Are you supposed to sleep for 8 hours?

LIsten to your body, (particularly if you are 19 and male).

And use common sense. If you wake up groggy and stagger around all day in a fog of fatigue, you need more sleep.

And vice versa. Sleep deprivation is not a random variable.

8 hours is the figure given for the norm or average. That means a lot of people sleep less and vice versa.

“all answers appreciated thank you!” Don’t chew me out

You can get by with 3 or 4 hours, once in a while. 9–10 hours for a 15 to 19 year old.

You are to shoot for 7–8 hours for peak performance.

I did my own sleep study when I was 18 or 19. I found that my body wanted a 26 hour day, and 11–12 hours sleep, sometimes more.
In my 20’s, I then had a summer of terrible insomnia. When that broke, my body had adjusted to a 24 hour day, and 8–10 hours sleep requirement.

I think a body’s need for sleep declines as you get older. At 19, nothing less than 10 hours would do for me. Now at 44, I do fine on 6.5–7 hours. And that would be actual sleep, not counting the time in bed trying to get to sleep.

I’ve always run on 7–8 hours most nights. Less than that and I’m not at my best, although I’ve gone for days without sleep when the situation demanded it. That was when I was a LOT younger, though. : )

I usually get between five & six hours sleep, it tends to catch up with me on a weekend :-/
I did a six till two today & I really need my bed…… it’s 17.50 almost now & I’m beat…….. :-/

G’nite, Scooby. Pleasant dreams! : ))

Supposedly, the eight hour sleep thing only became common with industrialization and the standardization of the work day. A lot of agrarian peoples break it up in the middle.

I don’t think so. Human circadian rythums are ancient in origin.

So I went to bed yesterday, shortly after 18.00 totally beat…. I figured I’d be up sometime in the early hours of the morning, say 02.00 maybe 03.00.…. :-/
I in fact woke a little after 07.00, used the loo then went back to bed for another couple of hours, rising eventually at 09.25.…. I guess I’ve caught up on my sleep from last week :-/ shame about the weather!

@incendiary_dan the eight-hour day thing is a northern-European invention. It’s in southern Europe, where mid-day is too hot for manual labour, where the working-day is split in the middle.

Actually not everyone has the same sleep cycle, some people need to sleep more than 8–9 hours while others can just get by with less than 8 hours of sleep every night.

You just need to figure out how many hours of sleep your body needs, it’s definitely not like you have to sleep 8 hours.

@incendiary_dan The eight hour day is. The eight hour night is the result of more regimented, timed work schedules.