Finnish researchers say that eight hours is the right amount of sleep for most of us, despite claims to the contrary.
An afternoon nap would do adults good too, according to sleep researcher Mikael Sallinen at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. Most people get tired in the afternoon and typically resort to coffee or a smoke to recover their alertness.
“Our biological rhythm triggers a need for sleep twice a day,” says Sallinen.
It’s important that we don’t nap for too long though, or this will disrupt our night-time sleep. For most people, a nap of 10-20 minutes is enough to refresh us. Interest in sleep patterns was stirred after a BBC interview in which researchers questioned the ideal of long, unbroken nocturnal sleep. It was also said that people have a tendency to split their sleep into two.
Evidence put forward for this includes a test conducted in the 1990s in which people began to sleep in spells: first for four hours, then awake for a couple of hours, followed by sleep again. Finnish researchers believe the test does not reveal a natural sleep rhythm, because the set-up was exceptional, as the test subjects were in the dark for 14 hours.
“The sleep-wake rhythm is also regulated by light and darkness,” explains Sallinen.
The ideal, says Sallinen, is to have a long sleep at night and a short afternoon nap too.
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JAANA VAAHTIO – STT
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LEHTIKUVA - MIKKO STIG
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