Posted by Sandman on November 28, 1997 at 16:57:42:

In Reply to: Optimum sleep time posted by Andy Thacker on November 26, 1997 at 09:59:07:

Do not have all the answers. However, there is a way to determine how much sleep a person needs. On average we need about 8 hours of sleep. There are short sleepers who only need 4 and also a few long sleepers who may need 12. The average hovers around 8. Now in order to find the correct amount of sleep for a single person a few test have to be done costing quite a bit of money. They involve getting different amounts of sleep and taking multiple sleep latency test the following day to see how fast you fall asleep. To get to the point if you were offered an opportunity to take a nap, someone who is very sleep deprived will fall asleep in less than 5 minutes. On average you should take about 12-15 minutes to fall asleep. Well in order to find the exact amount of sleep you need you would have to spent about 2 weeks in a sleep lab having the MSLT's the following day. You will know when you are getting the right amount of sleep when your sleep latency does not shorten after several days of the same amount of sleep. If it shortens you are not getting enough sleep. If it takes you longer to fall asleep every day then you are sleeping too long. It is when you get the same amount of sleep per night and your sleep latency stays constant over time you know exactly how much sleep you need.
Not to many people can afford this so here is a not so perfect way to get an idea how much sleep you need. If you find yourself feeling sleepy in the afternoon when bored you are not getting enough sleep. If you feel sleepy in the afternoon it has nothing to do with what you ate or being bored it has to do with sleep deprivation which will accumulate. So at the beginning of the week you may not feel as sleepy as you do at the end of the week. That is sleep loss adding up. It is more difficult without the studies to tell if you are getting to much sleep, but I would wager very few people get too much sleep.

As for coming up with a way to need less sleep, there are many people out there trying to come up with a way but I am not aware of one yet unless you have a sleep disorder which will usually decrease the amount of time in bed once corrected and have the person feeling much better.

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