Hyderabad: A leading neurologist from Hyderabad is making headlines with a message about sleep.
Dr. Sudhir Kumar of Apollo Hospitals is stressing just how important sleep is to our health. He says that even losing one hour of sleep can have a big effect, and it can take days to fully recover. This is sparking a conversation about how much sleep we really need to be healthy.
“If you lose just one hour of sleep, it could take four days to recover from that,” Dr Kumar posted on X, stating the serious repercussions of inadequate rest, including headaches, poor focus, increased irritability, and impaired decision-making.
The post on X went viral with over 86.6K views, 695 likes and 146 reposts with many sharing their relationship with sleep. To a follow-up question of whether sleeping during the day can compensate for lost sleep in the night, Dr Sudhir replied: ‘Absolutely.’
“Absolutely. Sleeping for 7-9 hours at night in one go is the best option. However, if someone can’t get the entire quota of sleep at night, he/she could compensate for the deficit in sleep by sleeping during daytime (second best option),” he replied.
One more X user asked the doctor about necessary hours of sleep required for a healthy life and, he replied.
“The average daily amount of sleep needed, by age, is: Newborns (up to 3 months old): 14 to 17 hours. Infants (4 to 12 months old): 12 to 16 hours, including naptime. Young children (1 to 5 years old): 10 to 14 hours, including naptime. School-aged children (6 to 12 years old): 9 to 12 hours. Teenagers (13 to 18 years old): 8 to 10 hours. Adults (18 years and up): 7 to 9 hours,” he said.
To one more question on school-going children struggling to sleep, he replied:
“Yes, they lose sleep on account of two reasons: 1. Use of gadgets in late evenings, 2. They need to wake up early to catch school bus.”
