I think the question how many hours sleep do you really need is a very interesting one. It’s been touted for many years that eight hours is ideal and that anything less than this can lead you un-rested and therefore unable to perform your day time duties optimally.
A new study from the sleep laboratory at the hospital University of Pennsylvania would tend to verify this fact. They split a group of students into three groups the first group getting eight hours sleep a night the second six hours and the third for hours.
They were then tested during the day and no surprises here the group that got eight hours sleep had no cognitive decline. The group that was getting six hours sleep did a little worse and the third group did the worst not rocket science.
From this data they deduced that anything less than eight hours sleep a night caused some decline in cognitive ability. But this could be slightly misleading. I used to work shifts when I was serving in the Merchant Marine some of which could be brutal.
Five hours on and five hours off meant that if you were to perform your duties adequately you would probably only get three to four hours continuous sleep and a maximum of six hours in any 24-hour period.
So not only was I getting less than eight hours sleep a day but my sleep pattern would be interupted as the shift forced me to sleep at different times during the day due to the five hours on and five hours off working pattern.
So was my cognitive ability compromised? I would have to say probably but I believe your mind and body adjusts to whatever sleeping patterns you throw at it and so long as they are not permanent changes your mind learns to cope and no permanent damage is done.
As a navigator it was obviously important for the safety of the ship and all the crew members that my cognitive ability wasn’t impaired and for the most part I believe it wasn’t.
Studies in laboratories are a good source of baseline data but in the real world I believe things are often not as simple or as straightforward.
So although in theory getting less than eight hours sleep isn’t optimal in practice the line between getting enough sleep and getting too little gets blurred in the real world.
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