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Sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of serious illness

196 points by open-source-ux 9y ago

sumitwatts 9y ago
I am sure these guys are going to die anything soon. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/nation-world/sleeping-habits-of-seven-most-powerful-people/narendra-modi/slideshow/57098128.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/nation-world/...
Cozumel 9y ago
I think the modern world has messed up peoples sleeping, getting jarred awake by an alarm is unnatural and unhealthy. I'm a big fan of the 'natural' way of sleeping[0][1]. Basically, sleeping twice, like two 4 hour sleeps through the day. Sometimes I don't sleep at all or only get a couple of hours, there's a gene that helps ABCC9[2] (also DEC2). [0]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 [1]https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/dual-core/ https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews... [2]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111124150237.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111124150237.h...
spodek 9y ago
This article says: > It’s his conviction that we are in the midst of a “catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic”, the consequences of which are far graver than any of us could imagine... sleep deprivation... constitutes anything less than seven hours I thought we found out that we sleep the same as our ancestors. This article -- https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nightmare-sleep-no-more-plentiful-primitive-cultures-183037441.html https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nightmare-sleep-no-more-plentiful-... -- says > Even without electricity or other modern trappings, they [the Tsimane people of Bolivia, Hadza people of Tanzania and San people of Namibia] logged an average of 6 hours and 25 minutes of sleep daily, a figure near the low end of industrialized society averages.
- saimiam 9y ago
  How long do those peoples live? If their expectancy is less than or similar to modern society's after controlling for infant mortality and preventable deaths before say 18, then maybe the lack of sleep is hurting them too.
- spraak 9y ago
  But you can't consider that figure in a silo. All those peoples live vastly different than most 'modern' people. Mich closer to the natural environment is one prominent difference.
- greedy_buffer 9y ago
  Might be interesting to look at the study itself. It doesn't say if it was summer or winter when it was undertaken. I wonder if results would be much different for other non-electrified people
tabeth 9y ago
Even if it's true that less sleep results in less life, it's still a wash. Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14 wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 * 365 hours, in other words. Now compare this to sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking hours. 1440 * 365 in a year, in this case. This gets more complicated if you abandon the hours and rather frame it as a percentage of time you spend with the people you care about. Now your sleep is a function of their sleep and the math gets too convoluted, but I'm sure you get the point. Whether one is better than the other is more of a philosophical question, but just food for thought. IMHO people shouldn't worry about these kinds of things. In general, trying to optimize the quality of life you have when you're awake will generally lead to the optimal outcome in general. In this case, eating well, exercising and having meaningful relationships will result in a higher quality sleep due to lower stress and also make your waking hours also more enjoyable. Ultimately, that's the point, right? EDIT: Hah, forgot to multiply by 365, but my point stands.
- exceptione 9y ago
  Those waking hours are not of the same quality according to the article. Moreover, the article states that with sleeping 6 hours a day one will die in their sixties rather than living to 80, without medical assistence.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  There's something off in your math, but I'm too sleepy to figure out what.
  - usjehshksish 9y ago
    14 h/d x 100 y x 365 d/y = way more than 1400 hours
- knocte 9y ago
  >Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14 wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 hours, in other words. Now compare this to sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking hours. 1440 in a year, in this case. True, but what's the quality of life of those zombie-walking hours?
chimprich 9y ago
