How much sleep does a male need?

I go to bed no later than 11 on a week night and no later than 11:30 on weekends. I always get up about 6 am. But boy do I drive home the ‘zzz’s. So I guess I am a 6-7.5 hour man too. So never quite as many as a fool…

The Student sleepes six Howres, the Traueller seuen; the Workeman eight, and all Laizie Bodies sleepe nine houres and more.
[1623 J. Wodroephe Spared Hours of Soldier 310]

John Wesley‥considered that five hours’ sleep was enough for him or any man. ‥The old English proverb, so often in the mouth of George III, was ‘six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool’.
[1864 J. H. Friswell Gentle Life 259]

Is there not a proverb that a man requires six hours’ sleep, a woman seven, a child eight and only a fool more? If this be true, thousands of great men were, and are, fools.
[1908 Spectator 19 Dec. 1047]

And it’s not only the duration of sleeping that counts. From the scientific point of view (however, one might doubt its validity) it’s much healthier to sleep, let’s say, from from 10 pm till 5 am than from 1 am till 10 am. Though the second sleep is apparently much longer, if you go to bed after the midnight you miss the most beneficial time for sleeping, which is from 9 pm till 1 am.

And that works at least for me. When I go to bed in the early night hours, next day I feel much more energy in my body. Conversely, if I go to sleep after 12 pm, I’m inert during the next day, even if I’ve slept 8-9 hours.

i need 8 hours and 40 minutes. i can get by on 8 hours but if i go under that i start to feel suffer. also if i miss sleep the night before i need a little more the next day but still don’t feel fully rested. need a full 3/4 days good sleep for that amazing feeling.

I sleep like a log, but seldom get to bed before 1am, and often much later. But when I lived in Asia I went to bed around 10pm and got up at 4am, and felt much better for it. I need to get my sleep patterns back under control!

Less than 12 hours I’m grumpy.

Now I could take that 1 hour or so nap right as I get home from work but then it is a little harder to go to sleep at bedtime. I have to get up for work at 5:30am on weekdays.

Bah, my college sleeping schedule has been screwing me all these years?

It is real individual. Try getting more sleep to see if your issues resolve, if they do, then that could be the factor.

Oh sleep, it is so easy for some people. So jealous of the folks with no sleep issues. When I was young I could sleep 9 hours (although for a long time I used to sleepwalk, wake up outside even, the whole bit), and was rarely tired during the day even while playing endless sports. In college I used to regularly pull all nighters or get like a 1-2 hour nap and still be able to work, study or attend class most of the day and function normally, as long as it wasn’t back to back all nighters.

Now as a guy nearing 40 I’d probably never be able to pull an all nighter.though sometimes it feels like it with all I have been through with kids, anxiety, crazy work schedules where I would be up til wee hours (when I worked at a start up and had customers on 3 continents to sell to). These days I’m pretty happy on 6-7 hours sleep, though I’ve gotten by okay on less than 5 if I have to. If I get 7, that is a good night, and if I get 8 it means the stars aligned, although it doesn’t necessarily make me feel any better. I find that good hydration and a better diet do more in that regard. I take melatonin at bedtime and I think it helps my sleep be more restful.

I just read an interesting article the other day that said every hour of sleep a person gets before 12 midnight is worth 2 hours after. I’m gonna have to learn to Tivo Daily show, Colbert report and Adult Swim on cartoon network. I loves me some late night television.

How much you sleep matters less than when you wake up. If you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle, you’re going to feel groggy and tired for the rest of the day. If you wake up at the end of a cycle, when your sleep is superficial, you’re going to feel better, even if you slept a little less. This explains why sleeping in can (paradoxically) make you feel sluggish.

With the advent of smartphones, there are iPhone and Android apps that try to wake you up at the optimum moment:
SleepCycle for the iPhone and GentleAlarm for Android.

It is interesting to see that most of you “need” 7-8 hours per night.

This week I slept ranging from 6 to 7,5 hours every night including some short 20 minute naps now and then and today on Friday I am totally exhausted.

I`m also curious about these sleep cycles. Maybe I should get an Iphone? ;)

I can understand that one feels more rested upon wakening after an cycle, but well into the day should not the body be more rested the more sleep it gets?

Until the 20th century, 10 was the standard. Then that damned light bulb was invented.

Seems like some of you should try Modifinil, I need it myself but I don’t know where to order it cheaply, and to get it shipped to Europe.

Your body does it’s physical repair from about 10:00 pm to 2:00 am. It then does it’s mental repair from about 2:00 am to 6:00 am. Some people can go to sleep really late and wake up early getting the mental repair done and feel fine mentally. However, your body needs the physical repair time to fight off infections and repair stuff.

Check out the book, “How to Eat Move and be Healthy” by Paul Chek for more information. It’s a good place to start researching about stuff like this.

All kinds of other stuff can mess up your sleep too though and make you feel unrested, stuff like stress hormones, blood sugar, parasite infections, etc.

My question is, how does the body “know” what time it is? What does it matter if I sleep from 10 to 7 or 2 to 11?