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

Re:Took a sleep seminar once...

[sphealey]

1. You need 8 hours per day. Anything that deviates from 8 hours per day too much will come back to haunt you, the effect is cumulative.

Like anything else related to animal physiology, there is a distribution curve. There are some people out there who truely need less sleep than the average - we probably all know one or two of them. However, based on my reading (popular press, not technical) over the last 20 years, sleep researchers are gradually coming to the conclusion that the average Western adult does not get enough sleep (average need being 8-10 hours) and in fact most Westerners suffer from chronic sleep depriviation.

Don't know what can be done about it, though! Unless we somehow get everyone to go to a 6 hour work day - then the geeks would only be working 10 hours.

sPh