Adults should try to go to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m.
The Best Time to Sleep Is Between 8 p.m. and Midnight
To align our sleep schedules with our body's natural cycles (our circadian rhythms), adults should go to bed when it's dark out, after 8 p.m. We also get deeper, more restorative sleep when our sleep time begins before midnight.
Adults should try to go to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m.
If you wake up at 6am, to get 7-9 hours of sleep you should be going to bed between 9pm and 11pm.
Turning in before midnight is good for our health.
Some studies have found that people who go to bed late and have trouble waking up in the morning are more likely to have a shortened lifespan, in addition to a much higher risk of psychological disorders and diabetes.
“Getting to bed around 9.30-10pm is optimal and it is one of the non-negotiables in my sleep protocol,” says sleep expert Dr Nerina Ramlakhan. When we are well rested, our anxiety reduces, mental focus improves, and exercise feels easier. There are long-term benefits to early nights, too.
If you wake up early feeling alert, should you just get up? It depends how early it is. If it is 3am, you should do your best to get back to sleep because if you don't, you're likely to feel tired and irritable later.
While some people regularly function on short periods of sleep, research mostly agrees that six hours of sleep is not enough for most adults. Experts recommend that most adults need at least seven hours of sleep every night.
“Women are also multi-taskers, and they do a lot at once. Because they use more of their actual brain, they may need a little bit more sleep than men. It is still debatable, but some experts say that women need twenty more minutes on average than men usually need.”
Interestingly, older adults need about the same amount of sleep as younger adults — seven or more hours of sleep per night. Unfortunately, many older adults often get less sleep than they need. One reason is that they often have more trouble falling asleep.
Another downside of going to bed too early is that it can cause problematic sleep conditioning. This occurs when you teach your brain to associate arousing activities with the act of laying down in bed.
Between the times of 10:00 pm and 2:00 am the body goes through a dramatic process of physical repair. Between roughly 2:00 am and 6:00 am the body will go through a process of psychological repair. A disrupted sleep pattern will cause the Cortisol to elevate and negatively affect the regenerative process.
Staying up all night should never be thought of as positive or beneficial and should be avoided. Even in circumstances when pulling an all-nighter seems like it could help, such as to give you extra time to study or work, it's still typically a bad idea.
This is due to your body's understanding of day and night. Dr Solanki, much like any expert on sleep, links your circadian rhythm with optimum quality of sleep. Dr Madhusudan Singh Solanki “The window of 10 pm to 4 am mostly correlates with a major part of the circadian rhythm of sleep for most individuals.
Daily rhythm helps our subconscious know when its time to slow down and get some sleep. Chaotic hours are likely to lead to sleep issues. The best hours for regenerative sleep for most people are between 10pm and 2am, so getting to bed before 10 can make a difference, although this varies between individuals.
School-age children (ages 6-13) need 9-11 hours a day. Teenagers (ages 14-17) need about 8-10 hours each day. Most adults need 7 to 9 hours, although some people may need as few as 6 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day. Older adults (ages 65 and older) need 7-8 hours of sleep each day.
7AM: Wake-up call
After a restful 7 hours, Bill awakes rearing to go. This was easy enough, as 7 hours is my personal ideal number of hours for sleep.
Now, he makes an effort to sleep at least six hours per night, he said in an interview with CNBC's David Faber on Tuesday. “I've tried [to sleep] less, but ... even though I'm awake more hours, I get less done,” Musk said. “And the brain pain level is bad if I get less than six hours [of sleep per night].”
President Obama would always tuck in his wife, too. Michelle Obama told People magazine that she would always go to bed before Barack, at about 10 p.m.