Study Finds How Many Hours Of Sleep You Need Each Night

study finds how many hours of sleep you need each night

A recent study conducted by an international team of scientists and led by Swinburne University of Technology, Australia found how one should divide their 24 hours performing different activities for optimal health. The study said your day should include more than four hours of physical activity involving exercise of light, moderate or vigorous intensity and 8.3 hours of sleep.

The light-intensity activity could be doing chores or making meals, however, moderate to vigorous exercise should include brisk walks or gym workouts. Along with this, the researchers say that your day should also have six hours of sitting and five hours of standing.

The researchers looked at the data of nearly 2,000 adults. These people wore body sensors that could interpret their physical behaviours, for seven days. This eventually gave the scientists a sense of how they spent their 24 hours.

At the beginning of the study, the participants had their waist circumference, blood sugar and insulin sensitivity measured. The body sensor and assessment data were matched and analysed then tested against health risk markers, such as a heart disease and stroke risk score, to create a model.

They used this model to feed through thousands of permutations of 24 hours and found the ones with the estimated lowest associations with heart disease risk and blood glucose levels. This created many optimal mixes of sitting, standing, light and moderate-intensity activity.

A report in The Conversation says that the researchers found light-intensity physical activity (defined as walking less than 100 steps per minute) – such as walking to the water cooler, the bathroom, or strolling casually with friends – had strong associations with glucose control, and especially in people with type 2 diabetes. This light-intensity physical activity is likely accumulated intermittently throughout the day rather than being a purposeful bout of light exercise.

“Our experimental evidence shows that interrupting our sitting regularly with light-physical activity (such as taking a 3–5 minute walk every hour) can improve our metabolism, especially so after lunch.”

While the duration of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity may appear significant, exceeding 2 hours daily, the researchers characterised it as surpassing 100 steps per minute, similar to a brisk walk.

The scientists also say that these findings are preliminary. This is the first study of heart disease and diabetes risk and the “optimal” 24 hours, and the results will have to be further confirmed.

The data is also cross-sectional. This means that the estimates of time use are correlated with the disease risk factors. This means that it is unclear whether how participants spend their time influences their risk factors or whether those risk factors influence how someone spends their time.

(With inputs from agencies)