If you get less than 8 hours of sleep, your day will be terrible

If you get less than 8 hours of sleep, your day will be terribleIf you get less than 8 hours of sleep, your day will be terribleI am writing this story sleep-deprived on six hours of sleep, with my cognitive functions significantly impaired. Likely, you are reading this sleep-deprived too, because multiple studies have confirmed that our adult brainsneed exactly eight hours of sleep and its pretty hard to get that regularly if you have any type of responsibility.The drumbeat from scientific studies is this 8 hours. 8 hours. 8 hours. Any less and youre not functioning well, even if you fool yourself that you are.Even seven hours of sleep, which is luxury not afforded to many in the medical or journalism worlds of overnights and shifts, will totenstill negatively affect your brain. Losing less than an hour of sleep from the prescribed eight hours made participants in a Walter Reed study three times more likely to doze off than participants who got eight hours of sleep.In a similar two- week study, the participants who only slept six hours were acting as if they were under total sleep deprivation after only 10 days of six-hour sleep.10 days.The researchers measured participants cognitive functions after their sleep. The ones who got less than eight hours of sleep were slower to respond, couldnt interpret words as well, and were dozing off more.After one sleepless night, the participants in the zero-sleep group were acting like they were legally drunk.You cant game sleepTheres no way to beat the sleep system. Sleep is superior. Those same researchers also found that we cant catch up on sleep on the weekends. People who slept less than eight hours during the week did not regain their baseline levels of cognitive function after a weekend of recommended sleep.Worse, we dont even recognize when we are sleep-deprived. People in the six-hour sleep group thought they did great on the cognitive function tests, but they performedsignificantly worse than the eight-hour sleep group.But naps do helpIf you dont get those eight hours of beauty rest, theres still one other option to help an afternoon siesta.University of Pennsylvania researchers found that a one-hour nap after lunch improved 3,000 elderly seniorsoverall cognition. They could recall tasks better and solve more math problems. Theres even a power nap wheel created by sleep researchers that determines when is the best time to take a nap based on when you woke up.It can be hard in our busy lives to make time for sleep, but study after study confirms that we need to prioritize zzzsto be our most productive selves. And these sleep studies suggest that the reason we are so busy with never-ending tasks might bebecause were too sleep-deprived and tired to be efficient. We need to make sleep a lifestyle, not a habit.One good nights sleep can make us feel like superheroes, but it doesnt mean we can pull an all-nighter the next night. A Reductress headline wryly satirized the sleep dilemmaas How Getting 8 Hours of Sleep Gave Me The Energy to Overcommit Again.After reading these studies, I, for one, am a changed woman. Im going to bed at 1130 p.m. tonight in penance after writing this.