One thing that never seems to be discussed in these type of articles is that for most people time awake is significantly more valuable than time spent asleep. An extended lifespan is of little use to me if those extra hours are spent unconscious. If I spend 10% extra of my time awake (2.4 hours) but shorten my life by 5%, that seems like a worthwhile trade-off. (That's just an example; I've no idea if those figures are in any way plausible, but I'd be interested in any research that tried to figure out the optimum level of sleep for maximum life-awake time.)
- janekm 9y ago
  That would make sense if one were talking about time spent on furthering one’s goals, or enjoying life’s pleasures. But in many cases I think we are talking about an hour before sleep spent “idly” browsing social networks for one more “information fix” which I suspect most would not consider worth the trade off if made to choose. A bit similar to smoking perhaps... the reduction in productive life span feels far away, and the temptation in the moment is hard to resist.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >One thing that never seems to be discussed in these type of articles is that for most people time awake is significantly more valuable than time spent asleep. An extended lifespan is of little use to me if those extra hours are spent unconscious. Those extra awake hours will be worse quality anyway, and less productive, because of the insufficient sleep -- and this is cumulative too.
- pakitan 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure the numbers aren't plausible. I feel at my best if I sleep about 8-9 hours. Maybe I can cut half an hour and still do well but sleeping only 6 hours every day guarantees I'll feel like shit all the time and I'd be surprised if it shortens my lifespan by anything less than 30%
  - Shikadi 9y ago
    Additional anecdote here, if I sleep 8 hours or more I feel horrible, the same as if I slept 12 (oversleeping) but I feel better than ever when I get 5-7.5 hours a night. I don't think there's a one size fits all, sort of like calorie counting
quuquuquu 9y ago
I'm unemployed. I sleep 10 hours per day. When I was employed, I slept 6 hours per day. The difference in mood is massive. However, I'm not sure if the working world will change. It's a zero sum game of who is willing to torture themselves the most, which is sometimes correlated with how much work you produce. At my past job, it wasn't enough to just produce. You had to /look like/ you were producing. This meant working 8-6. This meant skipping lunch. This meant always sitting at your desk (no walking meetings). Obvioisly not every employer is like this. But working is a pretty decent way to kill yourself. It happens to most people eventually.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- InternetUser 9y ago
  >The difference in mood is massive. What are two adjectives that describe your previous mood, and two that describe your current one?
  - quuquuquu 9y ago
    6 hours' sleep = zombified, confused, stressed, steeped in dread 10 hours' sleep = alert, optimistic, sharp, happy And the only variable that changed was lengthOfSleep !
    - asdfologist 9y ago
      I thought another variable that changed was your employment status. That's a huge one, no?
      - quuquuquu 9y ago
        Correct, becomeUnemployed() was what altered lengthOfSleep :) I certainly could have tried to sleep more while I was working, but there really wasn't a way for me to personally achieve that. My boss and company were psycho. Lots of unpaid forced overtime, else fired. Lots of meetings and political games to play, else fired. I wish my skills were desired elsewhere but it's been difficult to find a new job. So, plenty of time for me to sleep. I definitely am exercising the same amount as I was while working. Sleep changed everything. EDIT: How on earth is this answer downvotable? What have I said that is even remotely wrong or controversial?
wellboy 9y ago
Wasn't the consensus that 7h sleep was the best for lifespan and more or less than that lead du decreased life span?
- transverse 9y ago
  Yes, but that requires more time in bed than 7h. It would require I'd say 7.5h in bed.
- cxseven 9y ago
  There was never a conclusion that certain sleep lengths lead to decreased life span, only a correlation. The causal link has been suggested to be the reverse - that sick people tend to stay in bed longer because they're sick. I believe I saw a recent article that even said that the popular takeaway that avoiding "oversleep" is healthy is the opposite of reality, because extended sleep is actually a healing mechanism.
lg 9y ago
> An adult sleeping only 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only to their early 60s without medical intervention. I wonder if this controls for other lifestyle factors. Eating a lot before bed makes me sleepier and I could go 7-8 hours a night. Small dinner several hours before bed results in about 6 hours. No alarm clock, that's just how much I need. I find it hard to believe that I'm shortening my lifespan by eating less at night.
- misev 9y ago
