How much sleep do I need? Why you can forget the eight-hour sleep rule

Mafi R/Shutterstock.com For decades, the answer to “how much sleep does an adult need?” has been simple: eight hours. The idea dates back to the mid-19th century when the notion of eight hours of work, eight for recreation and eight for sleep first took hold. But growing evidence suggests that eight hours may not be the ideal amount of sleep for everyone, as a new narrative review in Brain Medicine reminds us. To find out how much people naturally sleep, researchers have studied…