Don’t take sleep apps too seriously and certainly don’t worry about a poor ‘sleep rating’ As teenagers and young adults, people tend to have later chronotypes, then move earlier in their middle and older years. This is greatly influenced by your biological (circadian) clock. Your “chronotype” refers to whether you are a “lark” (10% of the population), “owl” (25% of the population), or in between (sometimes called “dove”, representing most of us, at 65% of the population). We see the same variety with sleep timing. After 64, the average amount of sleep is between seven and eight hours, but the full range can be between five and nine hours. Most young and middle aged people (18 to 64 years) sleep between seven and nine hours each night, but some perfectly healthy individuals may sleep six or even 11 hours. The truth is that how long we sleep, our preferred sleep times and how many times we wake during the night vary both between people and in the same person as they get older. One size does not fit all, and these kinds of edicts cause confusion and anxiety for many. But this belief is wrong in so many ways. We are regularly told that the “ideal” night of sleep consists of eight uninterrupted hours. It should also prompt the question: so what is “good sleep”? Hopefully this encyclopedic list will convince you that insufficient sleep is so much more than the inconvenience of feeling tired at the wrong time. Finally, poor sleep affects physiological health, leading to an increased risk of stroke, heart attack, infection, cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes and mental illness. Cognitive performance also takes a hit, leading to a loss of attention, concentration, communication, decision making, creativity, and the ability to multitask. Insufficient and disrupted sleep is now known to result in altered emotional responses such as irritability, anxiety, loss of empathy, impulsivity and a reduced sense of humour. It helps us form memories and solve problems, allows tissue growth and repair, promotes metabolic health and removes toxins from the brain, including amyloid beta which is linked to Alzheimer’s disease. What we can be sure of is that sleep is critical for good health. We know we need it, but resent the fact that we have to do it, and are sometimes misled about how to get it. Attitudes are changing, but there remains a lingering disdain and suspicion. ‘S leep: those little slices of death, how I loathe them” “sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days.” Quotes like these, somewhat dubiously attributed to Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Edison, nevertheless reflect our society’s difficult relationship with sleep.
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