Exactly how much sleep you ought to be enjoying each night will depend very much on your state of health and your age. But sleep is not merely a question of the time that you spend sleeping, but is also very much a question of the quality of that sleep. Accordingly, if you are enjoying the correct amount of sleep and are waking up every morning feeling tired and going through the day not able to fully concentrate, and perhaps being somewhat bad-tempered, then there is a very good chance that you are not enjoying enough deep sleep and might very well be suffering from insomnia. As far as age is concerned, newborn babies obviously need the greatest amount of sleep and will often sleep in cycles of around four hours, waking when it is time to be fed and changed. Typically, a newborn baby needs somewhere in the region of fourteen to sixteen hours sleep each day. By the time babies get to the age of about four to six months they ough to be sleeping right through the night and will begin to spend longer periods awake during the day when they will start to take a greater interest in their surroundings and begin to play. At this point their requirementneed for sleep will fall slightly, but they will still need anywhere from ten to fourteen hours sleep a day. To most people's surprise older children and even teenagers should also be enjoying a similar amount of sleep and ten hours sleep a day for children in general is not a bad figure to aim for. For a long time it has been said that children, and particularly teenagers, who are sleeping for more than eight hours each day are just lazy, however this is in fact not true. Bearing in mind the amount of activity that the majority of children are involved in each day, both at school and in their free time, and the fact that their bodies are growing and changing very rapidly, there is a very real requirement for more than the traditional eight hours of sleep if they are to be given the best conditions for their development. For the majority of adults about eight to eight and a half hours of sleep each night is about right and should be sufficient to allow the body to recharge its batteries and have you up and about, alert and refreshed each morning. Another myth is that as we get older we need more sleep. Once again this is not true, unless there are also accompanying health problems, in which case more sleep could be necessary. A tendency for older peple to take a nap during the day is frequently taken as a signal that they need more sleep but in fact the daytime nap is normally offset by sleeping less at night. An exception to the rule is that of pregnant women, who should generally increase their sleep during pregnancy by around two or three hours. The test of whether or not you are enjoying enough sleep is a quite simple one and consists of merely deciding whether or not you feel refreshed when you get out of bed in the morning and are able to function normally and focus your attention on things during the day. If you find that you are not able to concentrate or doze off during the day then you are probably not enjoying enough sleep. Missing the odd few hours of sleep now and again will not do you any harm but if you find that you are regularly falling short on sleep then there could be serious consequences. We all suffer from insomnia occasionally, but insomnia that carries on for more than a month or six weeks can have a significant affect on both you quality of life and health.
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