Always feeling tired? How much sleep does your body really need?

Ray White speaks to restonic sleep specialist Dr Alison Bentley, about normal and abnormal sleep.

We're often told that getting eight hours of slumber is the norm.

But with the pressures of every day life such as shift-work, overtime, household demands and children, sometimes this is impossible.

So how many winks should you getting every night? What is 'normal sleep'?

Ray White chats to restonic sleep specialist, Dr Alison Bentley.

Seven to eight hours is not normal, it's the average. So there's a 'normal' range of normal.

Dr Alison Bentley, restonic sleep specialist

The majority sleep in this range (7-8). But there's a lot of people who sleep less and people who need more. So normal sleep is better defined as the amount of sleep that allows you to function well during the daytime.

Dr Alison Bentley, restonic sleep specialist

Creative people often want to be sleep deprived as it gives them better creativity.

But the amount of sleep also depends on your genetic make-up.

You can't create a 7-hour sleeper who's genetically defined to get that.... you can't get more than that. The important thing is that we have a number of people who think they have insomnia, because they have 5 hours of sleep. This is not the same as people who sleep four hours a night because of work pressure and on the weekend, sleep eight to nine hours.

Dr Alison Bentley, restonic sleep specialist

If you need six hours sleep and you get five hours during the week, you may be able to catch on two hours extra over the weekend. But if you're really short during the night, sometimes there isn't enough time to catch up on that time.

Dr Alison Bentley, restonic sleep specialist

Shortened sleep can be just as impactful, added Dr Bentley.

There's the view that you don't catch up hour for hour. So when you shorten sleep, your sleep becomes more efficient. And you get more of that deep restful sleep as a percentage of the hours that you sleep.

Dr Alison Bentley, restonic sleep specialist

Scroll up for the full conversation.

This article first appeared on 702 : Always feeling tired? How much sleep does your body really need?

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