If you don’t feel alert and awake after 12 hours of sleep, you might be getting too much. When you either don’t get enough sleep or get too much sleep you can feel groggy the next day and the cycle is likely to persist. For the most part individuals after sleeping lengthy hours feel tired and groggy throughout the day so they go to bed at 10 p.m. and sleep for another 12 hours.
Either way, a messed up sleeping pattern can influence your health. Experts for decades have been warning about not obtaining enough sleep. They have warned 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 at an earlier time.
It seems that in our time few people are getting the suggested 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 extended 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 vital to understand sleeping. The regular sleep cycle is 90 minutes. It starts with stage 1 the lightest sleep and then goes through increasingly 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 consistently sleep over nine hours on a regular basis and the quality is okay then you may want to see a doctor. Sleeping a lot can be a sign of considerable health risks like sleep apnea, narcolepsy or restless legs form of sleep disorder and not even realize it.
Sleeping is crucial for our bodies and it’s key 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. An additional study showed people getting more than eight hours a night are at elevated 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 completely function on six hours of sleep. Experts believe this gene regulates sleep length.
Scientists have yet to fully understand why some people require more sleep than others, but they believe heredity does play a role. For optimal sleeping experts recommend 7 – 8 hours and warn against undersleeping and oversleeping, since 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.
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