  Maybe sleeping long enough (7-8 hours) requires a certain (higher) amount of energy, which would be supported by a big dinner before bed? Not sure if there are any studies on this.
mratzloff 9y ago
I haven't used an alarm in probably a decade, outside of super early flights. I consistently wake up when I need to. I have no problems with insomnia. I don't need caffeine to feel awake and in fact haven't drank any in about three years. I wake up feeling refreshed and happy and looking forward to the day. I say this because I used to have pretty bad insomnia. Weeks of almost no sleep. Let me tell you: when sleep is not going right for you, nothing is going right. Sleep does wonders for depression, too. So I looked at everything I was doing wrong and changed it all. I changed my diet, my work habits, everything. I don't do a lot of critical thinking an hour or two before bed (no work, no computer). I've trained my body to know how to sleep. I go to bed at around the same time every night, and I listen to my body. Barring those with actual medical issues, for the majority, it is a choice.
- ddorian43 9y ago
  Dont depressed people sleep like 12 hours ?
  - fpoling 9y ago
    A person I knew with depression complained that it was just impossible to sleep at the time when one needs most and then get 12 hours of a bad sleep when one better do other things.
    - ddorian43 9y ago
      Seems like bipolar ? Sometimes you don't sleep (manic) and sometimes you oversleep (depress). Maybe he was misdiagnosed (often are). But I'm probably talking too much from 1 sentence.
      - hmschreck 9y ago
        Depression makes sleep more or less impossible sometimes, and more or less unavoidable others. My SO has severe depression, and no symptoms of bipolar (which I would recognize due to my own diagnosis), but experiences times where he's dead to the world for 12-14 hours, but then also experiences times where he will lay awake for hours trying to fall asleep.
hal9000xp 9y ago
There is massive problem in the culture about value of sleep. The culture implicitly defines mentality where working hard without much sleep is somewhat heroic. Therefore according to the culture (again implicitly) those who sleep a lot are lazy. Hard working heroes who sacrifice sleep from time to time displayed in popular films. Take for example three films Micro Men [1] and The Martian [2] and The Social Network [3]. In first two films, hard working heroes don't "waste" time on "useless/unproductive" sleep and instead drink lots caffeine. In corporate culture it's often the same. Since 2006 till 2008 I worked as a technical support engineer and I often had to work at night. Sometimes, I took two hours of sleep (in an office's couch) from 4 AM till 6 AM. After these two hours of sleep I would be energized and work really productive till 9 AM. But the company decided to impose strict ban on sleeping in office and instead put coffee machine. As I expected my performance fell significantly no matter how much coffee I took. So the company put stupid discipline over actual performance. In 2014, I had insomnia so I couldn't perform well at work (again no matter how much coffee I took). I went to corporate doctor (a doctor assigned by company). She looked at me and said that I don't have bruises under my eyes, so I'm totally fine. More than that she actually didn't take any my complaints seriously and instead assumed that I'm lazy. Nowadays, I mostly sleep well and I almost don't drink caffeine. Sometimes, my insomnia came back. Since I participate in algorithm contests and I know very well that no matter how hard I try to work hard without enough sleep I do not perform well in algorithm contests. The mentality that working hard is opposite to good sleep is most irrational, harmful and widespread yet very implicit thing in the culture. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network
- spraak 9y ago
  I wonder if there is a reverse effect of taking caffeine when tired/sleep deprived? Some days when I'd hardly slept the night before I would try to rely on caffeine to make it through the day but actually found myself ready to fall asleep after the drink. In any case I definitely agree, get sleep instead of coffee.
zild3d 9y ago
> the number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population and rounded to a whole number, is zero. Pretty deceiving claim, the author starts with "the number of people", but gives a rounded down percentage instead the point would be perfectly clear as "only 0.X% of people ..."
5_minutes 9y ago
It doesn’t mention taking naps. But damn, they make life pretty great!
- manmal 9y ago
  It does, and mentions that they are not long enough to reach deep sleep. The next sentence says that we need 4-5 cycles to get enough deep sleep.
bonniemuffin 9y ago
