The question isnt when we sleep, its how much

The question isnt when we sleep, its how muchThe question isnt when we sleep, its how muchThis week a sleep civil war broke out over at New York MagazinesThe Cut. The firstshot was fired on Monday by Edith Zimmerman in apiececalled Its Astounding How Many Problems Can Be Solved Just by Waking Up Early. The spoiler is in the headline, but Zimmerman elaborates by describing what an obscenely early wake-up time, like 5 or even 4 a.m., does for zu sich. Almost no one is awake then, so you can quietly and without being judged just get a bunch of stuff done, she writes. She concludes by saying that while she hasnt always been able to maintain that schedule, its still useful as a turbo-charge button to press when confronted with a seemingly unsolvable problem or set of problems.Controversy erupted. Twitter, as is mandated by Federal law, weighed in. As did, when they woke up and read the piece, the night owls.Zimmermans colleague Anna Silman returned fire with a spirited and hilarious piece of her own. On behalf of The Cuts motley collection of night owls, late-risers, and people who generally feel like theyve been hit by a cement truck if someone tries to shake them awake before 9 a.m., she wrote, Im afraid I must dissent. While allowing that being an early riser makes you better at life, Silman maintains being a night owl is more badass.And in any case, for Silman, it doesnt matter, because, as she writes, its physically impossible for her to wake up before 9 a.m. Shes tried everything medications, booze, herbs, elixirs and, yes, sleep tips from yours truly. But, she writes, my body is trained to resist these things. Silman concludes with a rousing call to arms to her late night brothers and sisters in arms (or beds) So I say to you, my fellow night owls, let us band together and fight against the scourge of early-riser propaganda. Let us revolt Let us sleep in Let us look at the clock flashing 145 a.m. and say Oh screw it, just one more episode Let us be ourselvesT o which I say Ladies, please Youre both right. Possibly.The question isnt whether youre a lark or an owl, when you go to bed or when you wake up. The real question is how much sleep youre getting between those two times, whenever they may be. The science says we need between seven and nine hours of sleep (unless youre parte of the one and a half percent of the population that has a genetic mutation - a single DNA sequence change causing a switch from proline to arginine in the 385th amino acid of the DEC2 protein). Yes, its true, chronotypes are real - some people are owls and some people are larks. And living a life out of sync with your chronotype can cause something called social jet lag. And thats why sleep stability, maintaining a consistent sleep and wake schedule, is important.But even more important is that youre getting all the sleep you need. People often rationalize short-changing sleep because of all the things they need to get done during the day. But as sleep researc hers have revealed, your brain is just as busy with its own high-priority action items at night. Taking time away from the sleep-time to-do list for the waking-time to-do list is not good.While we sleep, our brains are intensely active, taking care of things like memory consolidation, cognitive maintenance and neurochemical cleansing. As Dr. Maiken Nedergaard from the University of Rochester explains, its like bringing in the overnight cleaning crew to sweep the garbage thats accumulated during the day - except in this case, the garbage is made up of toxic proteins that, when they build up, are associated with Alzheimers disease. Its like a dishwasher, she said. You can think of it like having a house party. You can either entertain the guests or clean up the house, but you cant really do both at the same time. So the real issue is Did you get all the sleep you need to complete the cycle? Because if you didnt, its like not completing the cycle of a dishwasher or a laundry machine- only with much more dire consequences.So if youre a night owl, dont let your real late night house party take away from the party clean-up your brain needs to do. And if youre a lark getting up early to work, make sure you go to bed early enough to allow your brain to do its work - as Zimmermans and Silmans colleague Katie Heaney wrote when sheweighed in Sleep might be the most unimpeachably human behavior there is, she wrote. You almost certainly need more of it, and you do that by schauplatz aside a bigger chunk of time in which to do it.And if youve really got a problem to solve, try sleeping on it - it really works. As John Steinbeck put itSweet Thursday, It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.So yes, be yourselves, listen to your body, and nobody needs to be sleep-shamed (including the night owls, whom, as Silman rightly notes, society is biased against). I only hope the sleep wars h avent escalated at The Cut. Though I guess the fact that the two warring sides probably dont actually see each other very much will keep the tensions down.This article first appeared on Thrive Global.