Health

Instead, there's a macho heroism awarded to those who get by with the least sleep.

Unfortunately, sleep deprivation is a very bad thing. I often think that my annoyingly good health may be in no small part connected to my almost always getting enough sleep.

There are those who virtuously claim that humans only need some ludicrously small amount of sleep every night. Or that certain geniuses, like Thomas Edison, got by with only 4 hours of sleep a night. He took a lot of naps, said one assistant.

The truth is, we need a minimum of eight hours a night. A few really do get by quite well on less. Many of us need more.

Perhaps the best way to figure out how much your really do need is to just spend a week or more going to bed when you're tired, and getting up when you actually wake up. If you need an alarm clock to blast you out of sleep, you haven't slept enough.