“How much deep sleep is enough?”

As muvh as you need to feel refreshed in the am.

Approx. 7-8 hours/night.

Enough to keep you alert and active the next day. Average is about 7-8 hours per night. It varies from 5 hours to 9-10 hours. Children and teens require more sleep than adults.

Deep sleep has a natural course. It is highest in teenage years, after which it has a steady decline during our lifetime. After 55 years, it constitutes 10%-15% of total sleep time. It can be affected negatively by chronic conditions such as Fibromyalgia.

Deep sleep, or what we call N3 sleep, can vary, and the normal range is 15%-25% of total sleep time. So, it depends on what your total sleep time is, and some drugs also can influence the percentage of deep sleep.

Thank you,

Tabarak Qureshi, MD FCCP

The monitoring of stages of sleep is unreliable with the wrist watch-like devices. Do a sleep log for 2 weeks. Actigraphy if available. Collect info about symptoms and do not depend on wrist devices.

Sleep trackers use the technology called actigraphy and are fairly unreliable at recognizing and classifying sleep. They measure motion. Doctors don't use motion to define sleep staging. Tramadol is a sedating medication. If you're wide-awake in the day, even on that medicine, and experiencing no accidental naps, your sleep is probably adequate. The medical definition of "enough sleep" is the amount required for person to be optimally awake. That means no naps and no accidental falling asleep during the day. On average that is 7-8 hours nightly. It should not exceed 9 hours. You cannot find an Actigraph with sufficient accuracy at staging sleep to have reliable sleep stage numbers. The correct approach would be to obtain a polysomnogram which monitors brain waves and serves as the gold standard definition for sleep staging. That requires a physician and a sleep laboratory. If you have complaints of impairment in the day; that would be a worth while a evaluation.