Slashdot Mirror
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?
Sleep is very very very important. I learned that once during the final finals of my college career. I stayed up for over 112 hours (roughly 4.5 days) straight though a mixture of pluck, fear, and caffiene pills. By the end of this ordeal, I was literally barking mad.
I was seeing things that weren't there (like a staircase in my one-story flat, and various war heros standing over my shoulder giving me answers on the history test) and holding conversations with people which turned out to be completely unintelligible to both parties (with such zingers like: "Seven beer-teen and without even? You must be over. Totally joking over my and.").
Get your sleep. It's good for you.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
When you're asleep, the brain's level of consciousness (it's not that, but we'll call it that), swings up and down like a cross between a sine wave and a seismograph, something like so:
;>
When you first fall asleep, the brain goes into deep deep REM sleep, and you have your first dream. The brain's levels then swing back up towards non-REM sleep, but not necessarily leaving it, and then dip back down deeper into REM - but not as deep as the first time.
The brain undergoes several such swings, each time rising higher out of REM sleep (you're pretty much guaranteed to leave REM sleep the second time at least), and then not sinking as low. Eventually, it gets to the point where you're not even going into REM sleep, at which point you wake up.
Now, the trick is that if you wake up while in REM sleep, the body gets all mussed up. You feel like crap all day, you're tired, cranky, and whatnot. Effects may vary, but generally, this is the case.
If you wake up OUT of REM sleep, however, you will feel rested - perhaps not totally so, but you will be rested to some degree, and recharged.
The trick then is to catch yourself outside of these cycles. Ideally, you need to find a good time to go to sleep (for me, it's between 10 and 10:30 PM), and then see when you wake up. A few years ago, I found myself conscious enough to look at my clock and check the time every 2 hours - I would go to bed at 10-10:30, fall asleep at 11, and then wake up at 1, 3, 5, and 7 AM. At any of those times, I could have, if I'd wanted to, gotten up, gone to the bathroom, went online, gone to the store, or anything else - I was perfectly capable of doing whatever I wanted to do. My cycle is 2 hours then, and thus, I need sleep in 2-hour increments. I recall one time falling asleep at 2 AM, and waking up at 6 AM, and getting right back up and doing what I was doing before.
It has to be good sleep though - comfortable temperature, not sick, comfortable bed - and it has to be reliable (staying up until 1:30 AM screws me up big time for days to come), and you can't be malnourished - there are a few great ways to eat well, but that's a whole other Ask Slashdot.
Anyway, I suggest you experiment. Find a good time to sleep, and then see when you can wake up. Perhaps you'll need to get to sleep at 10 PM like I did, but perhaps you can wake up at 2 AM and study, prepare, mail letters, or code for the rest of the day afterwards.
Also, don't discount siestas. Lying down for half an hour in the middle of the day, even if you don't sleep, can be a great recharger. And don't touch sleeping pills, or anything, organic or not, to help you sleep better. The last thing you need is to get dependant on something for sleep, and then have it run out the night before your final.
--Dan
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:
Kind of makes you wonder if our planet has always been spinning this fast, doesn't it?
-RayI'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.
This is true. The symptoms are similar to dehydration. Granted it is estimated to happen after over +150hrs awake and somebody would have to sit there shocking you to keep you awake, but it is a possibility.
Another thought, try light therapy while sleeping. I've heard good things about its ability to make one feel more energized. Plus it is shown to be effective therapy for seasonal depression (which has been confirmed to be a honest to goodness mental disorder).
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.
I had a great
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.