How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

not_you asks: "Clinton, Giuliani, Bloomberg, and even Martha Stewart are rumored to only get only 4 hours of sleep on a normal night. Being a student without enough time for all the socializing (and studying) I'd like to do and lacking the ability to dream lucidly, I'd like to get the minimal amount of sleep necessary to function effectively. However, I tend to make up for anything less than about 7 hours by dozing off in class! Aside from taking espressos intravenously, how I can function effectively with less sleep?" There are several factors that affect how much sleep one can away with on a given day. Diet, activity level, and other factors all will affect how long and how well one rests. I've always heard that "nothing beats a full night of rest" and to me, that always means close to 8 hours of sleep. Of course, like most things Your Mileage May Vary, still, it would be interesting to know how much sleep some of you can get by on, and what conditions you have to maintain to keep it up. Comments?

Comments

Fooling mother nature

[rwaldin]

I find that sleeping for 10 hours and then staying awake for 20 hours works best for me. The problem is trying to get everyone else to work around my schedule! I've read that without light cues, people's circadian rhythms change by varying degrees. From the link above:

Experimenters have found that subjects under isolated conditions slept sometimes for 19 hours at a time, seemingly unaware of the time that had elapsed. Similarly, subjects sometimes stayed awake for as long as 30 hours, underestimating the length of their days. These outwardly bizarre sleep-wake cycles went unnoticed by subjects and had no adverse effects.

Kind of makes you wonder if our planet has always been spinning this fast, doesn't it?

-Ray

Re:Me think sleep good!

[SuiteSisterMary]

A buddy of mine in HS decided to try the 'five day' rule; damn near killed himself when he was riding his bike, and hallucinated, four days in. Me, I know that it's time to toddle off to bed when I get paranoid. Usually, this manifests as seeing my mouse move out of the corner of my eye. I swear the little bugger tries to crawl across me desk when I'm really really tired.

Who needs sleep (you're never gonna get it..)

[AnalogBoy]

I've worked first, second, and third shift, and can honestly say that sleep is my least favorite activity. I feel as I'm being robbed of part of my life.

However, once im nice and asleep, it typically takes me 10-11 hours to wake back up naturally. If i have to wake up before that (Read: Work), it takes an act of G-d to get me up and out of bed. My body (and simiconcious mind) hate waking up so much that i can turn off an alarm (even my winamp alarm) without ever becoming completely lucid. I do it every night. I have to set 3 alarms to wake up. They recently all became ineffective. (Sometimes, i'll get up, turn the alarm off BEFORE it goes off!). Now I have a flesh-and-blood alarm that makes sure im awake in time to come to work.

Once i'm awake, and have had a good 8 hours, im fine after 30 minutes, but my brain doesnt enter init 3 until about 2 hours later.

I want to beg my doctor to prescribe me modafinil, the drug they use to treat narcolepsy. A recent study by doctors at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston showed the drug is effective in letting healthy people stay awake and completely in control of their mental facilities for up to 4 days at a time. This raises an interesting question, at least for me.. my personality changes dramatically from the morning to the night.. wonder what would happen after 4 days.

Interesting thing: your brain needs sleep to grow.

[Lord_Hern]

I recall recently reading an oncology (cancer) report that indicated that the human brain does in fact GROW NEW NEURONS throughout life (haven't seen an online version.) The report summary indicated that the brain loses the nerve connections during the day and re-grows them at night.
A seperate study also showed that the popular anti-depressent prozac makes changes to this neural re-growth.

Further to how this tie's into Ask Slashdot - Neural re-growth normally occurs ONLY DURING REM STAGES OF SLEEP.

This (likely) explains the many reports of people hallucinating after long periods of REM sleep deprivation - A waking brain loses connections in that section and when enough connections are lost - mental coherency is lost.

There you have it folks - a reason for WHY sleep is needed

Lord_Hern (at) h o t m a i l d o t c o m

P.S. - An interesting thing about modafinil (often given to sufferers of sleep apnea - It has demonstrated the ability to restore brain function similar to good REM sleep. I *STRONGLY* suspect that it acts on the brain stem the same way as REM sleep - promoting neural regrowth.

don't believe it

[markj02]

Clinton, Giuliani, Bloomberg, and even Martha Stewart are rumored to only get only 4 hours of sleep on a normal night.

Well, then they have to make up for it on the weekend, or they have some serious brain disorder, and not the kind you want to have. Almost everybody needs about 8h of sleep per night. Some people need more. If you sleep less than what you need, you incur a sleep debt which you will have to repay. If the debt gets too large, you'll just keep falling asleep briefly throughout the day and not even notice (which can be rather dangerous). And if you are living with a large sleep debt, it's bad for your health.

Most Americans are already chronically sleep-deprived and suffering numerous health problems as a consequence.

One research group that has done excellent work on this and published a lot is Prof. Dement at Stanford (no, I'm not making up the name).

He has a guide specifically for students.