7 Most Convincing Reasons to Get 7 Hours of Sleep
About 1 in 3 of us sleeps less than six hours a night—and feels groggy, cranky and unfocused the next day. If reversing that isn't reason enough, here are 7 more benefits.
how many hours of sleep
It'll Ward Off Brain Blight
Seven—that's the average number of hours slept each night by women who scored highest on cognitive tests (reasoning, vocabulary, memory and more). When sleep decreased to six or fewer hours nightly, scores plummet—especially in reasoning and vocabulary—and the brain effectively aged by four to seven years, found a five-year study published in the journal SLEEP. While correlation isn't causation, sleep has restorative properties—and the habitual seven hours has also been linked with a lower dementia risk later in life.