Sleep is glorious and many of us feel like we aren’t getting enough of it.
Well, now you have numbers to consult! Just turn to the National Sleep Foundation’s newly released set of recommended sleep duration for various points of life, numbers that were developed after an extensive review of past scientific literature and input from a variety of medical professionals. The recommendations for age categories from newborns to older adults were published in the National Sleep Foundation’s journal Sleep Health.
Here are their recommended sleep times:
• Zero to 3 months of age: 14 to 17 hours.
• 4 to 11 months of age: 12 to 15 hours.
• 1 to 2 years of age: 11 to 14 hours.
• 3 to 5 years of age: 10 to 13 hours.
• 6 to 13 years of age: nine to 11 hours.
• 14 to 17 years of age: eight to 10 hours.
• 18 to 25 years of age: seven to nine hours.
• 26 to 64 years of age: seven to nine hours.
• 65 and older: seven to eight hours.
By comparison, the National Institutes of Health recommends newborns sleep 16 to 18 hours; preschoolers sleep 12 to 12 hours; school-aged children sleep at least 10 hours; teenagers sleep nine to 10 hours; and adults, including the elderly, sleep seven to eight hours.
“Sleeping too little and too much are both associated with increased risk of mortality and a range of other adverse health issues: cardiovascular disease, possibly cancer and also impaired psychological well-being,” said Lauren Hale, editor of the journal Sleep Health and associate professor of preventative medicine at Stony Brook University.