This reminds me of a delightful article that helped me fall back in love with sleep (and therefore find it easier to fall asleep): https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-love-with-sleep-again https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-l...
Apocryphon 9y ago
Two thoughts on how sleep deprivation directly impacts hackers and people working in the tech industry: 1. Glorifying low sleep through all-nighters, perpetual crunch time, etc., has become part and parcel of startup life for generations [0]. (I've always wondered if it's a carryover from the particularly collegiate nature of software culture [1]). There's been some backlash against founders and the like boasting about operating on low sleep, as part of the general backlash against poor work-life balances in tech. Hackers need to push back against the suboptimal performance and system degradation that chronic sleep deprivation creates. 2. The tech industry, known for its whimsical benefits and presumptions to think differently and be unconventional, could explore allowing employees to take nap breaks. So far it looks like Google and Cisco are among the handful of large tech companies to allow employees to nap [2], but one wonders how many employees with poor sleep hygiene actually do take advantage of it, and whenever those articles pop up it always seems like ads for sleep pods. Yet siestas and naps are something that have been allowed in cultures around the world, even in work-heavy East Asia [3]. [0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_And_Loving_It.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299145 [2] http://fortune.com/2011/08/18/why-companies-are-cozying-up-to-napping-at-work/ http://fortune.com/2011/08/18/why-companies-are-cozying-up-t... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/japanese-firms-encourage-workers-sleep-on-job https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/japanese-firms... http://mashable.com/2017/07/12/capsule-beds-beijing/#ohlpi6Knaaqr http://mashable.com/2017/07/12/capsule-beds-beijing/#ohlpi6K...
zem 9y ago
for the last few years, i've been getting by with 6 hours/night on weekdays and 10 on weekends, but lately i've found myself waking up too early on several weekends, and i'm a bit worried my body is getting used to "six hours are all you get". need to work up the self discipline to close the book at least an hour earlier every night.
- Shikadi 9y ago
  I read somewhere recently that the 8 hours a night number is wrong, and it depends on your age, lifestyle, and genetics. 6 was at the lower end of what they said was fine, though unfortunately I don't remember the source or if it was reputable.
joveian 9y ago
"Deep sleep – the part when we begin to dream" While I'm glad they don't use the popular but incorrect REM sleep == dream sleep, I don't think this is correct either. I have a circadian rhythm disorder and had severe insomnia before that and so have observed the process of getting to sleep in slow motion many times. At least in many cases for me, dreaming preceeds sleep by a bit as gently waundering thoughts gradually turn into dreaming (this might be considered stage 1 sleep on polysomnograph, but certainly not deep sleep). I have a poor visual memory and when I notice visual recall when close to sleep then that is a very good sign that sleep is about to happen. It turns into dreaming a little bit after that and then I fall asleep, although I don't think it always follows this progression (and I don't think I always get visual recall before sleep).
- Shikadi 9y ago
  I was under the impression that rem was the state when you dream, and you can sometimes enter it before the other stages, can you enlighten me to the truth with a decent source? Thanks =D
  - joveian 9y ago
    I think the best article on this is Mark Solms 2000 "Dreaming and REM sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms"[0]. Solms and a couple of coauthors have an article this year, "Dreaming in Neurological Disorders"[1], which is also great although I don't think it directly answers your question. My sense is that it is still being debated if there are differences in the types of dreams that happen in different stages or not. I couldn't find it last time I looked, but some research somewhat recently found that medically extinguishing REM sleep did not produce a detectable change in dream reports. Other studies seem to show that there may be differences. [0] http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-dom/My_research/Papers-2.1-done/Cognitive-S/Consciousness/For-icnnai-2010/2/Ref/download.pdf http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-dom/My_research/Papers-2.1-done/C... [1] https://twin.sci-hub.ac/cd77f4d5f6111801eee90b66a3ac13ee/solms2017.pdf https://twin.sci-hub.ac/cd77f4d5f6111801eee90b66a3ac13ee/sol...
    - Shikadi 9y ago
anotherevan 9y ago
The quality of your sleep is an important factor too. If you suspect you may have obstructive sleep apnea then go get it checked out.

