Do you need eight hours of sleep?

A survey is suggesting that only a tiny minority of us are getting eight hours' sleep a night. But do we really need that much?

[...]It's become an increasingly common sentiment that too much work and stress and missing out on our eight hours is the modern plague.

But the good news, says Prof Jim Horne, director of Loughborough University's Sleep Research Centre, is that we don't need eight hours at all.

"It's nonsense. It's like saying everybody should have size eight shoes, or be five foot eight inches.

"There is a normal distribution - the average sleep length is seven, seven and a quarter hours."

Lots of people report having more or less than the average, he said. It may all be down to genes, and what people are accustomed to. [...]

In a nutshell, if you sleep for eight hours a night go to work and find yourself lolling and drooling on the keyboard, you aren't getting enough. If you're sleeping five hours and running the country, you probably are getting enough. [...]

Read the full article here.