How long do you need to sleep each night?

I saw a recent article in our CTV news that says 7 hours is the ideal amount of sleep based on retaining cognitive function in middle and old age people. That sounds about right to me, as I have long held the theory that one of the causes of insomnia is sleeping during the day and/or trying to sleep too long at night. But, this may be like the "coffee is bad for you" articles. You only have to wait a week until another one comes out that says that coffee is not bad for you. My conclusion on that one is that coffee is not bad as long as you stop drinking it by mid to late morning. Later in the day the caffeine is sleeping issue...

Cognitive function? What's that and where do I get it? Most of my cogs stopped functioning a long time ago. Perhaps if they still meshed better sleep wouldn't be such an issue. Sometimes the daytime is the only quality sleep to be had. As for coffee, it's the stimulant that keeps my last few neurons firing. I do agree with you in general, reluctantly, under duress, for normal people, whoever they might be, but if that caffeine is going to have anything left to work with, I need to grab an hour or two wherever and whenever it can be found.

Considering that it started with such a clear conclusion that seemed like one of the most inconclusive articles I have read in quite a long time but those last few neurons keep harping on about seeing what we want to see .........