3 ms·

Damn you, science! I’ve read so many studies saying there’s absolutely no way you can get by without at least 7 hours sleep and now you tell me that that comple

Damn you, science! I’ve read so many studies saying there’s absolutely no way you can get by without at least 7 hours sleep and now you tell me that that completely doesn’t apply to 1-3% of the population?! That’s actually not that small of a percentage. How big were the sample sizes of all the other studies? Did nobody encounter at least one of these low-sleep requiring people? Maybe they were just eliminated as being an anomaly. I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel better if they got more. This is fantastic research, I just wish it had been around 10 years ago.

mc2k 16y ago
I did 4-hour nights of sleep for a year, mainly because I didn't like my job, so was trying to maximise my time outside of work. It's possible, but you lose the ability to think properly without realising it, and in my case, every few months I got intense headaches that only stopped when I was in darkness - presumably a migraine? Anyway, I really don't recommend it.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel better if they got more. Don't. If you insist on only giving advice that applies to 100% of the world you'll never say anything useful at all. I'm sure the studies do encounter these people. But studies use statistics. These people are on the far edge of the bell curve. The mean [1] is probably around 7-9 hours. But just because the far edge of the bell curve has very few samples in it doesn't mean that those samples don't exist, nor that someone is "hiding" them. Which reminds me: What this article does not talk about is the other side of the bell curve: The folks who need considerably more than 7-9 hours of sleep to attain peak performance and happiness. Or maybe those people don't exist, because the "bell curve" is actually a bimodal distribution, or cliff-shaped, or something. We could tell if there was any actual data here, or a link to the actual data and published science -- we could look at the shape of the distribution. But this is an article by a science journalist, so naturally it is nigh-useless. I wonder why the article doesn't talk about the "long sleepers"? Probably because the sleep researcher quoted herein is correct: There are more people who like to believe that they only need four hours' sleep than there are actual people who thrive on less sleep. And I'm sure that no Wall Street Journal wants to learn that they might really need twelve hours sleep. --- [1] I actually have no idea if the "7-9 hour" rule of thumb is based on a mean, a median, or a mode. Pity that nobody ever links to the original research.
- jerf 16y ago
  I suspect the problem with studying "long sleepers" is that the number of people who need, say, 12 hours of sleep "legitimately" is dominated by the number of people who need 12 hours of sleep due to a health issue, making them hard to identify and study. I've done the 12+ hours of sleep thing when I was a teenager, and only much later did I learn the health issue it was trying to tell me about.
  - liedra 16y ago
    I'd say you're probably right. I usually only need 8 hrs sleep, but when I'm sick, for example, I often find myself easily sleeping for 12+ hours (like this morning, oops! :).
mattmanser 16y ago
The 1-3% at the top of the article doesn't actually tally up with the rest of what is said: Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do So just 5% of people who believe they're short sleepers. Do 50% of people believe they're short sleepers, as I've not met many. To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers So that 5% was based on just 20 people... That sounds a lot less than 1-3% to me. And then when you apply that context of such a small test group the article then also sounds like a lot of wild speculation. Will they burn out? Does it last forever?

mc2k 16y ago

I did 4-hour nights of sleep for a year, mainly because I didn't like my job, so was trying to maximise my time outside of work. It's possible, but you lose the ability to think properly without realising it, and in my case, every few months I got intense headaches that only stopped when I was in darkness - presumably a migraine? Anyway, I really don't recommend it.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel better if they got more. Don't. If you insist on only giving advice that applies to 100% of the world you'll never say anything useful at all. I'm sure the studies do encounter these people. But studies use statistics. These people are on the far edge of the bell curve. The mean [1] is probably around 7-9 hours. But just because the far edge of the bell curve has very few samples in it doesn't mean that those samples don't exist, nor that someone is "hiding" them. Which reminds me: What this article does not talk about is the other side of the bell curve: The folks who need considerably more than 7-9 hours of sleep to attain peak performance and happiness. Or maybe those people don't exist, because the "bell curve" is actually a bimodal distribution, or cliff-shaped, or something. We could tell if there was any actual data here, or a link to the actual data and published science -- we could look at the shape of the distribution. But this is an article by a science journalist, so naturally it is nigh-useless. I wonder why the article doesn't talk about the "long sleepers"? Probably because the sleep researcher quoted herein is correct: There are more people who like to believe that they only need four hours' sleep than there are actual people who thrive on less sleep. And I'm sure that no Wall Street Journal wants to learn that they might really need twelve hours sleep. --- [1] I actually have no idea if the "7-9 hour" rule of thumb is based on a mean, a median, or a mode. Pity that nobody ever links to the original research.

jerf 16y ago
I suspect the problem with studying "long sleepers" is that the number of people who need, say, 12 hours of sleep "legitimately" is dominated by the number of people who need 12 hours of sleep due to a health issue, making them hard to identify and study. I've done the 12+ hours of sleep thing when I was a teenager, and only much later did I learn the health issue it was trying to tell me about.
- liedra 16y ago
  I'd say you're probably right. I usually only need 8 hrs sleep, but when I'm sick, for example, I often find myself easily sleeping for 12+ hours (like this morning, oops! :).

mattmanser 16y ago

The 1-3% at the top of the article doesn't actually tally up with the rest of what is said: Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do So just 5% of people who believe they're short sleepers. Do 50% of people believe they're short sleepers, as I've not met many. To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers So that 5% was based on just 20 people... That sounds a lot less than 1-3% to me. And then when you apply that context of such a small test group the article then also sounds like a lot of wild speculation. Will they burn out? Does it last forever?