Does sleeping less adversely affect health?

Q: I am 27 years old. How many hours should I sleep daily? For the last five past months I have been sleeping for 5 hours only daily. Will the decrease in sleep create any problems on my physical and mental health?

A:Even though there is no concrete scientific evidence in terms of how many hours an individual needs to sleep. Several large scientific studies have revealed that adults who sleep less than 7:30 hours and more than 9 hours have increased chances of death. Keeping these in context I think an adult individual needs on average 7:30-8:30 hours of sleep/24 hours. An additional important measure to assess if you are getting enough sleep or not is to examine how you feel the next day (while making sure that you are not going through any other illness/condition at that time) that is if you feel tired/exhausted you probably are not getting enough sleep - if you feel active/rested you probably are getting enough sleep.