how much sleep does the body need?

Answer 1

8 hrs but a body can get by on 6

Answer 2

Ideally we need about 8 hours, but your body can perform on six. Now, as long as you have 4 of those 8 consecutively and uninterrupted you're good to go, as long as you also get the remaining 4 throughout the day. Maybe a nap!

Answer 3

6 to 8 hours

Answer 4

They say you need about 8 hours sleep. Sleep is really important, they even say that people that don't get enough sleep tend to become overweight!

I'm a big fan of sleep, nothing better than being snug in bed!

Answer 5

atleast 6-8 hours of sleep for adults and 8-10 hours for kids

Answer 6

They say about 8 hours! But me personally about 10!

Answer 7

if you are well and healthy then the average is 8 hours but if your are unwell or your body or mind needs healing you will sleep longer for a child they say 11 hours is average

Answer 8

As an absolute minimum, I don't think anybody really knows.

But to be healthy and alert, children and teens should get 9 hours, adults at least 8, and seniors 7.

Answer 9

Hey let me tell you,

There is a thing called sleep cycle....
each cycle is of 90min...
you should hav sleep of 4*90 or 3*90 or 5*90...
that is 3cycles or 4 cycles or 5 cycles....
do not get up in between coz u will waste lot of energy & u will have laziness.....

try once you will know...

Answer 10

This is an excellent question. There are no documented cases of a healthy human dying from total sleep deprivation (excluding accidents), aside from those suffering from fatal familial insomnia (Fatal familial insomnia is a very rare autosomal dominant inherited disease of the brain. The dominant gene responsible has been found in just 28 families worldwide; if only one parent has the gene, the offspring have a 50:50 chance of inheriting it and developing the disease. The disease's genesis and the patient's progression into complete sleeplessness is untreatable, and ultimately fatal). In carefully monitored experiments, several normal research subjects stayed awake for 10 days. While they all experienced cognitive deficits in memory, concentration, etc., none of them experienced serious medical, neurological, physiological or psychiatric problems. Total sleep deprivation in rats leads to death in around 28 days. Death occurs later if only REM sleep is eliminated. In humans, extended sleep deprivation causes microsleep sessions to develop. A person who has fatal familial insomnia may die after several months with no sleep at all; people without this condition may experience dementia or develop permanent personality changes within the first few weeks.

Randy Gardner holds the Guinness world record for the longest period of time a human being has gone without sleep. In 1964, as a 17-year-old high school student, Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours (11 days) with the help of friends, TV reporters, and games of pinball. On his final day without sleep, Gardner presided over a press conference where he spoke without slurring or stumbling his words and in general appeared to be in excellent health. "I wanted to prove that bad things didn't happen if you went without sleep," said Gardner. "I thought, 'I can break that (Peter Tripp's 1959) record and I don't think it would be a negative experience.'" Sleep experts now believe that such sleep deprivation stunts are dangerous.

It is often claimed that Gardner's experiment demonstrated that extreme sleep deprivation has little effect. This is primarily due to a report by researcher William Dement, who stated that on the tenth day of the experiment, Gardner had been, among other things, able to beat Dement at pinball. However, Lt. Cmdr. John J. Ross of the US Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, who monitored Gardner's condition at the request of his parents, reported serious cognitive and behavioral changes. These included moodiness, problems with concentration and short term memory, paranoia, and hallucinations. On the fourth day he had a delusion that he was a famous black football player, and that a street sign was a person. On the eleventh day, when he was asked to subtract seven repeatedly, starting with 100, he stopped at 65. When asked why he had stopped, he replied that he had forgotten what he was doing.

Sleep debt is a term to conceptualize the cumulative effect of not getting enough sleep. A large sleep debt, for example, would suggest that a person is mentally and physically fatigued due to insufficient sleep. It is worth noting that there is debate in the scientific community over the specifics of sleep debt.

There is debate among researchers as to whether there is such a thing as sleep debt. The Sept 2004 issue of the journal Sleep contained dueling editorials from two of the world's leading sleep researchers: David F. Dinges and Jim Horne. The popular understanding that sleep debt can be accumulated indefinitely has been disproven and is no longer considered plausible. However, some believe that there is a sleep debt that can amount to under 20 hours.

To feel rested and refreshed upon awaking, most adults require 7-8 hours of sleep a night, although this number varies among individuals. As a result, a substantial fraction of our lives is spent in this mysterious state. For infants, the requirement is much higher (about 16 hours a day), and teenagers need on average about 9 hours of sleep. As people age, they tend to sleep more lightly and for shorter times, although often needing about the same amount of sleep as in early adulthood. Drivers who fall asleep at the wheel are estimated to cause some 56,000 traffic accidents annually and 1,500 highway deaths.