Sleep tight means sleep well. In many parts of the English-speaking world, this is a very well used phrase. It’s been common at bedtime for many years in the form of good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite or similar.
How much sleep do we need? The word of the day is that adults need eight hours of sleep per night. Sleep researchers answer with a resounding “no.”
In the book of No More Sleepless Nights by Peter Hauri, Ph.D says “that while different individuals have very different sleep needs, the amount remains amazingly constant for each person”. He tells the story of a 70 year old nurse who slept only one hour each night, took no naps during the day and said that she never felt tired. She said she didn’t understand why other people wasted so much time in bed. She had averaged the same amount of sleep each night since she was a child.
Some people may need 9, 10 or even 11 hours of sleep per night. Studies demonstrate that people perform just as well cognitively if they are sleep deprived. What happen is that people start to demonstrate intellectual problems when they are worried about how little they sleep. If you think you will be impaired, you will be. If you sleep for 90 minutes and when you wake up and someone tell you that you have slept for eight hours, you will feel great. But if you sleep for eight hours and someone wake you up and tell you that you have only slept for 45 minutes, you will feel exhausted.
Labels: health, insomnia, sleep tight |