Are you getting enough sleep?

The amount of sleep a person needs depends on many factors, including age. For example, in general:

• Infants require about 14-15 hours a day.
• Teenagers need about 8.5-9.5 hours on average.
• Most adults need 7 to 9 hours a night for the best amount of sleep, although some people may need as few as 6 hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep each day.
• Women in the first 3 months of pregnancy often need several more hours of sleep than usual.

However, experts say that if you feel drowsy during the day, even during boring activities, you haven't had enough sleep.

Sleep Deprivation Debits

The amount of sleep a person needs also increases if he or she has been deprived of sleep in previous days. Getting too little sleep creates a "sleep debt," which is much like being overdrawn at a bank. Eventually, your body will demand that the debt be repaid. We don't seem to adapt to getting less sleep than we need, while we may get used to a sleep-depriving schedule, our judgment, reaction time, and other functions are still impaired.

Culled from: webmd