I am sure these guys are going to die anything soon. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/nation-world/sleeping-habits-of-seven-most-powerful-people/narendra-modi/slideshow/57098128.cms http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/nation-world/...

Cozumel 9y ago

I think the modern world has messed up peoples sleeping, getting jarred awake by an alarm is unnatural and unhealthy. I'm a big fan of the 'natural' way of sleeping[0][1]. Basically, sleeping twice, like two 4 hour sleeps through the day. Sometimes I don't sleep at all or only get a couple of hours, there's a gene that helps ABCC9[2] (also DEC2). [0]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783 [1]https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/dual-core/ https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews... [2]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111124150237.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111124150237.h...

spodek 9y ago

This article says: > It’s his conviction that we are in the midst of a “catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic”, the consequences of which are far graver than any of us could imagine... sleep deprivation... constitutes anything less than seven hours I thought we found out that we sleep the same as our ancestors. This article -- https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nightmare-sleep-no-more-plentiful-primitive-cultures-183037441.html https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nightmare-sleep-no-more-plentiful-... -- says > Even without electricity or other modern trappings, they [the Tsimane people of Bolivia, Hadza people of Tanzania and San people of Namibia] logged an average of 6 hours and 25 minutes of sleep daily, a figure near the low end of industrialized society averages.

saimiam 9y ago
How long do those peoples live? If their expectancy is less than or similar to modern society's after controlling for infant mortality and preventable deaths before say 18, then maybe the lack of sleep is hurting them too.
spraak 9y ago
But you can't consider that figure in a silo. All those peoples live vastly different than most 'modern' people. Mich closer to the natural environment is one prominent difference.
greedy_buffer 9y ago
Might be interesting to look at the study itself. It doesn't say if it was summer or winter when it was undertaken. I wonder if results would be much different for other non-electrified people

tabeth 9y ago

Even if it's true that less sleep results in less life, it's still a wash. Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14 wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 * 365 hours, in other words. Now compare this to sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking hours. 1440 * 365 in a year, in this case. This gets more complicated if you abandon the hours and rather frame it as a percentage of time you spend with the people you care about. Now your sleep is a function of their sleep and the math gets too convoluted, but I'm sure you get the point. Whether one is better than the other is more of a philosophical question, but just food for thought. IMHO people shouldn't worry about these kinds of things. In general, trying to optimize the quality of life you have when you're awake will generally lead to the optimal outcome in general. In this case, eating well, exercising and having meaningful relationships will result in a higher quality sleep due to lower stress and also make your waking hours also more enjoyable. Ultimately, that's the point, right? EDIT: Hah, forgot to multiply by 365, but my point stands.

exceptione 9y ago
Those waking hours are not of the same quality according to the article. Moreover, the article states that with sleeping 6 hours a day one will die in their sixties rather than living to 80, without medical assistence.
dingo_bat 9y ago
There's something off in your math, but I'm too sleepy to figure out what.
- usjehshksish 9y ago
  14 h/d x 100 y x 365 d/y = way more than 1400 hours
knocte 9y ago
>Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14 wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 hours, in other words. Now compare this to sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking hours. 1440 in a year, in this case. True, but what's the quality of life of those zombie-walking hours?

chimprich 9y ago

One thing that never seems to be discussed in these type of articles is that for most people time awake is significantly more valuable than time spent asleep. An extended lifespan is of little use to me if those extra hours are spent unconscious. If I spend 10% extra of my time awake (2.4 hours) but shorten my life by 5%, that seems like a worthwhile trade-off. (That's just an example; I've no idea if those figures are in any way plausible, but I'd be interested in any research that tried to figure out the optimum level of sleep for maximum life-awake time.)

