DoctorOz: The Science of Sleep - How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Things that make you feel sluggish. We started with the gut, but now we're moving on to sleep. So is it six, seven, eight, nine? How many hours of sleep do you really need a day? Eight's always been the gold standard. We always want that, but it turns out the answer is not the same for each and every one of us. In fact, my wife, Lisa, can even be a little bit jealous. For example, last night, I slept like a log, seven and a half hours straight. What if he's already asleep? It takes him about three seconds to fall asleep. He hogs all the covers. I've got nothing. Ugh. This version of story. Okay, it's six a.m. Did I sleep well? I don't know. Did you sleep well? I don't know. I feel good. A little stretch. You could sense the anger dripping from her lips, couldn't you? How many women feel like that about their men? You sleep too well for the anxiety we should be feeling. So I might sleep seven and a half hours a night, and I do sleep well, but what's right for you? Joining me is sleep expert, Dr. Michael Bruce. So how many hours do you personally need? So I'm a six and a half to seven hour sleeper. I am not an eight hour sleeper. So where did that all come from? Why is eight hours no longer the ideal? Well, we used to think that everybody had to get the same amount, but of course people are different, and everybody actually has different individual sleep needs. Sometimes that can be a factor of age, that can be a factor of medical frailty, gender. It's pretty amazing, but people's sleep need, and we think in some cases, could be genetic. Genetic? Absolutely. So what percentage of us are bad sleepers? You know, not gonna sleep more than, I don't know, four or five hours a night. Well, hopefully not that many are really bad sleepers. Some of my patients turn to me and they say, I failed at sleep, right? Sleep is a lot like love. When you're not looking for it, that's when it shows up. Perfect. Okay. It's the first time. I fell asleep in love, but not in that context before. Well, it's a different kind of context. Let's show everyone this study for the National Sleep Foundation, and this is important, because it's gonna take some of the pressure off us to feel like we have to get to eight hours. In fact, we'll find it like we will find love. So walk us through what this National Sleep Foundation study showed. Okay, so first what we looked at were infants. And so with infants, we know that they need a lot more sleep, 12 plus hours of sleep a night, because they're growing. As kids get into the teenage years, I have two teenage children, and wow, do they like to sleep. But usually you're pushing more towards the nine, 10 hour range. So they're supposed to be like bats. Exactly, exactly. My son told me this. He's 16 now, he won't sleep. But he told me that kids are supposed to stay up late at night, because that's how they're supposed to meet each other. Is that true? So it's actually a biological clock function. We know that their circadian rhythms, or their internal biological clocks, actually rotate later. This is one of the reasons why school start times are starting to become later in certain states, because these children can't wake up in the mornings. They need to actually go to bed later and sleep later. So he's not punking me. He's not punking you out. I think he's actually got a point there. All right, what about for people like me? A minimum is gonna be in the six plus hour range, okay? Okay, and finally? Well, and finally, when we look at seniors, there are a lot of seniors who, as we know, as we get older, we don't produce nearly as much melatonin as we once did. And so the amount of sleep that we require, five hours being an absolute minimum here, can definitely change. It can also change with medications, medical frailties, things like that. So how do we figure out exactly how much we, as individuals, should sleep? What's the, there must be tools we could use. So I'm glad you asked. I created a bedtime calculator to teach people how to figure out what their sleep need is, because it's individual. Everybody's a little bit different. All right, you're gonna show this to us? I'm gonna show it to you right this minute. The bedtime calculator, you can use it for love as well, or only for bedtime? Only for bedtime. There's a different love calculator. We can talk about that on another show, all right? So let's say that you have to wake up at 6.30 in the morning. What we're gonna do is we're gonna say that most people sleep approximately 7 1⁄2 hours. So that's a 90-minute cycle, five cycles a night, 7 1⁄2 hours. So if you normally wake up around 6.30, I want you to go backwards and figure out that your bedtime is 7 1⁄2 hours before, or 11 o'clock. Then, when I wake up the next day, or two, or three, I should be waking up within five or 10 minutes of that 6.30 naturally. So what we're looking for here is to no longer have to need an alarm clock. All right, so what if you wake up an hour before that? So if you wake up an hour before that, you don't need 7 1⁄2 hours of sleep. You need 6 1⁄2 hours of sleep. And you can actually go to bed later. You can, instead of 11 in our example, you can actually go to bed at midnight. You can binge eat. Gives you the extra hours, fantastic. Well, we wanna be careful about binge eating late at night, as we were talking about before, but at the end of the day, you really wanna make sure that you're sleeping the amount of time that you need personally. And again, most people used to think it was eight. It really isn't necessarily eight anymore. Using this calculator can really help people out. So Tanika tried Dr. Bruce's bedtime calculator to find out how much she actually needs to sleep each night. And she's joining us now. Where's Tanika? Oh, she's over here. She's still sitting. So I'm gonna ask her how this works. I'm curious. Most folks probably get a little intimidated by sleeping an hour less than they may think they need. So how did it work for you? It worked really great for me. Before, I used to be stressed about getting eight hours of sleep. I always watched the clock. Oh God, I gotta go to sleep. I have to go to sleep. I have to get up at a certain time. But after doing the calculator, I found out that I only needed six and a half hours of sleep. You're like Dr. Bruce. Six and a half is just fine for you. Great. And how has that changed your life? I'm less stressed. I wake up now, I have five children. So now I wake up- You have five kids? Yes. God bless you. So instead of yelling, everybody get up, get up, I'm up and I'm singing and cooking breakfasts already. And I'm not stressed anymore. So what if the weekend comes and Tanika with five kids wants to sleep in a little bit, is that okay for her to sleep seven and a half hours? No, we don't want her to do that. We want her to keep the same schedule because your body loves consistency and your sleep schedule loves consistency. And you're gonna feel different. If you're good on six and a half and you sleep seven and a half, you're gonna be dragging. The more consistent you are, the more in balance you are with your body and your sleep needs, the better you're gonna feel. I feel happy for you. Thanks. Spread the word. No sleep for me though on the weekend. Up next, we tried out the latest deep technology on the market to find out which ones work and which ones, well, they're a waste of your money. Stay with us.