4 Ways to Find Out How Much Sleep You Really Need
Should you shoot for eight hours—or can you get by on less?
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When he was in medical school and his residency, sleep medicine specialist Chris Winter, M.D., realized he could function well on less shut-eye than some other doctors. “I could get an hour’s sleep on a couch, then I could take somebody’s spleen out. It wasn’t that big of a deal to me,” says Winter, author of Running Shoes & Gear.
Some genes enable people to better cope with sleep deprivation, Dr. Winter says—and if you find you can soldier through a run and a workday on only four hours, you might have won that particular DNA lottery.
Still, if you make it a regular habit, you’re probably not doing your health—or your training—any favors. “Even in those individuals who say, ‘I normally only get six hours or less of sleep and I feel perfectly fine,’ their metabolic profile is not normal,” says Phyllis Zee, M.D., chief of sleep medicine in the department of neurology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
In fact, people who regularly skimp on sleep start to show signs of insulin resistance, a disturbance in the way the body processes glucose for energy that can hamper your running performance and eventually lead to diabetes. When they’re allowed to catch up, their metabolic profiles return to normal, Zee says. Sleeping enough also increases the motivation to exercise, her research has found.
As for exactly how much is “enough,” well, that’s personal. Most experts agree that regularly getting less than six hours places you at risk for health hazards. The National Sleep Foundation recommends adults log seven to nine hours, but there’s definitely variance within that range and outliers who need far more or less. More isn’t necessarily better—and freaking yourself out about trying to hit eight or nine when you might not require it can be counterproductive, causing stress that paradoxically disrupts the quality of the sleep you are getting, Dr. Winter says.
Fortunately, with some experimentation, a bit of brutal honesty, and a little help from your training log, you can learn to nail your sleep sessions much the same way you would your mile repeats. Here’s how:
Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013. She’s the coauthor of both Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, a book about the psychology of sports injury from Bloomsbury Sport. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things, and the active community in her beloved Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it.
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