How to get enough sleep in 6 hours

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According to the National Sleep Foundation, people need different amounts of sleep depending on their age:

Newborns (0-3 months) - 14-17 hours
Infants (4-11 months) - 12-15 hours
Children (1-2 years old) - 11-14 hours
Preschoolers (3-5 years old) - 10-13 hours
Children (6-13) - 9-11 hours
Teenagers (14-17 years old) - 8-10 hours
Adults (18-64) - 7-9 hours
Elderly people (65+) - 7-8 hours

Pregnancy and various illnesses can increase your daily need for sleep. Older people sleep a little less and tend to have shorter periods of deep sleep, which is necessary for the body to recover. With age, the risk of sleep disorders also increases, and primarily insomnia (insomnia). It is also known that people over 65 years of age are more susceptible to mental disorders that occur due to lack of sleep.

How long does it take to sleep

Modern health standards indicate that an adult needs a minimum of 7-8 hours of sleep to get enough sleep. Getting a good night's rest is important for maintaining health and productivity.

The opinion that the more sleep the better is also wrong. Although this process is an important part of our daily life, too much sleep can have a negative impact on the body. Among the side effects, doctors highlight a tendency to obesity and depression.

If you constantly need to sleep 9-11 hours, this is a reason to think about your health.

Why six hours of sleep is not enough

As you understand, the subjects who slept 8 hours a day had better indicators of cognitive processes. were thinking worse and worse every day .

Read also: Sex and sleep are strongly interconnected - scientists

And those who slept for 6 hours maintained their mental abilities at a high level until about
the tenth day of the experiment .
But in the last few days, these subjects performed test tasks as poorly as people who were deprived of sleep at all. It turns out that, with only 6 hours of rest, you act as poorly as people who did not close their eyes for two days in a row.

Lack of sleep will turn you into a vegetable (still from the film “The Machinist”)

Source: YouTube

What are the dangers of lack of sleep for a person?

Lack of sleep is fraught with many dangers, both for the human body and for his mood. Chronic lack of sleep clearly affects your appearance, in particular your face. The skin turns pale, blue circles and bags appear under the eyes, and the whites of the eyes turn red. Hair becomes dull, nails become brittle.

Popular negative consequences of lack of sleep also include:

stress,
irritability,
slowness,
weakened immunity,
decreased creativity
constant pain in the body,
memory problems,
headache,
depression,
persistent drowsiness,
chills,
high blood pressure,
nausea,
Digestive problems.

Symptoms of sleep deprivation

If the amount of time regularly spent sleeping is below normal, a person is at risk of chronic sleep deprivation. Moreover, those who sleep several hours a day during the week and sleep on the weekends do not improve their own situation.

USEFUL INFORMATION: How long does healthy sleep last for an adult: how many hours do you need for healthy sleep

If you don't get enough sleep, you may encounter the following problems:

Decreased immunity.
Increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Concentration, ability to remember information and performance decrease.
Frequent headaches.
Problems with excess weight (the body, which has had little sleep, compensates for energy hunger by absorbing additional calories).
Lack of sleep in men can lead to a decrease in testosterone levels by 30%, which results in a larger belly and an increased risk of prostate inflammation.
The level of cortisol, the stress hormone, increases in the body. This threatens depression and insomnia.

In the initial stages of sleep deprivation, it can be managed through lifestyle changes. However, its chronic forms will require the help of professionals. This is why it is so important to know how much sleep an adult needs per day and to comply with this norm.

In urban life, when you need to combine several activities at once, time for sleep is limited. The question arises: is it possible to get enough sleep in 6 hours? Answer: yes, you can. In night rest, the main thing is not the number of hours, but their quality. To get a productive 6 hours of sleep, you should follow a few simple rules and techniques.

Don't eat 2-3 hours before bedtime

Before going to bed, the body should be in a calm, relaxed state. The feeling of overeating will interfere with the feeling of comfort before falling asleep. The body will not be able to completely relax. In addition, instead of the proper rest, the internal organs must devote all their energy to digesting food. That is, the body continues to work when it is given a period of time to recover, even if you are sleeping. As a result, the body will not have time to rest in the allotted interval, which will certainly affect the quality of sleep.

It is also recommended to avoid drinking alcohol and caffeine at least 4 hours before bedtime. You should quit nicotine an hour before bedtime.

Sleep without clothes

Even if pajamas or a shirt seem to you as convenient and comfortable as possible, you should still give it up. The fact is that clothing interferes with relaxation and disrupts blood circulation.

The second reason in favor of naked sleep is that clothing warms the body, while it needs lower temperatures. This is confirmed by a number of studies. Cool conditions are needed to improve metabolism and burn excess fat. It also reduces stress, improves mood and improves well-being.

Mental attitude

Stress directly affects the quality of your sleep. Restless thoughts will interfere with sleep and can wake a person in the middle of the night, interfering with further rest. In the evening, you should put your thoughts in order, calm down, and solve all important current affairs. Of course, sometimes events happen that haunt you. These include problems with loved ones and difficulties at work. Try to learn to leave bad thoughts in the past day. The calmer you feel, the better your rest will be.

Warm shower

Taking a warm shower will allow your body and brain to relax and switch from worries to pleasant thoughts. If you have a sedentary job and by the end of the day there is pain in the neck, shoulders and head, then warm water will help to cope with this. Under its influence, the blood vessels will dilate and blood circulation will improve. This will lead to muscle relaxation.