janekm 9y ago
That would make sense if one were talking about time spent on furthering one’s goals, or enjoying life’s pleasures. But in many cases I think we are talking about an hour before sleep spent “idly” browsing social networks for one more “information fix” which I suspect most would not consider worth the trade off if made to choose. A bit similar to smoking perhaps... the reduction in productive life span feels far away, and the temptation in the moment is hard to resist.
coldtea 9y ago
>One thing that never seems to be discussed in these type of articles is that for most people time awake is significantly more valuable than time spent asleep. An extended lifespan is of little use to me if those extra hours are spent unconscious. Those extra awake hours will be worse quality anyway, and less productive, because of the insufficient sleep -- and this is cumulative too.
pakitan 9y ago
I'm pretty sure the numbers aren't plausible. I feel at my best if I sleep about 8-9 hours. Maybe I can cut half an hour and still do well but sleeping only 6 hours every day guarantees I'll feel like shit all the time and I'd be surprised if it shortens my lifespan by anything less than 30%
- Shikadi 9y ago
  Additional anecdote here, if I sleep 8 hours or more I feel horrible, the same as if I slept 12 (oversleeping) but I feel better than ever when I get 5-7.5 hours a night. I don't think there's a one size fits all, sort of like calorie counting

quuquuquu 9y ago

I'm unemployed. I sleep 10 hours per day. When I was employed, I slept 6 hours per day. The difference in mood is massive. However, I'm not sure if the working world will change. It's a zero sum game of who is willing to torture themselves the most, which is sometimes correlated with how much work you produce. At my past job, it wasn't enough to just produce. You had to /look like/ you were producing. This meant working 8-6. This meant skipping lunch. This meant always sitting at your desk (no walking meetings). Obvioisly not every employer is like this. But working is a pretty decent way to kill yourself. It happens to most people eventually.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
InternetUser 9y ago
>The difference in mood is massive. What are two adjectives that describe your previous mood, and two that describe your current one?
- quuquuquu 9y ago
  6 hours' sleep = zombified, confused, stressed, steeped in dread 10 hours' sleep = alert, optimistic, sharp, happy And the only variable that changed was lengthOfSleep !
  - asdfologist 9y ago
    I thought another variable that changed was your employment status. That's a huge one, no?
    - quuquuquu 9y ago
      Correct, becomeUnemployed() was what altered lengthOfSleep :) I certainly could have tried to sleep more while I was working, but there really wasn't a way for me to personally achieve that. My boss and company were psycho. Lots of unpaid forced overtime, else fired. Lots of meetings and political games to play, else fired. I wish my skills were desired elsewhere but it's been difficult to find a new job. So, plenty of time for me to sleep. I definitely am exercising the same amount as I was while working. Sleep changed everything. EDIT: How on earth is this answer downvotable? What have I said that is even remotely wrong or controversial?

wellboy 9y ago

Wasn't the consensus that 7h sleep was the best for lifespan and more or less than that lead du decreased life span?

transverse 9y ago
Yes, but that requires more time in bed than 7h. It would require I'd say 7.5h in bed.
cxseven 9y ago
There was never a conclusion that certain sleep lengths lead to decreased life span, only a correlation. The causal link has been suggested to be the reverse - that sick people tend to stay in bed longer because they're sick. I believe I saw a recent article that even said that the popular takeaway that avoiding "oversleep" is healthy is the opposite of reality, because extended sleep is actually a healing mechanism.

lg 9y ago

> An adult sleeping only 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only to their early 60s without medical intervention. I wonder if this controls for other lifestyle factors. Eating a lot before bed makes me sleepier and I could go 7-8 hours a night. Small dinner several hours before bed results in about 6 hours. No alarm clock, that's just how much I need. I find it hard to believe that I'm shortening my lifespan by eating less at night.

misev 9y ago
Maybe sleeping long enough (7-8 hours) requires a certain (higher) amount of energy, which would be supported by a big dinner before bed? Not sure if there are any studies on this.

