1. Less than 1% of people can survive on six hours of sleep

“I don’t want to scare you, but when we start sleeping less than seven hours a night, we can start looking at the brain and see the impairments at a physiological level,” Ovin explains. “It affects our cognition, it affects our attention span in our day-to-day life, and there is a linear with the amount of sleep that we get and how long we live. Shorter sleep leads to a shorter life.”

She continues: “Most of us need between seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Children need more, but adults need between seven to nine hours. That’s just the way it is.

“You always meet those people that say ‘I manage fine on six hours’ – there’s less than 1% of the population that can do well and live healthily on six hours of sleep. It might not be that you’re noticing it, but it’s having an effect on our bodies.”

5 sleep myths a sleep expert wants you to stop believing