If we reach the age of 90 we will have slept 30 years of our life. 30 years to be able to be 60 awake. Sleeping is the most important function that our brain performs throughout our life. Without sleep there is no life. The quality of sleep conditions our wakefulness and our quality of life.
Sleep is a workshop of repair, restoration and memorization of everything we spend and learn during the day. Everything we spend during the day, we repair and restore during the night. Also what we learn, we memorize when we sleep. Memory is configured during sleep.
Therefore, the correct functioning of this workshop, sleep, conditions our life.
With this idea of workshop, it is understood that the hours of sleep depend on age. A 6 year old child, who moves a lot and learns a lot during the day, will need the workshop, i.e. sleep, to last between 11 and 12 hours. An adolescent needs 9, a young adult 8 hours and from 65 years of age, 6 hours will be enough, because as adults we do not move so much and because we have already learned many things.
More than 70% of adults sleep less than they need. The current rhythms of life, stress, daytime tensions and multiple obligations, take away hours of sleep.
As a result, we are irritable, in a bad mood and with loss of memory and performance during the day.
There are also many people who sleep poorly. There are people who sleep little (they have insomnia), there are those who sleep a lot (those who are too sleepy during the day) and those who do not let sleep (those who snore, those who shake their legs while sleeping, sleepwalkers, those who talk, etc.).
These sleep disturbances are all treatable and many are completely curable. But we must understand that these disorders always have a cause. And to solve the problem, we must know the cause. Treatments should be aimed at treating the cause that produces the alterations. There is no single treatment to sleep well, because there are more than 40 causes of insomnia.
This is why it is always advisable to see a sleep specialist, who will perform the necessary tests to make the diagnosis and then recommend the most appropriate treatment.