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My dad's one of those lucky guys who did 5 hours a night his entire career (probably going back to his Navy days at least). Now that he's retired, he's a bit mo
by rconti 9y ago
My dad's one of those lucky guys who did 5 hours a night his entire career (probably going back to his Navy days at least). Now that he's retired, he's a bit more leisurely and sleeps until 6:30 or so (instead of 4:50!) but often I receive emails from him at 1 or 2am, and we'll easily stay up half the night chatting when I'm visiting. He's one of the healthiest 79 year olds you'll ever meet, and not due to a particularly great diet or exercise (though both are fine in his case; he's just not a health nut). The thing that always made me jealous about him is not so much his ability to thrive on less sleep than most of us, but his ability to wake up. One beep from a digital watch alarm and he's out of bed, feet on the floor. I can't wake up to save my life. But then again, I try to get as close to 8h a night as possible, particularly as I've focused more than ever on my health and fitness.
- shams93 9y agoSome people may have the ability to drop into deep states of sleep with unusual rapidity where they don't need the extra ramp up and ramp down hours that most of us need so they can make do with 5 hours with the same quality it takes most of us to reach with 8.
- stevesimmons 9y agoI am perfectly refreshed with 5 hours sleep for exactly that reason. I have narcolepsy. Basically I fall asleep immediately and hit REM sleep a minute or two later. That saves the 90 minutes it takes most people need to reach the REM stage. My normal sleeping pattern is in bed at 1am, up before 6am, at work by 7am.
- murali89 9y agoHow do you know you go into REM? Do you use any sleep tracking device? Could you please suggest here?
- jaggederest 9y agoWaking to an alarm is a training thing. You have to make it policy that when the alarm goes off, you're up and out of bed within 10 seconds. You'll never sleep through an alarm again. It's the snooze button that kills people.
- mikosty 9y agoNeeding very few hours of sleep is extremely rare. Basically everyone who claims to get along with less than the usual 7-8h of sleep do worse in various cognitive performance tests and most likely will suffer in longer term as well. Matthew Walker writes about this in his excellent book Why we sleep.