Lies You Tell Yourself: You only need 6 hours of sleep. While caffeine and habit could trick you into believing that 5 or 6 hours a night is adequate, you're wrong. University of Pennsylvania researchers found people who slept 6 hours a night for 2 weeks performed as poorly on memory and alertness tests as participants who took the same test after a night without sleep. Mounds of additional research have linked sleeping less than 8 hours to higher rates of obesity, heart disease, and cancer, as well as a 15 percent drop in working memory function -- the type of
brain activity that helps you solve problems and make decisions.
