How much sleep is too much sleep?

Question

I am a 17 year old female and i often seem to have to sleep at least 14 hours to feel rested. There are times where i sleep 16 hours and i'm not sick, i might just be tired, but is it normal to sleep this much? 8 hours is just not enough.

Details: During the school year i have a very hectic schedule and i definitely don't sleep 7 hours a night during the weekdays.

Answer 1

Most people only need 7 or 8 hours of sleep but some people actually need 9 or 10 hours.

More than 10 hours is generally regarded as too much.

Answer 2

It does vary a little bit from person to person- what is enough sleep for me might be too much or not enough for you. In this case though, obviously not enough! 14-18 hrs is a LOT of sleep. There's no reason you should need that much. It seems though, when I was your age, I did the same thing. I just thought I was so exhausted all the time, but really it was just how my body was trained. I guarantee you if you got up after 11 hours of sleep you'd be fine... but the getting up is the hard part. Give it a try, cut down little by little. You shouldn't need all that sleep, and it kinda feels like the days just waste away, doesn't it?

If that doesn't work, you may want to see a doctor. There are a lot of things that can cause fatigue, especially anemia- which is BASICALLY an iron deficiency. It makes you feel tired all the time, no matter if you sleep for 2 days, because due to the deficiency, your blood isn't carrying enough oxygen throughout your body. I'm a nurse, and doctors see anemia more and more in people about your age just due to lack of proper eating and things like that, or it also could have been passed down to you.

Now that I'm thinking about it, you may want to visit the doctor first. Explain to him how you're feeling and maybe keep track of how much you sleep for a few days, and take that info in with you. He'll do some bloodwork and you'll be set.

Hope this helps! Good luck to you!

Answer 3

its pretty normal for your age to be sleeping that long specially on weekend when you catch up with your lost hours during the week. so most probably you're not sleeping too much. your body does need its rest. but just make sure that you dont have a headache after you've slept that long and that might mean that you are sleeping too much

Answer 4

If you don't get enough sleep on the weekdays it is not unusual to catch it up on the weekend. Too much sleep is when you are fuzzy headed and not refreshed after extended sleeping.

Answer 5

8 hours is considered "normal". Everyone is different though and while one person is fine with 6 hours, another will require 12. I must say 16 seems a bit extreme though. There is a condition called hypersomnia, it is linked to depression.

Here's more:The National Sleep Foundation in the United States maintains that eight to nine hours of sleep for adult humans is optimal and that sufficient sleep benefits alertness, memory and problem solving, and overall health, as well as reducing the risk of accidents.A widely publicized 2003 studyperformed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine demonstrated that cognitive performance declines with fewer than eight hours of sleep.

However, a University of California, San Diego psychiatry study of more than one million adults found that people who live the longest self-report sleeping for six to seven hours each night. Another study of sleep duration and mortality risk in women showed similar results. Other studies show that "sleeping more than 7 to 8 hours per day has been consistently associated with increased mortality", though this study suggests the cause is probably other factors such as depression and socio-economic status which would correlate statistically. It has been suggested that the correlation between lower sleep hours and reduced morbidity only occurs with those who wake after less sleep naturally, rather than those who use an alarm.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleephttp://www.ambiencr.com/Trouble_sleeping...