Some people sleep eight hours a night and are completely floating around in their day jobs, while others sleep only five hours a night and manage to be alert business moguls who are fresh and active all day. What gives? Have we been lied to all our lives? Or are some of us evolving into sleep-resisting super humans?

"It's nonsense. It's like saying everybody should have size eight shoes, or be five foot eight inches," says Professor Jim Horne of the Louborough University Sleep Research Center, "there is a normal distribution - the average sleep length is seven, seven and a quarter hours."

However, Professor Horne says that the average does not necessarily mean that it applies to all. The fact of the matter is that it all boils down to genes and the habits we are accustomed to, says he. The need for sleep is relative and may be a case to case basis, so there's no sure way of determining how much sleep you need other than your alertness level during the day time.

What Horne suggests is for people to observe for themselves what kind of sleep they need. If they can work well and stay alert with less than eight, then they probably are getting enough rest. Some people sleep for more than eight hours and still get drowsy in the day time.

Doctors suggest that relieving oneself of stressful thinking and activities will enhance the ability to sleep and improves the quality of it. This sets up a night of rest that is healthy, deep and natural, which proves refreshing to most individuals.