7 ms·

The headline is misleading; the article is talking about research that shows we're sleeping as much as we used to, the "myth" being that we're sleeping less tha

The headline is misleading; the article is talking about research that shows we're sleeping as much as we used to, the "myth" being that we're sleeping less than we used to. We still might not be getting enough sleep, it's just now it seems that might have always been the case.

akshatrathi 11y ago
I wrote the piece. Thanks for the feedback. I see it differently though. If you look at the studies most people are sleeping between seven and nine hours, which is what the little research we have done on sleep says we need. The "myth" is that, as opposed to what the CDC says, the number of people sleeping less than the recommended hours hasn't increased. Thus the myth that most of us are not sleeping enough.
- lighthawk 11y ago
  The problem we are having today is people that are overweight. Notice I said overweight and not obese. You don't have to be obese to have sleep problems. Simply getting your weight down enough can often reduce sleep apnea, which increases the quality of sleep. In addition, when we go to sleep matters, and this can vary, depending on the person. Finally, the amount of light, noise, the mattress, pillow, etc. all matter. Don't cheap out, but the most expensive mattress is not guaranteed to be the best. Don't sleep on a couch or an uncomfortable mattress.
jerf 11y ago
If we have "always" been getting "not enough" sleep, then for sufficiently large definitions of "always" I begin to question the "not enough". The twentieth century saw a lot of poorly-informed scientists second-guessing human body mechanims that have been keeping us alive for millions upon millions of years, on the basis of "studies" that constituted tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny samplings of a horrifically n-dimensional parameter space. I don't think the twentieth century scientists came out of it looking too good even now in 2015 and I expect them to continue to look worse as we learn more. This seems as likely a place as any for them to end up having been wrong.
- basch 11y ago
  enough probably means optimal not baseline to function adequately
dang 11y ago
Ok, we changed the title to make that claim more explicit.
deleted 11y ago
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akshatrathi 11y ago

I wrote the piece. Thanks for the feedback. I see it differently though. If you look at the studies most people are sleeping between seven and nine hours, which is what the little research we have done on sleep says we need. The "myth" is that, as opposed to what the CDC says, the number of people sleeping less than the recommended hours hasn't increased. Thus the myth that most of us are not sleeping enough.

lighthawk 11y ago
The problem we are having today is people that are overweight. Notice I said overweight and not obese. You don't have to be obese to have sleep problems. Simply getting your weight down enough can often reduce sleep apnea, which increases the quality of sleep. In addition, when we go to sleep matters, and this can vary, depending on the person. Finally, the amount of light, noise, the mattress, pillow, etc. all matter. Don't cheap out, but the most expensive mattress is not guaranteed to be the best. Don't sleep on a couch or an uncomfortable mattress.

jerf 11y ago

If we have "always" been getting "not enough" sleep, then for sufficiently large definitions of "always" I begin to question the "not enough". The twentieth century saw a lot of poorly-informed scientists second-guessing human body mechanims that have been keeping us alive for millions upon millions of years, on the basis of "studies" that constituted tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny samplings of a horrifically n-dimensional parameter space. I don't think the twentieth century scientists came out of it looking too good even now in 2015 and I expect them to continue to look worse as we learn more. This seems as likely a place as any for them to end up having been wrong.

basch 11y ago
enough probably means optimal not baseline to function adequately

dang 11y ago

Ok, we changed the title to make that claim more explicit.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]