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Getting 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep each night can help keep you healthy and happy. Here’s everything you need to snooze better.
We all know how important sleep is. But 1 out of 3 adults aren’t getting the rest they need, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And almost half of all Americans surveyed for a poll by the Sleep Foundation admitted feeling drowsy during the day at least 3 times a week. That means there are lots of sleep-deprived folks out there.
Sleep affects almost every part of our body, including the brain, heart and liver. And when we don’t get enough shut-eye, our health and happiness take a hit, even when we’re not aware of the damage.
Here’s the lowdown on why good-quality z’s are so important — and how to overcome any challenge to getting the rest you need every night.
Adults ages 18 to 64 should be getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night, according to the CDC. People 65 and older should get between 7 and 8. But how many hours you need depends on many factors, including your genes. Scientists have discovered genetic mutations that mean some people can get by on just 6 hours of sleep or less and still function well. But for most people, the sweet spot is 8 hours.
But it’s not just the number of hours you spend snoozing. You need quality sleep, too, and you get that by going through the various stages of REM and non-REM sleep every night. REM stands for rapid eye movement, and that’s the stage in which your dreams are typically the most vivid and prevalent. Non-REM sleep has three separate stages, including light and deep sleep.
Sleep scientists think both non-REM and REM sleep help your memory and focus. Deep sleep helps restore the body and brain by strengthening the immune system and helping the brain flush out toxins.
There’s no magic formula for how much time you need to spend in each stage. But it’s important that you get enough sleep to cycle through all 4 stages, several times a night, so you feel refreshed when you wake up. Otherwise, you may show the classic signs you’re not getting enough sleep — exhaustion, irritability, clumsiness and trouble focusing.
Here is what happens to your body when you sleep 7 to 9 hours a night.
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Here’s how sleeping for 7 to 9 hours a night can boost your brain power and your mood.
You’re calmer. There’s an area deep in the brain called the amygdala that’s involved in regulating emotions. Getting enough sleep can help your brain process thoughts and feelings in a more positive way. The result: You’re less likely to behave badly when you’re angry or upset.
You may lower your risk of dementia. During the deep sleep stage, your brain flushes out toxins. Scientists think this prevents waste buildup that may be a factor in causing Alzheimer’s. And scientists know that sleeping less than 7 hours a night in your 50s and 60s can raise the risk of developing dementia later.
You may be less prone to mental health issues. People develop depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders for many reasons, including family history and trauma. But poor sleep can make depression and anxiety worse. It can also raise the likelihood that you’ll develop these conditions if you’re already at risk.
There are so many. But these are the ones that sleep doctors think get in the way most often.
Taking tech to bed with you. The blue light from your devices messes with melatonin, the hormone that tells your brain when it’s sleepy. Melatonin naturally rises as your bedtime nears and falls when it’s time to wake up. So if there’s too much light in the room, your body thinks it’s still daytime and suppresses melatonin. Plus, fiddling with your smartphone might tempt you to read a few more emails or scroll through Twitter a little longer. These stimulating activities won’t put you in the mood to snooze.
Your partner, kids or pets. Maybe your partner snores, your preschooler gets nightmares, or your cat jumps on the bed in the wee hours. Sometimes it’s the ones you love the most who mess with your sleep.
Alcohol or other recreational drugs. You might think that a glass of wine or a cannabis-laced gummy will help you feel drowsy. And it may at first. But alcohol and marijuana can both interfere with the deep and REM stages of sleep.
Some prescription medications. Taking medications such as beta-blockers (for heart problems) and even some antidepressants can also interrupt sleep. If so, talk to your doctor about possibly switching medications.
Drinking too much coffee late in the day. Caffeine is a stimulant that takes a while to leave your system. Not surprisingly, it interferes with your ability to fall asleep.
Stress and too many obligations. If you lie in bed worrying about what you have to do tomorrow, it can leave your mind racing. Another sleep wrecker: You have to wake up early to go to work and you’re a night owl, so you don’t get enough z’s.
