you sleep for longer periods you don’t need to start stressing yet but experts are also starting to warn about oversleeping.
Experts advise that individuals sleep between 7 – 8 hours per night. If you’re spending that much time sleeping its important to understand sleeping. The normal sleep cycle is 90 minutes. It starts with stage 1 the lightest sleep and then goes through progressively deeper sleep levels through stage 4. Then it commences with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep while the person is dreaming.
Now if you sleep long hours it could be a result of the poor quality of sleep you are getting. Having a cruddy night of sleep will make you want to sleep longer because you used up most of the night in the first stage. But if you always sleep over nine hours on a normal basis and the quality is okay then you may want to see a physician. Sleeping a lot can be a sign of serious health risks like sleep apnea, narcolepsy or restless legs form of sleep disorder and not even recognize it.
Sleeping is necessary for our bodies and it’s important to get the right amount. Studies have revealed that if you get less than five hours of sleep or more than 10, it increases your mortality. A 2007 Finnish study showed that mortality risks increased by almost 20 percent for individuals sleeping more than eight hours. Another study showed people getting more than eight hours a night are at higher risk of a stroke than others that sleep less.
Experts also believe that when it comes to sleeping it’s partially hereditary. A study in the Journal of Science recognized a mutated gene in a mother-daughter pair that allowed them to fully function on six hours of sleep. Experts think this gene moderates sleep length.
Scientists have yet to entirely understand why some people require more sleep than others, but they believe heredity does play a role. For optimal sleeping experts suggest 7 – 8 hours and warn against undersleeping and oversleeping, because they increase your mortality.
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Diane Johnson graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Utah and enjoys writing about current events, politics, college degrees, Continuing Education, and the office.