mratzloff 9y ago

I haven't used an alarm in probably a decade, outside of super early flights. I consistently wake up when I need to. I have no problems with insomnia. I don't need caffeine to feel awake and in fact haven't drank any in about three years. I wake up feeling refreshed and happy and looking forward to the day. I say this because I used to have pretty bad insomnia. Weeks of almost no sleep. Let me tell you: when sleep is not going right for you, nothing is going right. Sleep does wonders for depression, too. So I looked at everything I was doing wrong and changed it all. I changed my diet, my work habits, everything. I don't do a lot of critical thinking an hour or two before bed (no work, no computer). I've trained my body to know how to sleep. I go to bed at around the same time every night, and I listen to my body. Barring those with actual medical issues, for the majority, it is a choice.

ddorian43 9y ago
Dont depressed people sleep like 12 hours ?
- fpoling 9y ago
  A person I knew with depression complained that it was just impossible to sleep at the time when one needs most and then get 12 hours of a bad sleep when one better do other things.
  - ddorian43 9y ago
    Seems like bipolar ? Sometimes you don't sleep (manic) and sometimes you oversleep (depress). Maybe he was misdiagnosed (often are). But I'm probably talking too much from 1 sentence.
    - hmschreck 9y ago
      Depression makes sleep more or less impossible sometimes, and more or less unavoidable others. My SO has severe depression, and no symptoms of bipolar (which I would recognize due to my own diagnosis), but experiences times where he's dead to the world for 12-14 hours, but then also experiences times where he will lay awake for hours trying to fall asleep.

hal9000xp 9y ago

There is massive problem in the culture about value of sleep. The culture implicitly defines mentality where working hard without much sleep is somewhat heroic. Therefore according to the culture (again implicitly) those who sleep a lot are lazy. Hard working heroes who sacrifice sleep from time to time displayed in popular films. Take for example three films Micro Men [1] and The Martian [2] and The Social Network [3]. In first two films, hard working heroes don't "waste" time on "useless/unproductive" sleep and instead drink lots caffeine. In corporate culture it's often the same. Since 2006 till 2008 I worked as a technical support engineer and I often had to work at night. Sometimes, I took two hours of sleep (in an office's couch) from 4 AM till 6 AM. After these two hours of sleep I would be energized and work really productive till 9 AM. But the company decided to impose strict ban on sleeping in office and instead put coffee machine. As I expected my performance fell significantly no matter how much coffee I took. So the company put stupid discipline over actual performance. In 2014, I had insomnia so I couldn't perform well at work (again no matter how much coffee I took). I went to corporate doctor (a doctor assigned by company). She looked at me and said that I don't have bruises under my eyes, so I'm totally fine. More than that she actually didn't take any my complaints seriously and instead assumed that I'm lazy. Nowadays, I mostly sleep well and I almost don't drink caffeine. Sometimes, my insomnia came back. Since I participate in algorithm contests and I know very well that no matter how hard I try to work hard without enough sleep I do not perform well in algorithm contests. The mentality that working hard is opposite to good sleep is most irrational, harmful and widespread yet very implicit thing in the culture. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network

spraak 9y ago
I wonder if there is a reverse effect of taking caffeine when tired/sleep deprived? Some days when I'd hardly slept the night before I would try to rely on caffeine to make it through the day but actually found myself ready to fall asleep after the drink. In any case I definitely agree, get sleep instead of coffee.

zild3d 9y ago

> the number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population and rounded to a whole number, is zero. Pretty deceiving claim, the author starts with "the number of people", but gives a rounded down percentage instead the point would be perfectly clear as "only 0.X% of people ..."

5_minutes 9y ago

It doesn’t mention taking naps. But damn, they make life pretty great!

manmal 9y ago
It does, and mentions that they are not long enough to reach deep sleep. The next sentence says that we need 4-5 cycles to get enough deep sleep.

bonniemuffin 9y ago

This reminds me of a delightful article that helped me fall back in love with sleep (and therefore find it easier to fall asleep): https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-love-with-sleep-again https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-l...