Having a health or sleep disorder, such as:
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This is when you have trouble falling or staying asleep at least 3 times a week for 3 months or more. You may be hardwired for insomnia thanks to your genes, according to a 2018 study in Molecular Psychiatry. Or you could have underlying depression or anxiety, which can lead to insomnia.
Another culprit: A life-changing event, such as a death or illness in the family, could cause sleeplessness. To deal with it, you may develop bad habits that you think will help but actually make your insomnia worse. These include having a glass of wine to help you nod off or lying in bed tossing and turning (which can increase your anxiety).
The first-line method for treating chronic insomnia is cognitive behavioral therapy especially geared toward insomnia (known as CBT-I). This treatment, usually supervised by a trained CBT-I provider, helps you break old habits and replace them with snooze-promoting ones.
Another biggie that derails sleep? Not being aware of how crucial sleep is for your health. If you don’t make sleep a priority, you won’t develop good habits that lead to better bedtimes.
Sleep hygiene is the regular habits and rituals you do to send yourself off to dreamland. You should aim to:
There are things you can do during the day that make for better nights, including:
High-tech devices that track your sleep are big business. But can they actually help you change your habits? The answer, according to sleep experts, is yes — especially when paired with old-school methods.
Sleep trackers tell you how many hours you slept and how often you woke up during the night. Many pinpoint the percentage of time you were in each stage of sleep, too. (Learn more about how technology can improve your sleep.)
But sleep trackers don’t actually monitor brain waves the way a sleep doctor would in a lab. Instead, they rely on sensors that measure your heart rate and body movements, as well as noise and light, to figure out when you nod off and enter each stage.
Then the information is calculated and displayed on your phone. It’s usually displayed in a user-friendly graph that makes it easy to spot patterns. But while sleep trackers are pretty good at giving you the number of hours you were dozing, they only estimate the amount of time you were in each stage.
To really know if you’re getting enough REM and deep sleep, you’d have to go to a sleep specialist. So take that information from your tracker with a grain of salt. And don’t freak out if you seem to be spending most of the night in so-called light sleep or if your sleep scores are in the 70% territory.
The best way to use your tracker? Log the approximate number of hours you slept, along with your own record of when you went to bed and how often you woke up. Then pair it with a sleep journal. In the journal, write down what you ate and drank that day, when you did some sort of physical activity, and the medications you took. That information — along with the objective readout from your tracker — can help you spot triggers for good or bad quality sleep.
You can buy a sleep tracking pad or wrist tracker from the Optum Store. We have you covered.
There are many supplements that promise to help you sleep better, but sleep specialists advise you to speak to your doctor first. Supplements (and even prescription medication) can help. But it may be better to use them in combination with CBT-I. And they should only be taken short term.
Another reason to get your doctor on board: Supplements can interact with other medications in ways that may be bad for your health. For instance, melatonin can raise blood pressure in people who take blood pressure pills.
That said, the supplements below can help people sleep better. (You can shop for a variety of supplements at the Optum Store. Explore now.)
If your bedroom is the problem, there are products that can help make it a more snooze-friendly place, including:
Funke Afolabi-Brown, MD, pediatric pulmonologist and sleep specialist and founder of Restful Sleep MD, Philadelphia
Raj Dasgupta, MD, pulmonary critical care and sleep medicine specialist and host of The Dr. Raj Podcast
Sanjay Shah, MD, medical director, Northwest Hospital Sleep Lab, Pikesville, Maryland
Sleep needs: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2017). “How Much Sleep Do I Need?”
Sleep poll: Sleep Foundation (2021). “Sleep Statistics”
Sleep basics: National Institutes of Health. “Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep”
Sleep and cancer: Sleep Foundation (2021). “Cancer and Sleep”
Family history of insomnia: Molecular Psychiatry (2018). “Genome-Wide Analysis of Insomnia Disorder”
Magnesium as a sleep aid: Journal of Research in Medical Sciences (2012). “The Effect of Magnesium Supplementation on Primary Insomnia in Elderly: A Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial”