How much sleep do we need?

This depends mainly on how old we are.

• Babies sleep for about 17 hours each day.
• Older children only need 9 or 10 hours a night.
• Most adults need around 7-8 hours sleep each night.
• Older people need the same amount of sleep, but will often only have one period of deep sleep during the night, usually in the first 3 or 4 hours, after which they wake more easily. We also tend to dream less as we get older.

There are also differences between people of the same age. Most of us need 7-8 hours a night, but some (a few) people can get by with only 3 hours a night. It's not helpful to regularly sleep more than 7-8 hours each night.

The short periods of being awake feel much longer than they really are. So it's easy to feel that we are not sleeping as much as we actually are.