maintaining a consistent wake time, especially on weekends.

Other strategies that can help support good sleep quality include: Three key strategies to support the quality of your sleep 'It is common for people struggling with their sleep to try to get more sleep by staying in bed longer, but this disrupts their sleep patterns and diminishes their sleep quality,' says Zhou. 'After a week or two, review the information to see if you can identify certain patterns that may be affecting your sleep quality, then make adjustments,' says Zhou.įor example, if you have trouble falling asleep, go to bed half an hour later than usual but maintain the same wake-up time. Also, keep track of how you feel upon awakening and at the end of the day. How can you better understand the factors likely contributing to your sleep quality? One way is to keep a sleep diary where you track and record your sleep.Įvery day, record the time you went to bed, how long it took you to fall asleep, whether you had any nighttime awakenings (and if so, how long you were awake), and at what time you woke up. 'As a result of these changes, when we get older we may start to wake up earlier than we did when we were younger, or wake up more frequently during the night,' says Zhou. Production of melatonin, the sleep hormone, also gradually declines with age.

This means people spend less time each night in restorative slow-wave sleep. For instance, your circadian rhythm - which regulates many bodily functions, including our sleep-wake cycle - can naturally get disrupted over time. 'Many people are not going to sleep in their 50s and 60s exactly like they did in their 20s,' says Zhou. Yet it's normal for people's sleep patterns to change over time. 'Poor sleep also can increase daytime fatigue and make it more difficult to enjoy life,' says Zhou. Research has shown that people with poor sleep quality are at a higher risk for diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and mental health issues like anxiety and depression.Īnd that's not all. Sleep quality is vital for our overall health. How does sleep quality affect your health? 'If you awaken refreshed and feel like you have the energy to get through your day, then I would worry less about the exact number of hours you're sleeping,' says Zhou. Did you sleep straight through? Or did you have periods where you woke up? If so, did it take you a long time to fall asleep? How did you feel when you woke up? Sleep quality means how well you sleep during the night. 'Instead of focusing exclusively on the number of hours we sleep per night, we should also consider our sleep quality,' says Zhou. The major reason for individual differences is that we often look at sleep the wrong way. We get it: you know people who swear they only need five hours of sleep per night, yet you feel foggy unless you log in eight to nine hours. 'Some people need less than seven hours, while others might need more,' says Eric Zhou with the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School. The process to develop this statement was conducted over a 12-month period and concluded with a consensus meeting held in February 2015 in Chicago, Illinois.On average, how many hours do you sleep each night? For most healthy adults, guidelines suggest at least seven hours of slumber.īut these are general recommendations and not strict rules. Consistent with the RAND Appropriateness Method, multiple rounds of evidence review, discussion, and voting were conducted to arrive at the final recommendation. 3 The panel focused on nine health categories with the best available evidence in relation to sleep duration: general health, cardiovascular health, metabolic health, mental health, immunologic function, human performance, cancer, pain, and mortality. The process was further guided by the Oxford grading system. The expert panel reviewed published scientific evidence addressing the relationship between sleep duration and health, using a broad set of National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms and no date restrictions, which resulted in a total of 5,314 scientific articles. A panel of 15 experts in sleep medicine and research used a modified RAND Appropriateness Method 2 to develop a recommendation regarding the sleep duration, or sleep duration range, that promotes optimal health in adults aged 18 to 60 years.

1 Thus our recommendation focuses on this sleep parameter.

Furthermore, the US Department of Health and Human Services created a Sleep Health Objective to “increase the proportion of adults who get sufficient sleep” in Healthy People 2020, a federal initiative to improve the nation's health. Sleep duration is the most frequently investigated sleep measure in relation to health. Healthy sleep requires adequate duration, good quality, appropriate timing and regularity, and the absence of sleep disturbances or disorders.

Sleep expert ucla