HH285: Sleep-How Much Is Enough?

Welcome back to another episode of health hack, and a new theme for this month. Now I'm going to be moving into the theme of sleep. because sleep is so critical in your health, it is literally one of the key factors in optimizing your health, along with nutrition, exercise, et cetera, et cetera. And most people are not getting enough sleep. In fact, people I hear them say all the time, you can sleep when you're dead, sleep is overrated, et cetera, et cetera. So let's talk about how much sleep is the right amount of sleep for you, because it does depend on what age you are. So newborns, zero to three months need 14 to 17 hours of sleep every day. And then infants from four months to 11 months need 12 to 15 hours of sleep. Toddlers, one to two years old need 11 to 14 hours of sleep. And then preschoolers aged three to five years old need 10 to 13 hours of sleep. children aged six to 13 years old need nine to 11 hours of sleep. And teenagers aged 14 to 17 need nine to 10 hours of sleep. Young adults aged 18 to 25 need eight to nine hours of sleep. And then adults aged 26 to 64 need seven to nine hours of sleep. And seniors 65 years plus need seven to eight hours of sleep. However, if they're very active seniors, then they too need seven to nine hours of sleep like the adults. So my question to you is, do you fit into that bracket that I've just provided for your age. Now, if you're feeling energetic and strong and you're in good health, then perhaps you only need the lower end of that range. If you're feeling like you're coming down with something you're a little bit sick, you've been overdoing it recently, your body's asking you to slow down, then perhaps you need the upper end of that range. However, you definitely want to be within that range. Because when we don't get enough sleep, night after night, day after day, year after year, you are literally shortening your life sleep is that critical to your overall health. And I really want to highlight the teen and the young adult age group here. teens need nine to 10 hours asleep young adults, eight to nine hours of sleep. And I'm willing to bet most teenagers and young adults are not getting that. Because they're busy at school University. They've got jobs, they've got extracurricular activities, and then they come home they've got assignments and homework. And on top of that, then they want to be watching their movies and they're on their phones. And they're staying up way into the middle of the night on their devices, which is then putting blue light into their eyes negatively impacting their ability to get to sleep and get into a deep quality sleep. And this is a real problem for those age groups. And so this education that I'm sharing is really important. If you're a parent, if you know people in these age groups, you want to be sharing this with them. And if you want to dive in even more, go to my podcast number 154, which is an entire episode diving in to why we need to sleep more and how we can improve our sleep habits. And meanwhile, here on health hacks for the rest of this month, I will be continuing to dive into little snippets on all of the reasons that sleep is important to your health. So stay tuned, keep coming back. This is critical for your health for that of your loved ones. You definitely want to be tuning in and learning about why sleep is so important.