HOW MUCH SLEEP?
Sleep is essential, but the amount required
varies. The usual sleeping time for the adult is eight hours, but some people
need less, some need more. Everyone has heard the story of Thomas A. Edison
sleeping only two hours a night-and the romantic picture of Edison working on
through the night to invent the electric light bulb suggests that any of us,
strong willed enough, could cut down on sleep and have more time to become
famous and rich. The fact is that Edison, though protesting that sleep was a
loss of time and opportunity, was concerned about getting his own quota of
sleep, according to his own diaries.
He napped often, and frequently drifted back to sleep for
another hour or so after waking in the morning. Some physicians are firmly
convinced that if shortchanging yourself on sleep does not catch up with you
quickly, it will, and there will come the day when you suddenly appear to lose
your energy, become prone to ailments, and suffer a general deterioration of
health. There is no simple answer to the question of how much sleep is best.
The essential test is whether you feel rested in the morning and have enough
energy to carry on the day's activities.
Eight hours, as we have noted, is an average figure. If you
do very heavy physical work or extremely exacting mental work, you may need
more. Children need more sleep than adults since they are growing fast and are
very active. Old people often have been thought to need less sleep; this is not
necessarily true. They may need more, depending upon their activity and health.
It could be a most worthwhile exercise to make your own investigation into your
sleep needs, on the simple basis of experimenting to determine how much sleep
makes you feel good, how much less makes you feel out of sorts, irritable,
fatigued.
