• Learn more about us:

Menu Close
The bigger picture

How much sleep is good for you?

The "HEADACHE HURTS" campaign taught us that (especially if you have migraine) about 7 hours of regular, undisturbed sleep is a great way to stop horrible headache attacks or at least not provoke them unnecessarily.

But, on a basic level, how much sleep should you get to stay sharp and feel good all day? Is it possible to sleep too much? How does the amount you sleep affect your well-being?

Conor Wild, a sleep researcher at Western University in Ontario, Canada, found himself unable to rest until he found the answers – and launched a massive study in more than 10,000 people to get to the bottom of it all. Participants were first asked to complete an extensive online form with questions about their sleep patterns, health status, education level and many other variables. The subjects then completed a battery of 12 well-established tests (games, riddles, puzzles, and special association exercises) to assess a range of cognitive abilities. These included reasoning, spatial and short-term memory, verbal fluency, and selective attention. The results of all the assessments were combined to give an overall score summarizing performance across the entire battery of tests.

Participants reported an average sleep duration of 6.4 hours per night over the last month. However, analysis of all the data indicated a sweet spot (optimal sleep amount) of 7.2 to 7.4 hours, depending on how each cognitive ability (thinking, speaking, total index) was weighted. In other words, subjects with that amount of sleep did best in the tests. Longer and shorter sleeps were linked to poorer test results. With one exception: sleep duration had no effect on short-term memory. Also, performance did not differ with respect to gender or age.

Baffling

One result will make you sit up and think: it turns out that one proper night’s sleep can restore you to full performance if you’ve been getting too little sleep. Subjects who slept a good hour longer than their average 6.4 hours for just one night achieved the best results in all the tests. But there was a limit: participants who slept three hours longer than usual experienced a significant drop in performance. So, based on a mean sleep duration of 6.4 hours, performance improved if the actual amount of sleep approached the optimal amount of 7 to 8 hours, even for one night. ‘Big sleepers’ who shortened their night's rest to the optimal duration also improved their importance.

From their observations, the authors developed the following hypothesis: sleeping only six and a half hours a night on a long-term basis leads to a 'sleep debt' associated with a decrease in cognitive abilities. As soon as you pay off that debt, which you can do by approaching the optimal sleep duration (even for just one night), your organism recovers and your brain gets back to peak performance. This means if you sleep too little on a regular basis, you will benefit from a single proper night’s sleep. Conversely, 'normal sleepers' will feel the effects of just a single night with too little sleep.

Save important decisions for when you’ve had a good night’s sleep

The authors say their findings have real-world implications, summed up in the following advice: If you need to make important decisions, get enough sleep the night before. The advice is all the more valuable because many people in positions of responsibility operate on too little sleep, possibly resulting in significantly impaired cognition and communications skills – and a debilitating headache on top.

Like brain, like heart

The brain is not the only organ to feel the effects of getting too little or too much sleep. Studies have shown that the two extremes are cardiovascular risk factors as well. Too little sleep increases your risk of diabetes, hypertriglyceridemia, and high blood pressure. Sleep durations of more than ten hours were also associated with high levels of triglycerides (a type of fat found in your blood) and high blood sugar levels in research subjects. The cause of these metabolic effects is largely unexplained. However, at least for sleep deprivation, there is evidence that it leads to altered levels of certain hormones that regulate appetite, calorie intake and energy expenditure in our organism.

A mysterious exception

So how come too little or too much sleep has no effect on short-term memory, of all things? Evolutionary biology may provide an answer, but this is all complete speculation: perhaps this part of our mind turned out to be crucial for key everyday tasks like finding food, escaping from predators or caring for offspring – and was protected from any interference so that it would be fully available at all times for these crucial activities. In other words, short-term memory’s non-reliance on sleep could be a kind of behavioral relic, a throwback from tribal times when peak intellectual performance was less important than situational flexibility, sort of: now where was that cave I can run to if I meet a wild animal? In these and similar situations, the protective shield around short-term memory may have proved life-saving, which would explain why it has been preserved to this day.  Investigating whether this bold hypothesis has any probability of being true would certainly be an intriguing research topic all of its own.

  • Kim CE, Shin S, Lee HW, Lim J, Lee JK, Shin A, Kang D. Association between sleep duration and metabolic syndrome: a cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health. 2018 Jun 13;18(1):720. doi: 10.1186/s12889-018-5557-8.

    Liu F, Zhang H, Liu Y, Sun X, Yin Z, Li H, Deng K, Zhao Y, Wang B, Ren Y, Zhang L, Zhou J, Han C, Liu X, Zhang D, Chen G, Hong S, Wang C, Hu D, Zhang M. Sleep duration interacts with lifestyle risk factors and health status to alter risk of all-cause mortality: the Rural Chinese Cohort Study. J Clin Sleep Med. 2018;14(5):857–865.