Comfortable sleeping place

The right place to sleep is not much like a soft feather bed. The best option is a hard surface. No matter how strange it may seem, it is the hard surface that gives the body complete relaxation; on it the spine receives maximum unloading. A soft mattress will only increase discomfort and pain in the body. Choose hard or orthopedic mattresses.

Sleeping positions

Each sleeping position has both pros and cons. There are the most favorable options, but if you feel as rested as possible in the morning, and nothing hurts after sleeping in the “wrong” position, then you don’t need to change anything. If there are problems, then you should think about changing your position.

63% of people choose to sleep on their side. The left side is considered a better choice than the right. This is due to the internal structure of the body. The organ system is positioned in such a way that sleeping on the left side improves blood circulation, digestion, and reduces heartburn.

A night spent on your back indicates that the body is resting in the most natural position, with no parts pressing on each other.

Resting on your back is not recommended for those who suffer from snoring because it will only worsen the problem.

Lying on your stomach reduces snoring, but otherwise this is the most unfavorable position. After it, pain appears in the neck and lower back, because the head and spine are in unnatural positions.

Darkness

You should start avoiding bright light a couple of hours before bedtime in order to better prepare for it. The rest itself should be carried out in complete darkness, since all light sources will serve as irritants for the body.

Ventilation of the room

Low temperatures are favorable for high-quality restoration. Before going to bed, you should thoroughly ventilate the room. This is done both to reduce the temperature and to eliminate extraneous odors that could interfere with the process.

The ideal temperature for a room at night is 20-22 degrees.

Correct hours to sleep

The quality of rest depends not only on “how”, but also on “when” to start it. 6 hours in the interval between 01:00 at night and 07:00 in the morning and 6 hours in the interval from 22:00 to 04:00 are fundamentally different in results.

Every hour of rest before midnight is equal to two hours of rest after midnight. Thus, the body will receive full recovery when sleep begins at 22:00 and within 6 hours it will feel qualitatively reloaded. Sleeping from 01:00 at night to 07:00 in the morning will not give such an effect; the person will feel “broken.”

Dreams in understanding the past

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Since ancient times, people have been trying to unravel such a phenomenon as sleep. And the question: how much sleep does an adult need per day was also of interest to ancient scientists. In Ancient Greece, it was believed that during dreams, blood fills the brain, and its outflow contributes to awakening. In Islam, this period is interpreted as something that steals the soul at night and is resurrected in the morning.

Astrologers associated the period of night rest with something mystical; it was during this period that prophetic dreams occur, which are more often seen by representatives of the air element. By the way, the scientist chemist Dmitry Mendeleev discovered the table of chemical elements in a dream and his sign is Aquarius.

Some physiologists have suggested that falling asleep occurs only at the moment when brain activity is empty of various types of thoughts. I will say one thing that there is truth in this, a person who is always in experiences is more difficult to fly into the world of dreams.

Rules for falling asleep easily

It happens that the body simply does not want to “switch off” when it is needed. There are several techniques to help him.

First, make sure that your body is as comfortable and light as possible. For this:

Relax your body parts gradually, from top to bottom. Start with the muscles of the face and neck.
If the jaw is clenched, it should be lowered.
Take the load off your shoulders, lower them too.
Look at each hand in turn and feel a wave of relaxation flow through them.
Let the wave go further through the body, alternately relaxing the chest, stomach, hips, legs, reaching the fingertips.

When the body has reached maximum relaxation, proceed to visualization. To quickly fall asleep, mentally imagine different scenes with your eyes closed. Here are some options:

Start peering into the darkness, look at various patterns and shapes, the outlines of objects. Soon you will have an imaginary “cartoon”.
Imagine any ordinary object in monotonous motion. For example, a board on the water. Watch how she swings on the waves and stays in place.
Draw in your imagination, in as much detail as possible, a lake overgrown with water lilies. Imagine being in a boat in the middle of its waters. The boat rocks slowly as you lie on your back and look up at the blue sky.

It is worth considering that perfect sleep may not happen the first time. It's important to understand that this is normal. Any body needs time to readjust. Just keep trying and analyze your condition to understand what is best for you.

How much sleep does an adult need per day and what kind of Morpheus is he?

So what is sleep and why are we so dependent on its quality?
Scientists have not fully understood this physiological phenomenon, however, they have defined it as a certain gap between the mentally active state of a person and the outside world. Simply put, a kind of pause to restore the body’s strength from all points of view. It is this state that occupies 1/3 of our lives. The dream period is usually divided into sleep phases:

the fast phase or REM, characterized by a short period of 1-2 hours, at this moment there is a rapid movement of the eyeballs under closed eyelids, which distinguishes this type from the next one, the most interesting thing is that the brain is in a state of wakefulness;
the slow phase is divided into several stages:

Stage - superficial sleep , this period is very sensitive, so a person wakes up from the slightest noise;

Stage - physiological processes . At this moment, the heartbeat and breathing stabilize, body temperature, muscle tone, etc. decrease. The slightest noise may awaken you.

The stage is transitory and is a connecting link between the previous and subsequent final stages. Brain activity decreases at this point.

Stage – deep sleep, during this period the brain receives maximum rest from external stimuli, the body regains strength. It is very difficult to wake a person; with a sudden awakening, as a rule, one loses orientation in space and lacks understanding of reality.