1. Sleeping. A good night's sleep is vital for every human being to survive. Given that an average a person sleeps for 8 hours in a day, that means that an average person will sleep for 229,961 hours in their lifetime or basically one third of their life.
If the average night's sleep is eight hours (ie one third of a day), one sleeps for one third of one's life. If you live, say, 75 years, that's 25 years asleep, or 9,125 days.
Editor's note: Kleine-Levin Syndrome mostly affects teen boys, causing them to sleep up to 20 hours a day during episodes that can last weeks. It's rare, possibly affecting one person in a million, with a higher incidence among Jewish people.
Sleeping eight hours a day equates to sleeping 2,920 hours a year or a total of 122 days of the year, basically 33% of the year.
Sleep and Aging
Older adults need about the same amount of sleep as all adults—7 to 9 hours each night. But, older people tend to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier than they did when they were younger. There are many reasons why older people may not get enough sleep at night.
Which age group gets the least amount of sleep? Teenagers get the least amount of sleep, with 97% getting less than the recommended amount each night. In terms of those over 18, adults aged between 45-54 years old are the age group that don't get enough sleep.
Recent studies show that sleeping in multiple phases within a 24-hour period may adversely affect physical and mental health, and it's widely not recommended for most people.
The bare minimum of sleep needed to live, not just thrive, is 4 hours per 24-hour period. Seven to 9 hours of sleep are needed for health, renewal, learning, and memory.
A person with an 8-hour sleep need who gets 6 hours each day for 5 days builds a sleep debt of 10 hours. As sleep debt builds, brain and body functioning deteriorate. Sleep is needed to “pay down” this debt.
Sleep feels good because when we rest, our bodies produce melatonin, which controls our sleep patterns. Our melatonin levels increase at bedtime, making us feel tired. Melatonin, secreted by the pineal gland, makes us feel cozy and relaxed, allowing our bodies to get the time off they need at the end of each day.
Hypersomnia means excessive sleepiness. There are many different causes, the most common in our society being inadequate sleep. This may be due to shiftwork, family demands (such as a new baby), study or social life. Other causes include sleep disorders, medication, and medical and psychiatric illnesses.
We spend about one-third of our life either sleeping or attempting to do so.
While some people regularly function on short periods of sleep, research mostly agrees that six hours of sleep is not enough for most adults. Experts recommend that most adults need at least seven hours of sleep every night.
In fact, the study's authors determined that a full night of interrupted sleep is equivalent to no more than four hours of consecutive sleep, in terms of how you'll likely feel and act the next day.
Some people divide their sleep into a schedule of naps around the clock, sometimes called polyphasic sleeping. It's often designed to let you get by on less total rest. That's a bad idea, Kushida says, since adults need at least 7 hours of sleep in 24 hours. There can be major consequences if you cut back, he says.
Typically, they went to sleep three hours and 20 minutes after sunset and woke before sunrise. And they slept through the night. The result of these sleep patterns: Nearly no one suffered from insomnia. In none of their languages is there even a word for insomnia.
For millennia, people slept in two shifts – once in the evening, and once in the morning. But why?
Before the days of Tempur-Pedic mattresses and Casper, humans slept on makeshift sleeping surfaces like piles of straw. As society advanced, primitive mattresses were fashioned out of stuffed fabrics, and down was introduced. Bedframes came much later but have still been around since the ancient Egyptians era.
According to their internal body clock, most older adults need to go to sleep around 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. and wake up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Many people fight their natural inclination to sleep and choose to go to bed several hours later instead.
Living in poverty may bring about challenges in social relationships and social roles that make individuals less likely to obtain enough sleep.
If your teen is always tired, it's for one of two reasons — physical health or mental/emotional health. You can start by making sure your teen gets enough sleep each night, doesn't use their phone at night, gets enough physical activity, and follows a healthy diet.