    Wang C, Bangdiwala SI, Rangarajan S, Lear SA, AlHabib KF, Mohan V, Teo K, Poirier P, Tse LA, Liu Z, Rosengren A, Kumar R, Lopez-Jaramillo P, Yusoff K, Monsef N, Krishnapillai V, Ismail N, Seron P, Dans AL, Kruger L, Yeates K, Leach L, Yusuf R, Orlandini A, Wolyniec M, Bahonar A, Mohan I, Khatib R, Temizhan A, Li W, Yusuf S. Association of estimated sleep duration and naps with mortality and cardiovascular events: a study of 116 632 people from 21 countries. Eur Heart J. 2018 Dec 5. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehy695.

    Wild CJ, Nichols ES, Battista ME, Stojanoski B, Owen AM. Dissociable effects of self-reported daily sleep duration on high-level cognitive abilities. Sleep. 2018 Sep 13. doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsy182.

    close

Zurück

NOCH MEHR:

LATEST
ARTICLES

DIE NEUSTEN
INFORMATIONEN

Deep Dive

The human brain needs a consistent supply of energy to work properly. Its primary fuel is glucose. Since the central nervous system lacks its own energy stores, the brain relies on a steady supply of

Current Research

How caffeine and headaches interact is among the most common questions asked in the headache community. It’s worth taking a look at the latest research findings and asking what they mean for headache

Deep Dive

Up to ten percent of people with migraine experience the phenomenon known as “aura”. The ancient Greeks used this term to describe a cool breath of air. Today, it is used in medicine to mean the

Deep Dive

Our perception of the world relies on a complex interaction between our brain and our sensory organs. Sensory stimuli that we receive through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin are converted into

The bigger picture

People with headaches and migraines often feel that their suffering is not taken seriously. Because their pain is not visible to those around them, it’s easy for others to dismiss it as minor or even

Deep Dive

Our bodies are engaged in countless processes around the clock. Most of these happen without us consciously initiating them, and many go completely unnoticed. We breathe in and out all day long

Deep Dive

Headaches affect almost everyone. With their widespread prevalence comes a remarkable array of myths surrounding their causes. Let’s delve into some “classic” headache myths and see if there’s any

Deep Dive

Headaches affect almost everyone. With their widespread prevalence comes a remarkable array of myths surrounding their causes. Let’s delve into some “classic” headache myths and see if there’s any

The bigger picture

Presenteeism in the narrower sense used in this article means when employees show up for work despite being ill. How widespread is this phenomenon? Why do people choose work over rest and recovery?

The bigger picture

Many people believe their headaches are directly related to the weather. We explored the connections in a previous article. The verdict: the science so far has not uncovered any mechanisms that would

Deep Dive

Developed by American doctor and psychologist Edmund Jacobson, progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a valuable tool for headache sufferers. As described previously in this article, numerous studies

Deep Dive

How do migraine headaches feel? Are they the same for everyone affected by them? How severe is my pain and how much does it limit me?

People who want to measure pain are faced with a significant

Headaches as a symptom of long COVID

“The coronavirus pandemic is over!” As these words were pronounced a good two years after the outbreak of a hitherto unknown viral infection, which had the whole world paralysed for a long time, there

DEEP DIVE

The medication-overuse headache (referred to hereafter as MOH) has been well-known for a relatively long time. It was first described as an independent phenomenon in 1951. According to its definition,

PREVENTION IN PRACTICE

Studying was badly affected by the coronavirus crisis. Many new students were caught unawares by the suspension of in-person events and could not enjoy lectures and classes in a familiar environment

Prevention in Practice

For many of us, the summer holidays are the best time of year. We have put together several tips in this article on how to achieve real relaxation – regardless of whether you want to take some time

DEEP DIVE

The fact that stress is a key factor in the development of migraine attacks is undisputed and repeatedly backed up by research. In practice, it is clear that people with migraine who succeed in

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Our genes are subject to the laws of evolution. Since the beginnings of humanity, they have undergone constant change, and still do to this day. We know that the course of evolution intends for traits

The bigger picture

We all know about pain. Pain is an important mode of communication between us and our organism. Contrary to what has long been assumed, it seems that there are differences between men and women when

DEEP DIVE

In our last article, we presented several explanatory approaches to the connection between blood pressure and headaches. In this continuation, we will be explaining a further, much-discussed

DEEP DIVE

The question of how headaches and high blood pressure relate to each other has a long tradition in medical research. Even today, the results in this field are very inconsistent and continue to give

Living with Tension-Type Headache

If you sleep badly, you have a higher risk of getting headaches. At the same time, headaches often bring about sleeping problems. It is undisputed that both headaches and bad sleep influence each

The bigger picture

The World Health Organisation (WHO) counts migraine as one of the most severely disabling illnesses affecting humanity; in general, headache disorders are a great burden to those affected by them. In

PREVENTION IN PRACTICE

Stress is an undisputed factor in the development of headaches and migraine. Relaxing and calming measures are important pillars of migraine and headache prevention, and current research supports this

DEEP DIVE

The fact that wearing face masks can effectively prevent getting infected with the coronavirus, is now adequately proven. Covid face masks therefore belong to the repertoire of measures we are

DEEP DIVE

Migraine is a neurological disorder that affects millions of people worldwide. Centuries-worth of research into this complex clinical entity is continuing to give birth to new hypotheses. The last few

The bigger picture

The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks migraine among the world’s most disabling illnesses. Yet migraine stigma persists. Many people are skeptical about migraine and other headache disorders,

Prevention in Practice

Holistic management of migraine and other types of headache now offers a treatment arsenal that is about much more than medication alone. In fact, it embraces many elements of behavioral therapy.

