Sleep is very important. Did you know that sleep is more important than food? A
person who does not sleep dies faster than a person who does not eat.
Let’s say you go to sleep 12 hours late. It will take your body about three
weeks to return to normal. We spend about a third (1/3) of our lives in sleep. That’s
about 121 days a year!
How much sleep do we need? We are all different. A baby needs 16 hours of
sleep every day. Children 6 to 12 years old need an average of 10 to 12 hours of sleep.
Teenager need 9 to 10 hours of sleep. An adult need an average of 7 to 8 hours a
night. There are some people who need only 3 hours of sleep. Others need 10 hours of
sleep. After the age of 50, the average sleep time goes down to 6.5 hours a night. We
need less sleep as we get older.
Most People have some nights when they cannot sleep. About one in three
Americans has a problem with sleep. Many of these people cannot fall asleep. The
name of this problem is insomnia. The word insomnia means “no sleep.” Some people
say, “I didn’t sleep all night. But that’s not really true. They may sleep lightly and
wake up several times. In the morning, they only remember the times they were
awake, so they think they were awake all night.
This is not a new problem. Many famous people in history had insomnia.
Some of these people had special ideas to make them sleep. Benjamin Franklin, the
famous statesman and inventor, had four beds. He moved from one to the other to fall
asleep. King Luis XIV of France had 413 beds and hoped to fall asleep in one of
them. Mark Twain, the famous American writer, had a different way. He lay on his
side across the end of the bed!