Sleep is essential, and due to technology and a stress filled world, roughly one third or 41 million people in the United States get six hours or less of sleep per night. An article in the New York Times suggests that perhaps not everyone is built for eight-hours of sleeping every night.
The doctors who prescribe sleep aid products may be unintentionally reinforcing the idea that there is something wrong with interrupted sleep cycles. When we are in our beds thinking getting sleep, we are actually diminishing the chances of a good night’s rest. The world’s population sleeps in various ways; including hour-long desk naps in China, and siestas in Mexico, Spain, and even all the way to India. Acceptance that sequential sleep hours are not essential for high-level job performance is increasing gradually, and is leading to increased workplace tolerance for taking naps.
Every expert is positive that sleep is essential, and that immune system cannot function optimally without adequate sleep. But change from rigorous and possibly outdated ideas about what constitutes a good night’s sleep may help get many people to achieve healthy rest, even if the rest that they are getting is not in a typical continuous eight-hour block.
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