Apocryphon 9y ago

Two thoughts on how sleep deprivation directly impacts hackers and people working in the tech industry: 1. Glorifying low sleep through all-nighters, perpetual crunch time, etc., has become part and parcel of startup life for generations [0]. (I've always wondered if it's a carryover from the particularly collegiate nature of software culture [1]). There's been some backlash against founders and the like boasting about operating on low sleep, as part of the general backlash against poor work-life balances in tech. Hackers need to push back against the suboptimal performance and system degradation that chronic sleep deprivation creates. 2. The tech industry, known for its whimsical benefits and presumptions to think differently and be unconventional, could explore allowing employees to take nap breaks. So far it looks like Google and Cisco are among the handful of large tech companies to allow employees to nap [2], but one wonders how many employees with poor sleep hygiene actually do take advantage of it, and whenever those articles pop up it always seems like ads for sleep pods. Yet siestas and naps are something that have been allowed in cultures around the world, even in work-heavy East Asia [3]. [0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_And_Loving_It.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299145 [2] http://fortune.com/2011/08/18/why-companies-are-cozying-up-to-napping-at-work/ http://fortune.com/2011/08/18/why-companies-are-cozying-up-t... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/japanese-firms-encourage-workers-sleep-on-job https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/japanese-firms... http://mashable.com/2017/07/12/capsule-beds-beijing/#ohlpi6Knaaqr http://mashable.com/2017/07/12/capsule-beds-beijing/#ohlpi6K...

zem 9y ago

for the last few years, i've been getting by with 6 hours/night on weekdays and 10 on weekends, but lately i've found myself waking up too early on several weekends, and i'm a bit worried my body is getting used to "six hours are all you get". need to work up the self discipline to close the book at least an hour earlier every night.

Shikadi 9y ago
I read somewhere recently that the 8 hours a night number is wrong, and it depends on your age, lifestyle, and genetics. 6 was at the lower end of what they said was fine, though unfortunately I don't remember the source or if it was reputable.

joveian 9y ago

"Deep sleep – the part when we begin to dream" While I'm glad they don't use the popular but incorrect REM sleep == dream sleep, I don't think this is correct either. I have a circadian rhythm disorder and had severe insomnia before that and so have observed the process of getting to sleep in slow motion many times. At least in many cases for me, dreaming preceeds sleep by a bit as gently waundering thoughts gradually turn into dreaming (this might be considered stage 1 sleep on polysomnograph, but certainly not deep sleep). I have a poor visual memory and when I notice visual recall when close to sleep then that is a very good sign that sleep is about to happen. It turns into dreaming a little bit after that and then I fall asleep, although I don't think it always follows this progression (and I don't think I always get visual recall before sleep).

Shikadi 9y ago
I was under the impression that rem was the state when you dream, and you can sometimes enter it before the other stages, can you enlighten me to the truth with a decent source? Thanks =D
- joveian 9y ago
  I think the best article on this is Mark Solms 2000 "Dreaming and REM sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms"[0]. Solms and a couple of coauthors have an article this year, "Dreaming in Neurological Disorders"[1], which is also great although I don't think it directly answers your question. My sense is that it is still being debated if there are differences in the types of dreams that happen in different stages or not. I couldn't find it last time I looked, but some research somewhat recently found that medically extinguishing REM sleep did not produce a detectable change in dream reports. Other studies seem to show that there may be differences. [0] http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-dom/My_research/Papers-2.1-done/Cognitive-S/Consciousness/For-icnnai-2010/2/Ref/download.pdf http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-dom/My_research/Papers-2.1-done/C... [1] https://twin.sci-hub.ac/cd77f4d5f6111801eee90b66a3ac13ee/solms2017.pdf https://twin.sci-hub.ac/cd77f4d5f6111801eee90b66a3ac13ee/sol...
  - Shikadi 9y ago

anotherevan 9y ago

The quality of your sleep is an important factor too. If you suspect you may have obstructive sleep apnea then go get it checked out.