All along I thought it was just me needing more sleep, but now research is backing up my feeling that I do indeed need more sleep!

Thankfully there's some science behind what I've been feeling for some time now. Researchers at Penn State University say there is a new standard on the amount of time we all need for quality shut eye.  No longer is eight hours good enough.  The new standard is eight and a half hours!

Daniel Gartenberg, a Penn State researcher tells Quartz,

A lot of this has to do with stress in our environment and our external need to work all the time. This is what’s driving the fact that we’re sleeping so poorly nowadays."

It's not just the stress here at the radio station that drives me to need more sleep, it's also the stress of keeping up my personal life, the house, mowing the yard, keeping up with friends and their activities along with helping my daughter with her homework and all the different projects that she has to complete for school. There's a lot going on not only in my life but all of our lives and I'm pretty sure there's a lot more people reading this that has quite a bit more stressors in their life than mine.

We need sleep to decompress from all those stressors in our life. The researchers on this project say that a good sleeper stays asleep for 90% of time when they are asleep, which translates into us getting closer to seven hours of sleep instead of those eight hours.

I'm good for getting more sleep in my life because I know I could benefit from it. Now I've just got to learn how to prioritize my time and to only take care of those 'critical' things that cause stress and deal with the other things later and concentrate on getting my eight and half hours so I can have a great tomorrow!

More From Mix 93.1