The bigger picture

In a world full of sensory overload, silence is something many people only know from hearsay. This article looks at why unplugging from environmental noise is good medicine for headaches and migraine

Prevention in Practice

The classic advice from experts in headache prevention is to drink regularly. Boozing every night? Well, no. They mean staying hydrated and giving your body the fluids it needs. Specialists recommend

DEEP DIVE

The brains of people with migraine have a special way of processing sensory input. Headache research suggests that a migraine brain responds to incoming stimuli sooner and faster than a non-migraine

Living with Migraine

The diet-headache connection is one of the hottest of topics for patients and experts alike. Migraine sufferers often see a direct link between how and what they eat and a migraine attack. This

Give yourself a break

Studies show that headache disorders take a heavy toll on student productivity and performance. Nearly one in three sufferers reported 'severe disability' (the highest severity level) using the MIDAS

The bigger picture

Humans are hard-wired to follow a routine. Your natural 24-hour cycle (circadian rhythm) governs many of the physiological processes in your body, including brain activity, blood pressure, hormones

DEEP DIVE

Paradoxical but true: medications you take for headache relief can themselves trigger headaches. A nervous system control mechanism is behind this phenomenon. Taking painkillers regularly and for a

Living with Migraine

Many people with a migraine will try to get out of the light. Often they have no choice but to go into a dark room and wait for the attack to end. Increased sensitivity to light is common in people

Current Research

All the statistics show that migraine affects women more than men, but experts disagree on what causes this gender gap. The role of sex hormones as migraine triggers is a hot research topic these

Digital stress and its consequences

Digital stress (or technostress) is a burgeoning area of interest in medical and social science research. How does it affect us to be surrounded by digital media in almost every area of our lives?

Prevention in Practice

Congratulations, you made it through another digital semester of online lectures, studying alone on your laptop, the final push to pass your exams. Semester break is here and you so deserve it. As the

Prevention in Practice

Where would we be without our smartphones? Life these days is hard to imagine without a phone to plan the day, find information we need right this second, keep up with hobbies or just to pass the

The bigger picture

Rarely has a saying been more apt than now. Covid is a headache on so many levels. The contact restrictions are causing profound distress. Fear and uncertainty are everywhere. Will it ever go away?

The bigger picture

Do short, gray, sunless winter days get you down? You’re not alone. The science is clear: daylight-deprived winter days affect our mood. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors would say it’s time to retreat

Current Research

Everyone has a different noise tolerance level. One person’s “barely noticeable” is another’s “unbearable”. Many people find it especially hard to be around those everyday sounds we hear all the time.

Prevention in Practice

The most strenuous events are not usually distributed evenly across the week. Monday mornings (that notorious 8. a.m. lecture...) can frazzle your nerves and set the week off to a highly stressful

DEEP DIVE

Vertigo (spinning dizziness) in migraine has only recently gained traction as a research topic. The science on migraine-related vertigo is unclear. One study found that only 10% of people are

Current Research

Coffee ranks high on the headache triggers list. The ingredient that gives you the buzz – caffeine – is one of the best-loved psychostimulants (uppers) ever. As a pick-me-up at work or just to hang

Prevention in Practice

In a 2018 study by Turner and Houle, headache patients were asked what factors commonly trigger their pain. Three-quarters said stress was the main trigger, closely followed by "irregular meals" and

The bigger picture

Teeth grinding (bruxism) has been commonly linked to headache. Bruxism is not a niche phenomenon. One in five female college students and one-tenth of their male peers are aware that they clench or

The bigger picture

The exercise-headache connection continues to vex scientists. Conducting genuine evidence-based science is hard because, first, the research conditions are difficult to standardize; second, many of

Living with Migraine

Migraine is not an allergic disorder, but migraine is more common in people with allergies. Doctors noticed the link more than a century ago. Individual case reports dating mainly from the first half

Prevention in Practice

Headaches make it harder to think, reason and remember – so when you need to be on top of your game, pampering your brain is crucial. Proactive headache prevention is essential, because you need to be

The bigger picture

The impact of weather on wellbeing features regularly on just about every media channel you could name. With so many people reporting that changes in the weather trigger a migraine or tension-type

DEEP DIVE

Your brain produces large amounts of waste products (cellular detritus; remnants of dead cells, proteins and much more) that need to be cleared away to keep your brain healthy.

One example of harmful

Prevention in Practice

Careful nutrition can help prevent headaches. But careful nutrition doesn’t just mean what you eat, but when and how. Migraine patients benefit from a regular daily routine that is less likely to

DEEP DIVE

The term “stress” as used today was coined by Hans Selye, a Hungarian-Canadian clinician who defined it as "the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change". Selye once called stress