Doctors Answers (2)
The entire 8 hours. You should allow a reasonable amount of time to complete a quality test allowing for adequate data collection. Most sleep labs should be willing to work around your schedule and see patients most nights of the week.
By definition a sleep study must include six hours of recorded data. This does not have to be actual sleep time, but you must be hooked up and monitored by the sleep technologist for a minimum of six hours. More importantly, however, you should consult with a sleep disorder specialist to discuss your symptoms and the effects of only having four hours of sleep on a nightly basis.
