Attention: you are receiving this because, weirdly enough, it’s actually sometimes healthier to get less sleep.

And maybe you’ve struggled to fall asleep – and you might be worried about what that means for your health.

Say goodbye to 8! Several studies have shown that it is 7 hours not 8, that is ideal sleep duration. A professor based in University of California tracked data from about 1.1 million adults who participated in a cancer study. Based on his findings, those who slept less than 6.5 hours and those more than 7.4 hours appeared to have a higher mortality rate than those who slept between 6.5 to 7.4 hours.

Another study published in the Sleep Medicine journal again showed that less than 8 hours of sleep seems to be good for ideal brain function. The sleep activity of about 450 elderly women was analyzed with the help of a measuring device attached to the wrist. After 10 years of analysis, it was found that sleeping between 5 and 6.5 hours a day was the best in terms of lower mortality.

Still not convinced?

A neurological study studied the self-reported sleeping habits of 160,000 participants who took a spatial memory-based matching test and another 127,000 participants who took an arithmetic test. The performance in these tests seemed to increase with higher sleep duration, but anything above 7 hours did not result in any improvements. In fact, the longer the sleep duration was, the greater was the decline in performance.

These studies show us that we could probably reconsider our sleep duration. But ideally, the way to go about with it is to test whether 7 hours of sleep works well and then make it a habit.

After all, the sleep needs of individuals vary! It is also difficult to overdose on sleep because your body knows when it is enough.

But perhaps you’re really struggling with insomnia, which is not fun at all.

Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve slept soundly. But it can happen again. All you need is this proven method that’ll help eliminate your insomnia for good. Learn more here.