Are You Aware Of Just How Much Sleep You Should Be Enjoying Every Night?

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Exactly how much sleep you need every night will very much depend on both your state of health and your age. But sleep is not just about the time spent sleeping, but is also very much a question of the quality of the sleep which you get. Thus, if you are enjoying enough of sleep and are waking up each morning feeling tired and going through your day not able to concentrate fully, and perhaps being a bit irritable, then there is a very good chance that you are not enjoying enough deep sleep and might very well be suffering from insomnia.

When it comes to age, newborn babies obviously need the most sleep and will often sleep in cycles of about four hours, waking up when it is time to be fed and changed. On average, a newborn baby needs between fourteen and sixteen hours sleep every day.

Once infants get to the age of about four to six months they should be sleeping through the night and will begin to spend greater periods of time awake during the day when they will begin to take a greater interest in their surroundings and begin to play. At this time their requirementneed for sleep will drop slightly, although they will still need anywhere from about ten to fourteen hours sleep a day.

To most people's surprise older children and even teenage children should also be enjoying a similar amount of sleep and ten hours sleep a day for children is not a bad figure to aim for.

For some time it has been believed that children, and in particular teenagers, who are sleeping for more than about eight hours a day are simply lazy, however this is in fact far from the case. Bearing in mind the level of activity which most children are involved in every day, both at school as well as in their free time, and the fact that their bodies are growing and changing very rapidly, there is a very real requirement for more than the traditional eight hours sleep if they are to be given the best conditions for their development.

For most adults about eight to eight and a half hours sleep a night is just about right and should be sufficient to allow the body to recharge its batteries and have you up and about, alert and refreshed in the morning.

Another myth is that the older we are the more sleep we need. Once again this is not the case, unless there are also accompanying health problems, in which case more sleep may be needed. A tendency for older individuals to take a nap during the day is generally taken to be a signal that they need more sleep but in fact the daytime nap is normally offset by less sleep at night.

An exception to the rule is that of pregnant women, who should normally increase their sleep during this time by approximately two or three hours.

The test of whether you are enjoying enough sleep is a fairly simple one and consists of nothing more than assessing whether you feel refreshed when you get up in the morning and can to function normally and focus your attention on the tasks at hand during the day. Should you find yourself unable to concentrate or doze off during the day then it is likely that you are not enjoying enough sleep.

Missing a few hours of sleep now and again will not do you any harm at all but if you find that you are regularly missing out on sleep then there could be serious consequences. Everybody suffers from insomnia occasionally, but insomnia which carries on for more than about a month or six weeks will have a marked affect on both you quality of life and health.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Help-Me-To-Sleep.com looks at various sleep disorders and covers everything from finding a natural cure for insomnia to recognizing insomnia symptoms

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