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  • Q&A with Australian Health Practitioners

    How do you define a "good nights sleep"?

    Mainly reports talk of “volume” of sleep in hours, but I've rarely read about quality of sleep. Many patients I know are in bed for 7 or 8 hours, but will often wake for short or long periods of time.
    What then constitutes “Healthy” sleep?
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  • 2

    Thanks

    Dr Peter Solin is a highly trained authority in sleep disorders medicine and respiratory medicine, having graduated from Melbourne University in 1987 and undertaken specialist … View Profile

    Quality and quantity of sleep go hand in hand. Like all humans, there is a great deal of variability in the amount of sleep that we need to feel well. In general a good nights sleep allows you to feel refreshed in the morning. Humans are very good at stealing from sleep, in order to keep up with all the entertaining things there are to do in the average day/night! Communitywide, once you start dropping regularly below 7 1/2 hours of regular and uninterrupted sleep, general mental performance the following day begins to drop, and if you ask people in this situation, they progressively say they are feeling more tired and unrefreshed from the night sleep. Frequent short awakenings at night are unusual, and would be regarded as unhealthy or abnormal. Maybe 2 awakenings with some awareness would be regarded as normal, but once people are awake five or more times, this is more than would be regarded as normal.

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