https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... y-we-sleep
A few snippets:
■ Two-thirds of adults in developed nations fail to obtain the nightly eight hours of sleep recommended by the World Health Organisation.
■ An adult sleeping only 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only to their early 60s without medical intervention.
■ A 2013 study reported that men who slept too little had a sperm count 29% lower than those who regularly get a full and restful night’s sleep.
■ If you drive a car when you have had less than five hours’ sleep, you are 4.3 times more likely to be involved in a crash. If you drive having had four hours, you are 11.5 times more likely to be involved in an accident.
■ A hot bath aids sleep not because it makes you warm, but because your dilated blood vessels radiate inner heat, and your core body temperature drops. To successfully initiate sleep, your core temperature needs to drop about 1C.
■ The time taken to reach physical exhaustion by athletes who obtain anything less than eight hours of sleep, and especially less than six hours, drops by 10-30%.
I certainly try to get my eight hours but often fail but Mrs RS routinely seems to manage on 6 or 7 hours. Her problem...which becomes mine is that she tend to wake in the morning at around 5.30 (which wakes me) she then cannot get back to sleep so gets up and goes to the gym, she then has an hour's exercise and starts work at 8am. This has now become a habit and unless she goes to bed and sleeps from 9.30 then she cannot get the recommended 8 hours.
I tend to go back to sleep for about two hours after Mrs RS leaves and therefore get my 8 hours but sometimes I can't and I can't help feeling a bit guilty that perhaps I am somehow being lazy and feckless, unlike my get up and go wife who is out exercising at dawn.
This issue is mentioned in the article, somehow these days, unless one is managing on 6 hours a night then one is seen to been lazy and unambitious and this is driving some behaviours that will have serious long term implications for health.
Do you manage your 8 hours?
John