Welcome back to Get Fit Guy, Coach Kevin Don here.

This past week, I took an Uber.

Took a ride out to coach karate and on the way, the driver asked me what I did for a job.

Upon finding out, he asked me if it was true that you do need eight hours of sleep and if it was bad for your health not to get it.

He, like many of us do, was finding it difficult to get a full night's sleep.

So here I am to share the answer with the get-fit guy audience.

I'm going to introduce you to the idea that eight hours of sleep is actually a myth.

Not only that, but it's a myth perpetuated only 10 miles away from my current location in

Scotland. The year is 1817 and the location is a purpose-built village on the River Clyde, just outside Glasgow, called New Lanark.

New Lanark was a project in utopian socialism.

The village was the site of huge cotton mills powered by the river water from nearby falls.

The industrialist owner, Robert Owen, had a number of welfare projects for the workers

who lived on site, such as schooling. In fact, New Lanark had the first infant school in the UK.

Aside from the welfare programs to increase happiness and therefore productivity, he also coined

the idea of eight hours of work,

eight hours of recreation, and eight hours of sleep. So it's from this tiny village in Scotland

that eight hours of sleep idea grew. It was later mentioned in the Treaty of Versailles and was

the first item on the agenda at the 1919 International Labour Organization meeting, where the eight-hour workday, therefore also eight hours of sleep and recreation, was ratified by 52 countries.

Just like anything else, though, quality matters over quantity. There is a lot more

to good sleep than purely the numbers you spend in bed. I often wake up feeling a lot more

rested and refreshed from a nap than I do from an eight-hour sleep.

However, one thing we do know for certain is that the right amount of good sleep is critical to health and wellness, both physically and mentally.

...