You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hume. How is your sleep? Are you getting enough of it?

Dr. Jen Gunter says the messaging we get about trying to achieve perfect sleep might be going overboard.

She offers some tips for the sleep deprived and the sleep anxious in today's

episode of Body Stuff. It's from a video spin-off of Dr. Jen's popular podcast of the same name,

which you might have heard right here. If you enjoy it, you can watch more episodes at

TED.com slash body stuff. Sleep is so important. We needed to live, and when we can't sleep, we're desperate for help.

But lately, our fascination with sleep feels as if it's taken on an urgency. Do a quick

internet search for sleep, and you'll find a slew of

articles about how to make your sleep perfect. New gadgets, fancy alarm clocks, stay away from blue

light. There are lots of services, products, and advice columns that tell us we're sleeping wrong.

Not enough. Not quality sleep. Wrong position. Even worse, you might find scary messaging

claiming that if you're not sleeping right, your life is going to be shorter. You're going to get

all kinds of diseases. One of the biggest worries we have about our sleep is that we're not

getting enough. And that anything less than seven hours a night means that we're doomed

to bad health. Everything from high blood pressure to Alzheimer's disease. But there are two

flaws with this kind of messaging. The first flaw is that it's not completely accurate.

Seven to eight hours of sleep, while recommended for adults, is just an

average. And while messages have to be simplified for health communication to the public,

sometimes important nuances get lost. So yes, it's true that not getting enough sleep in the

long term is associated with health problems like cardiovascular

disease, diabetes, and depression, but fixating solely on seven to eight hours ignores the fact

that there's a range of sleep that people need. The duration of a good night's sleep can be

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