Gina Johnson
The amount of sleep needed varies across the lifespan and shows an inverse relationship with age. Sleep duration recommendations issued by public health authorities are important for surveillance and help to inform the population of interventions, policies, and healthy sleep behaviors. However, the ideal amount of sleep required each night can vary between different individuals due to genetic factors and other reasons, and it is important to adapt our recommendations on a case-by-case basis.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| --- | --- |
| Sleep duration | 16-24 hours |
| Sleep quality | Good |
| Sleep timing | Early chronotype |
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What You'll Learn
Sleep is a dynamic process
Sleep is a highly organised sequence of events that follows a regular, cyclic program each night. Sleep is not a passive event, but rather an active process involving characteristic physiological changes in the organs of the body. Sleep is a dynamic process and is not a passive event.
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Sleep is a highly organized sequence of events that follows a regular, cyclic program each night
Sleep is a dynamic process. Sleep is not a passive event, but rather an active process involving characteristic physiological changes in the organs of the body. Scientists study sleep by measuring the electrical changes in the brain using electroencephalograms (EEGs). Typically, electrodes are placed on the scalp in a symmetrical pattern. The electrodes measure very small voltages that scientists think are caused by synchronized activity in very large numbers of synapses (nerve connections) in the brain's outer layers (cerebral cortex).
Sleep is a cyclical process. During sleep, people experience repeated cycles of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, beginning with an NREM phase. This cycle lasts approximately 90 to 110 minutes and is repeated four to six times per night. As the night progresses, however, the amount of deep NREM sleep decreases and the amount of REM sleep increases.
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Sleep is a cyclical process
Sleep is a dynamic process that is actively generated in specific brain regions. Sleep is a highly organized sequence of events that follows a regular, cyclic program each night. Sleep is not a passive event, but rather an active process involving characteristic physiological changes in the organs of the body. Sleep is a cyclical process. During sleep, people experience repeated cycles of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, beginning with an NREM phase. This cycle lasts approximately 90 to 110 minutes and is repeated four to six times per night. As the night progresses, however, the amount of deep NREM sleep decreases and the amount of REM sleep increases.
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Sleep is a highly organized sequence of events that follows a regular, cyclic program each night
The 2014 Health behaviour in school-aged children report demonstrated that for 15-year-olds in England, 30% of boys and 49% of girls reported experiencing sleeping difficulties and 36% of 15-year-olds reported not having enough sleep to be able to concentrate on school work. Poor sleep in adolescents and young adults can result in longer-term sleep problems, which may impact on them into adulthood.
In one study, adolescent sleep disturbances predicted adult sleep disturbances. If problems were present at age 16 years, a third still had problems at 23 years and 10% at 42 years.
Many adult physicians will encounter young people who might present with complaints or conditions that have some relation to poor sleep and/or fatigue. If sleep is not first considered by the physician, this is likely to remain unrecognised and consequently result in ineffective treatment strategies if the underlying problem is not addressed.
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Sleep is a dynamic process
Sleep is a highly organised sequence of events that follows a regular, cyclic program each night. Sleep is a dynamic process, and the brain remains active during sleep. Sleep is not a passive event, but rather an active process involving characteristic physiological changes in the organs of the body.
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Frequently asked questions
There is a long-standing debate on whether older adults need less sleep. Some evidence suggests that older adults get less sleep because they need less sleep. However, other evidence suggests that older adults need more sleep but are unable to generate the sleep that they need.
Arguments that older adults do not require as much sleep as younger adults and therefore do not have a significant unmet sleep need:
- Older adults sleep significantly less than younger adults when offered extremely long, enforced periods of sleep opportunity (time in bed >12 hr/day).
- Following sleep-deprivation or experimental slow wave sleep suppression, healthy older adults exhibit a smaller rebound in slow wave sleep time and SWA compared to younger adults.
- Older adults suffer less subjective and objective waking sleepiness following selective slow wave sleep deprivation than do younger adults; a result that even holds true under rested conditions.
- Older adults suffer less relative impairment on sleep-sensitive vigilance tasks under sleep deprivation conditions, relative to younger adults.
Arguments that older adults need more sleep than they are normally able to obtain:
- Extracellular adenosine levels, which are a major molecular marker of homeostatic sleep drive, actually increases with advancing adult age in many sleep regulatory centers.
- A lower homeostatic sleep drive would predict the opposite. This discrepancy appears to be due to a widespread loss of A1 adenosine receptors in the aged brain.
- Compounding this adenosine receptor downregulation, neuronal loss in sleep regulatory centers that are influenced by this system and involved in sleep homeostasis may further impair the regulation of sleep drive.
- Thus, instead of reduced sleep need, aging could alternatively be characterized as a desensitization to a still present homeostatic sleep drive and a reduction in the neural apparatus for regulating a still present sleep need.
