The answer to how many hours you need to sleep to rest well is "it depends." It depends on your age, your activity during the day, whether you are taking certain medications, and, above all, it depends on the quality of your sleep.
A good mattress, in addition to ensuring you a better rest, with all that it implies for your physical and mental health, can reduce that numerical value that guides us on how many hours to sleep at a minimum.
How many hours do you need to sleep according to age?
Before providing values based on the premise that sleep is of good quality, let us summarize what neurologists have discovered about sleep and rest.
More important than the quantity is the quality of sleep because, to rest well, our sleep must go through a series of consecutive phases lasting about 90 minutes each, until reaching the REM phase. If sleep is interrupted, even with a micro-awakening, you have to start over from the beginning.
This explains why an adult can sleep 6 hours and feel 100% refreshed, while on other nights, they may wake up feeling exhausted despite having seemingly slept uninterrupted for, say, 10 hours.
Once this point is clarified, we will look at the minimum values of quality sleep needed according to the age or stage of life we are in. Do not take them as absolute values, as other circumstances will need to be considered, which we will discuss in the next section.
Early Childhood
Babies and children until they reach 4 or 5 years old wake up several times during the night, especially to eat. This is normal and does not interfere with their sleep quality, although awakenings due to poor temperature or humidity conditions or those almost sleepless nights due to pain, such as an ear infection, can affect them.
It is precisely in babies where the importance of sleep quality is well observed:
- Until they reach 3 months of age, the recommendation for them to sleep between 14 and 17 hours a day can be reduced by 3 hours per day if the sleep is good.
- Until they reach one year of age, pediatricians recommend sleeping between 12 and 15 hours a day, but never more than 16 or 18 hours.
- Children between 1 and 3 years old usually sleep between 11 and 14 hours, but as they become much more active at this age, it is normal for the level of exercise performed during the day to influence their sleep needs. At this age, napping is recommended in almost all cases, although there may be some exceptions. When in doubt, consult with the pediatrician.
- Between 3 and 5 years of age, it is estimated that good sleep is restorative with ensuring 10 hours of uninterrupted rest per day, with a maximum of 13 hours.
As a general rule, babies and young children usually self-regulate their need for sleep, so if your little one sleeps less compared to other children their age but shows energy during the day and the pediatrician finds no problem, you should not worry: they may know how to make the most of their sleep, and an additional nap could interfere with nighttime rest.
Prepubescent Stage
In this growth stage, we see discrepancies again, as while most children need between 9 and 11 hours of sleep each day, there are children who feel fresher than a lettuce with just 8 hours of good sleep.
Puberty and Adolescence
Problems begin, not due to the need for more or fewer hours of sleep, but due to hormonal spikes and their impact on mood changes. Imagine a teenager, whose mood is normal to fluctuate rapidly, not resting well. Poor parents and poor teenager!
Here it becomes essential to take care of the mattress being used. It is time to leave behind the children's mattress, even if it may not have completely finished its useful life, and invest in one that can adapt to the changes in weight and build that their body will experience in the next 3 or 4 years.
What’s the best option? A well-chosen pocket spring mattress.
As for the number of hours, 9 or 10 would be a good value, although at these ages, each case is unique.
Young Adults and Middle Age
We usually talk about the need to sleep an average of between 7 and 9 hours, referring to how much an adult should sleep without much wear. If your sleep quality is very good and you have no special needs, you could be at 100% with 6 hours of sleep daily, and conversely, when you engage in exhausting physical and mental activity, you might need to sleep 10 or 11 hours under the best conditions.
Older Adults and Seniors
As we pass 60, sleep becomes lighter during the night. Awakenings occur that sometimes prevent falling back asleep. As a result, during the day we feel more tired and often need a nap or a doze.
If your schedule allows, listen to your body, but do not neglect where you sleep: napping on the sofa is not a good idea. Whenever you need to rest, try to do so under optimal conditions for 7 to 8 hours.
How should you sleep according to your age?: meet your needs
If you are an athlete or a high-level student
In these cases, you need to add at least one additional hour of sleep, preferably two.
Choose a firm mattress to ensure you reach all sleep phases
That’s why, since we enter puberty, we recommend pocket spring mattresses for their firmness and how well they can protect the spine during the night, even if you change positions many times.
Children can also sleep on pocket spring mattresses. Just choose softer layers that cover the core.
Rest for older adults and adolescents
Just as adolescence affects sleep quality and mood, something similar happens when we get older and it becomes harder to achieve good sleep.
In both cases, it is best to review the mattress, pillow, and room conditions before opting to take anything. But if you think you need help sleeping, always consult your doctor first.
In the end, we should not give a categorical value about how many hours to sleep without studying the age and activity of each person. It is also necessary to consider daily activity and other factors, always keeping in mind that the quality of sleep is the final word: do we manage to go through all the phases?
To ensure this quality, we can optimize how we sleep, choosing a good mattress, with quality pillows, and controlling the factors of light, noise, temperature, and humidity in the room. Naps should be taken in bed, not on the sofa.