CLEVELAND, Ohio. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — “Are you an early bird or a night owl?” Well, about 60% of people are in the middle with only slight preferences either way. But we live in an early bird society, as most work happens during the day. And a 2024 Gallup poll found that 57% of adults report needing more sleep.
Whether you start a new school or a new job, your sleep schedule could be very different than your current one. So how do you change it?
“If you wanna shift your schedule, slower is better,” said Brian Chen, MD, sleep specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Sleep Disorders Center. “Just plan ahead for if you know something like, school is about to start in this many weeks and I’m falling asleep at this time, but I have to be falling asleep four hours earlier. Well, you gotta start shifting four weeks ahead of time.”
If you shift your sleep schedule cold turkey, you put yourself at risk for sleep deprivation.
“There are issues in terms of your heart, in terms of your brain, cognitive deficits later on in life as you’re older and probably insomnia, long-term, chronic insomnia,” explained Dr. Chen.
The NIH reports that 86.5% of older adults with insomnia report at least two other chronic illnesses including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and AFib. Also, older adults with chronic pain and insomnia experienced worse pain more often. So how do you know how much sleep you need?
“Everybody is a little bit different,” said Dr. Chen.
Your baseline depends on your age. Six to 12-year-olds need between nine and 12 hours of sleep, teenagers need eight to 10 hours of sleep, and adults need seven to nine hours of sleep. Dr. Chen says start by tracking how much sleep you get naturally:
“This is usually something you do on vacation. So on vacation, when do you to bed, when do you wake up?” he told Ivanhoe.
From there you can create a healthy shift of your schedule little by little over several weeks.
If you think just sleeping in on the weekends can off-set your sleep debt, you’re wrong. The Sleep Foundation says while that may help you feel less sleepy, it doesn’t take away the increased risk of hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. If you have serious concerns about your sleep, Dr. Chen says you should speak to a sleep specialist.
Contributors to this news report include: Marcy Wilder, Associate Producer; Chuck Bennethum, Editor.
Sources:
https://doi.org/10.3109/07420528.2012.719971
https://news.gallup.com/poll/642704/americans-sleeping-less-stressed.aspx
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33312842/
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23970-sleep-deprivation
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/sleep-debt-and-catch-up-sleep
* For More Information, Contact:
Brian Chen, MD
Sleep Specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Sleep Disorders Center
(216) 444-2165
and
Beth Hertz
Senior Manager of Corporate Communications at Cleveland Clinic
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