Do You Need Less Sleep As You Get Older?
Common wisdom used to say that as you got older you needed more sleep. Now people think that as you get older you need less sleep. The actual truth is that the hours do not really change that much. In fact, the average person only sleeps about half an hour less when they are 70, than when they are 20 years old.
What Does Change Is The Pattern Of Your Sleep
The younger person tends to sleep more deeply and as you age, your sleep becomes lighter. As you get older, your sleep also tends to be less restful. Delta sleep, which is the deepest part of your sleep, is the most needed type of sleep for the body to heal at night. As you reach your senior years, you get less to none of the Delta sleep. Since you are not sleeping deeply, you tend to wake up easier and more often.
Seniors often think they sleep longer, because they tend to be in bed longer, but when you wake up several times a night, you actually do not get much rest. Some older folks can actually wake up more than a hundred times a night. These episodes may last less than 15 seconds before sleep resumes. When this occurs, you get the feeling that you have been awake all night, which is not actually true. Seniors also tend to nap more during the day, which does not help the situation at all.
Children Are A Different Story
Babies, when they are firstborn, can normally sleep around 16 hours a day. The time gradually decreases until around the age of two, they are sleeping about 12 hours. This would include a nap during the day. When children are six years old, they usually are not napping anymore, and the normal sleep time is about 11 hours. By the time the child is 10 they are sleeping 10 hours a night, and when they are an older teenager, their sleep is down to between seven and nine hours.
Now, having said that, infants and children often do not sleep according to average sleep times. Some children sleep more and some sleep less. If your child is awake and alert during the day and sleeps well at night, then you are fine. However, if you struggle to keep your child up during the day and then they fall asleep when doing something quiet, like watching television, then your child probably is not getting enough sleep.
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