The stages of life are crucial, as sleep behaviour and the optimal duration of sleep change over the course of a person’s life. Even in the womb, characteristic brainwave patterns occur that are similar to those of REM sleep in adults.
FACTS: The optimal sleep duration decreases with age!
Older people tend to spend more time in bed than younger adults. As the need for sleep and therefore the duration of sleep decreases with age, older people tend to lie awake in bed for longer. The ratio of sleep duration to time spent in bed is known as sleep efficiency. This decreases significantly after the age of 30.
How much sleep do you need?
Optimal sleep duration for
- Newborns: 17 hours
- Babies (from 3 months): 14 hours
- Toddlers: 11 – 14 hours (+ nap)
- Schoolchildren: 10 – 11 hours
- Teenagers: 8 – 10 hours
- Adults: 7 – 8 hours
- 60 years and older: often < 7 Stunden
How much sleep is optimal for kids?
Childhood – no typical day/night rhythm
Baby sleep duration:
Newborn babies have a pattern of several sleep phases spread throughout the day. These last around three to four hours. Babies soon begin to sleep longer at night than during the day. During the first months of life, they sleep for 14 to 17 hours. Babies can hardly be woken from a deep sleep, even by loud noises. After a few months, babies can manage with less sleep. They usually sleep in two longer periods – a total of 12 to 15 hours a day.
Children’s sleep duration:
As toddlers become more mobile, their need for sleep decreases further. They need 11 to 14 hours – including an afternoon nap. Sleep time shifts more and more into the night. Young children develop a regular sleeping and waking rhythm and sense the difference between day and night. From the age of five, the midday nap is no longer necessary. Children generally find it harder to fall asleep. In the course of childhood, the typical sleep pattern of adults develops with a long sleep phase at night.
How much sleep do teenagers need?
Sleep duration of primary school children:
They need eleven hours of sleep at the beginning, later less than ten. They no longer instinctively follow their need for sleep, but want to stay up longer in the evening.
When the duration of sleep becomes shorter, a lack of sleep develops for the first time, which children do not compensate for as well as adults. This is because a lot of sleep is particularly important at this age. The brain is developing, the events of the day are processed and the immune system is activated. If children regularly get too little sleep, the brain does not have enough time to mature and the consequences not only manifest themselves in tiredness, but also in cognitive maturation and developmental delays. Physical and mental illnesses are the result.
Teenage sleep duration:
Teenagers aged 14 and over sleep eight to ten hours. Despite this, they are often tired. This is partly due to the mental and physical changes during puberty, but also because most teenagers now stay up longer.
The reason: melatonin is now produced at a later time than in children of primary school age. Teenagers often go to bed too late and have to get up again at half past six to go to school. Added to this are the distractions offered by TV, smartphones and laptops, which contribute to overtiredness. This creates a sleep deficit that is exacerbated by weekend activities such as parties. Teenagers then often spend the rest of the weekend sleeping. This is how adolescents compensate for this ‘social jet lag’.
How much sleep is optimal for adults?
Sleep duration for adults:
Sleep duration hardly varies until senior age. From the age of 18, the duration of sleep decreases further and averages seven to eight hours. In adulthood, the need for sleep hardly changes. The duration of sleep is stable for a long time and only changes in old age. Older people only sleep for a few hours at a time at night. The quality of sleep decreases. The biological clock of senior citizens ticks differently: older people are tired earlier and wake up earlier in the morning – sleep research calls this phenomenon ‘senile bed-wandering’. Many seniors take a midday nap in addition to their night-time sleep – the sleep structure now resembles that of small children again. Sleep behaviour is also influenced by physical impairments and chronic pain.
Change in the sleep phases
The composition of the sleep phases also changes with age. In infants, around 50 % of sleep consists of REM sleep phases. In the first few years of life, REM sleep phases decrease significantly and only account for 20 % in adults. It decreases even further in the elderly. This is why older people often experience their sleep as less restful.
The proportion that children spend in deep sleep increases from the first months of life to a maximum shortly before puberty. Deep sleep accounts for 25% of sleep time in young adults. In older people, the proportion decreases – down to 5 %. The sleep phases are shorter in babies than in adults. One-year-olds go through a cycle of 40 to 50 minutes. From the age of five, the cycle length is around 90 minutes.
Did you know . . .
… that pupils who sleep longer on average get better grades at school?
This is because insufficient sleep in children and adolescents has an effect on the brain and therefore on learning new information.
CONCLUSION:
The same applies to sleep: life is a cycle!
This is shown by the fact that senior citizens sometimes have similar sleep behaviour to young children. In general, however, the quality and quantity of sleep tends to decline with increasing age. The following applies to all phases of life: sufficient sleep is the basis for health and well-being. In childhood and adolescence, a good night’s sleep is also crucial for the maturation of the brain.
