The Great Sleep Debate

Did you catch the recent TIME article in which Dr. Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, California, was interviewed about sleep? (You can check it out at www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1812420,00.html.)

According to the article, in 2002 Dr. Kripke compared death rates among more than 1 million American adults who, as part of a study on cancer prevention, reported their average nightly amount of sleep. Dr. Kripke’s findings may surprise some of you:

· Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours a night, as reported, live the longest. People who sleep 8 hours or more, or less than 6.5 hours, don’t live as long.

· Both very short sleep and very long sleep have been associated with depression, obesity, heart disease, and other chronic health problems.

Dr. Kripke’s findings fascinate me because I generally recommend that adults get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night, the amount that most adults need to fulfill their requirement for sleep. Unfortunately, we now live in a 24/7 society, and people often find themselves stinting on this necessity. For example, a recent National Sleep Foundation poll found that Americans are working too many hours and sleeping too few. Findings showed that 29 percent of Americans fall asleep or become very sleepy at work, while 12 percent say that sleepiness has caused them to be late to work. Add the stresses of work to everyday stresses at home, and it’s easy to see how most of us always feel so exhausted.

But that still leaves us with one question: what IS the ideal amount of sleep time? It’s important to consider that Dr. Kripke himself noted that the ideal amount of sleep varies for different individuals. In fact, the amount of sleep each of us needs is hardwired into our DNA. As Dr. Kripke mentions, “We don’t know if a short sleeper can live longer by extending their sleep, and we don’t know if a long sleeper can live longer by setting the alarm clock a bit earlier.” There are a lot of variables that need to be considered, both biological and societal.

While Dr. Kripke’s research provides an important starting point, more research needs to be done on this subject, especially because the amount of sleep is so variable from person to person. While no “ideal” amount of sleep has been established , there is an ideal range within which most people fall. But, while we all ponder what the “ideal” amount of sleep is, we should also be focusing our efforts on another sleep factor: the quality of sleep we’re receiving. There is just no denying the importance of quality sleep. If we don’t focus on relaxing our bodies during the sleep process, the amount of sleep received won’t matter anyway.