What is the minimum amount of sleep we can survive on?

What is the minimum amount of sleep we can survive on?

Chris Idzikowski (Director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre) gives expert video advice on: What is sleep deprivation?; What is sleep restriction?; Does sleep deprivation have cumulative effect? and more...

The shortest sleepers tend to be around three hours, three to four and a half hours, so there's an element of that. But in fact there is some evidence the long sleepers-I have to say a disadvantaged group in society-I say the nine hour sleepers, you can only manage on nine and nobody believes that they can't manage on eight. But, in fact, in sleep deprivation, in emergency situations, those long sleepers tend to tolerate the reduced sleep better than the short sleepers. But if I was looking for minimums, I would always think in terms of deep sleep, when you usually get around three hours deep sleep during the night, say well two and a half to three hours deep sleep during the night. One needs to get that in. It would be good to get the rapid eye movement sleep in and that is likely to happen if one is only allowing short amounts, somewhere around there.