Sleep Less: It's Not Harmful For Health

[BlackH@tWorld]

The fascinating topic of sleeping less. There was once a thread posted on BHW about an extreme polyphasic sleep routine ( sleeping every 40 mins for 5 mins). That doesn't do any good because apart from being impractical, it breaks your work routine. You don't want to go to sleep every 45 min when doing something important! I was doing some research on the topic and some of the most successful people, sleeps only around 3-4 hrs every night! Provided that you are working right, doing that puts you much ahead of the competition.

What do you guys feel? How many hours do you sleep? Want to make this an interesting thread of methods, stories etc of sleeping less.

Do post interesting links if you know about it.

Thanks

 

[gamingmaster42]

These days usually I'm staying up til 3 to 4 AM, then sleeping 5 to 6 hours and waking up around 9 or 10 AM. This was working well for a couple weeks, but this last weekend I crashed really hard, and ended up sleeping 12 hours Friday night.

 

[PandaDomo]

I don't really have much knowledge of this and I'm sure you know it already, but I'm assuming the 3-4 hours thing is probably just pure REM sleeping.

Most people normally sleep for about 8-10hrs daily (or at least should be receiving that much). However, only roughly two of those hours spent are actually necessary to the whole process which gives your body the rest, repair, and whatever else it is that it actually needs. After depriving yourself of sleep for two weeks or so (you will still feel fatigue and all the other side-effects of being sleep-deprived), your body will instaneously just kick into that "REM sleep" that's vital.

Or at least something along those lines

 

[jazzc]

Listen to your body and keep it in good shape. It will tell you when it wants to sleep and when it doesn't.

 

[bertbaby]

Supposedly Michael Jackson's extreme condition at the time of his death was caused by 60 days of REM deprivation brought on by a constant diet of propofol which is known to inhibit REM. Inadvertently, MJ perhaps set a record for the number of days with no REM sleep for a human.

Don't screw with your sleep, the people I know that went on a regular regime of 3 to 4 hours sleep a night have not fared well in life. Or in scientific terms: lab rats die after five weeks of getting no REM sleep!

Remember in life it's quality not quantity that counts.

 

[BlackH@tWorld]

Listen to your body and keep it in good shape. It will tell you when it wants to sleep and when it doesn't.

Problem is, then the body will simply say it needs 8 - 10 hrs every night. What you are saying is important though, you can tell when you are breaking the limit your body can endure. But I think the human body needs some training before it accepts that OK, 4 hrs is good enough.

I can't post links but you can search on Business Insider about an article "19 Successful People Who Barely Sleep". Reading that, it was pretty obvious they followed that routine because of work, not just because they like to sleep less!

 

[TheArticleMan]

Your body has a daily routine and clock (circadian rhythm) and you should go with that.

It will naturally tell you when you are tired and need to sleep and when you should wake up. In most cases the older you get the less sleep you require with your teenage years being the stage where you sleep the most.

Ideally, around 7 hours of sleep should be enough to energize you for the following day and send you into REM sleep (the dream stage).

I do agree oversleeping is counterproductive, so when you awake from sleep naturally try to get up immediately rather than snooze as many do. Your body is telling you to wake up and once you've had a shower you'll be feeling alert and awake. If you follow this routine you should obtain the optimum amount of sleep your body requires and sufficiently replenish your brain to its best working state. This can do wonders for your productivity as well as focus and creativity.

I hope this answers a few questions.

Cheers.

 

[PizzaPill]

My history teacher slept for only three hours a night because he wanted to read more books on history. He did this for 40+ years. He lived a healthy life and was very good at what he did. But I don't think this works for everybody and could be very dangerous for some.

 

[madoctopus]

WTF Would I want to sleep less? I go to bed when I'm tired and I wake up when I had enough sleep. This is anything between 5 hours and 14 hours of sleep. Otherwise I could just get a job and be forced to wake up to go to work like the rest of the people. No thank you, not for me!

Sleep is GREAT! It heals you, gives you ideas, helps you fixate new information, etc.

 

[pr0ject]

WTF Would I want to sleep less? I go to bed when I'm tired and I wake up when I had enough sleep.

This.

 

[Theodore]

Sleep is an important factor for you to function correctly. People think by doing 2-3 days straight with out any sleep that they will get a lot more done but you won't because your brain hasnt had time to rest or switch off. Also not sleeping much can cause depression which you dont want, its not worth it.

 

[Final]

I find 6 or 8 hours is good for me. Any less than that and i can't focus as well Most important thing to remember is that our sleep process works in cycles.. In an 8 hour sleep session, there are many stages of sleep you go through, such as REM, NREM and SWS (slow wave sleep). SWS is the deepest stage of sleep, and getting woken up during this stage is what causes the shitty groggy feeling known as sleep inertia. You can use sleepytim.me to calculate what time to wake up/go to bed, its great. if you tell it you need to be up at 7:00am it will give you four different times that are best to go to sleep, so that you wake up between cycles instead of in the middle of one.

 

[bartosimpsonio]

Curious fact: back when there was no electricity people would sleep from 6 or 7 pm to midnight, then wake up and do all sorts of things, then sleep again a few more hours to the morning. Some sleep studies point to that thousands year habit as to why sometimes we sleep 8 hours and then take a nap, that is, we have a two session sleep cycle, not one long session of sleep.

Since the modern age, which is historically recent, we sleep in weird cycles when compared to our ancestors. Today, you've got a hundred distractions due to computers and TV's and so on. So our sleep is basically screwed up compared to thousands of years of living without electricity.

Our present day sleep cycle is based on thousands of years of the habit of sleeping when the animals slept and waking up in the middle of the night, then sleeping some more till the morning.

 

[ArtVandelay]

There's a condition related to people who are referred to 'short sleepers.' It's what it sounds like - people who don't need to sleep as long to get the same amount of regenerative effects as a regular person who sleeps longer.
If I remember correctly, I think about 3% of the population has this, and it does typically lead to increased productivity.

 

[angelas111]

If you sleep two hours less every night, you would gain a whole month of extra awake time over 1 year. Over 30 years that is 2.5 years of extra time you have awake and experiencing life. Not saying its healthy but those are the numbers.....

 

[macdonjo3]

There was once a thread posted on BHW about an extreme polyphasic sleep routine ( sleeping very 40 mins for 5 mins).

When I wake up, I'm not in the intense and concentrated working mood for an hour or so. I'd never get in the zone by sleeping every 45 minutes.

If you exercise everyday, and do the proper amount of physical activity, 8 hours or so would be ideal, but everyone is different of course and I'm not expert.

 

[Ranko Jones]

this is bullcrap imo. I sleep as much as my body wants. Often tho I dont get as much as Id like and have a nap in the afternoon. More sleep = more productivity in my experience so its the other way round.

When underslept I am unable to concentrate and am like a zombie but if i had a good nights sleep or even a good nap im refreshed for another blitzkrieg of matt cutt's bullshit!

 

[isaacyip007]

not too sure about that.Anyway for me,it seems that if I sleep in late like for a week or two continuously,my body crashes,literally!Came down with flu,fever,headache,cough,stuffy nose and couldn't heal for a week long.So I decided to stop sleeping late continuously except necessary.

 

[Junkfood00]

Common sense, sleep when you need to, you don't have to follow any retarded researches.

 

[imguy]