Sleep is important to all of us and the amount of sleep we get each night is crucial to our performance during the following day and, too, to our health. 
With too little sleep is bad, we feel tired and irritable and this lack of sleep can contribute to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease, doctors say.
We have all been told that six-eight hours sleep a night is what our bodies need.
Now there is recent research, according to the BBC, showing that too much sleep could also be a problem.
To put it more scientifically, there is a gradual increase in mortality risk for those who fall outside the six-to-eight-hour band.
Professor Franco Cappuccio, professor of cardiovascular medicine and epidemiology at the University of Warwick, used the results of 16 studies to show that people who slept for more than eight hours had a higher mortality rate than those who slept regularly in the six-to-eight hour band.
But not everyone agrees with this, said the BBC. Prof Shawn Youngstedt of Arizona State University did a study where he found that younger people who slept long complained about depression and back pain. This made Youngstedt wonder whether problem with long sleep is the prolonged inactivity that goes with it.
So, how much sleep do we need? The magic number, according to Dr Gregg Jacobs, of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School may actually be seven.
“Seven hours sleep keeps turning up over and over again,” he said, with that seeming to be the ideal sleep duration for adults.
However, the National Institutes of Health has found that the average adult sleeps less than seven hours per night. In today’s fast-paced society, six or seven hours of sleep may sound sufficient but in reality it can be a recipe for chronic sleep deprivation.
What can we do to correct our sleeping patterns? The National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) in the UK has around 1800 registered and qualified therapists on its directory, all of whom can help adjust your sleep patterns for the better.
Hypnotherapy and hypnosis can help us overcome patterns of sleep disturbance which have become embedded in our subconscious mind after long periods of unsatisfactory sleep.
By using hypnotherapy, clients will experience fast and effective changes. The NCH states that insomniacs generally respond well to hypnosis.
A hypnotherapist will create a programme of personalised treatment that identifies sleeping patterns and teaches self-management techniques which make a big difference to both the length of time we sleep and the quality of sleep.
Research shows that hypnosis combined with cognitive behavioural therapy is the most effective treatment for insomnia.
There is a big difference between the amount of sleep we can get by on and the amount we need to function optimally, says the National Institutes of Health.
If you’re getting less than eight hours of sleep each night, chances are you’re sleep deprived. What’s more, you probably have no idea just how much lack of sleep is affecting you.
Side effects include fatigue, lethargy, moodiness and irritability, inability to cope with stress, weight gain and an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other health problems.
