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Sleep Less, Live Longer
Linuxathome writes: "The Washington Post carried an article describing the results of a study linking the average amount of sleep one gets per night with his/her life span. It appears that those who sleep less than 8 hours a night, live longer (optimum is 7 hours). The study (link to the abstract) was aimed at looking at the mortality rate of those suffering from insomnia. But rather than associating insomnia with increased risk of death, it appears that sleeping more than 8 hours carries a much higher risk."
Personally, I'd rather sleep longer and live a shorter life.
Since I'm replying to this at 1:30 am, that means I'm going to be living for a while now...Long live nocturnal geeks!
Trying is the First Step to Failing --Homer Simpson
...when I say that most of us are not often in danger of getting too much sleep ;-)
I'm going to live FOREVER!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
i'm testing that theory right NOW!
So right now I'd be practicing self-preservation? (2:40 am)
Yeah, I'll just keep telling myself that.
Goddamned International Baccaleureate compsci. Mindless busywork.
it seems from the report that the data are based on actual sleeping habits. this is to say that the time spent sleeping is, if anything, a symptom, not a cause. lots of rich people fly to Paris every day. this does not mean that flying to Paris every day will make you any richer.
-- Rolf Lindgren, cand.psychol
...but you'll feel like it ;-)
I would guess that many healthy persons lead busy lives and therefore have less time for sleep. Whereas some people with poor health may need more sleep.
Correlation is not causation.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Wow, they really know their logic! Sleep longer, your days are shorter.. sleep less, your days are longer, hence you live for longer, wow!
Really though, I'm screwed. I sleep at least 10/11 hours every night, and my 'record' was 20. Start building my coffin.
I'm guessing it's just a slow news day on Slashdot.. this story was discussed several days ago on MetaFilter. Lots of interesting comments, check it out.
mogorific carpentry experiments
...correlation is not causation. Who sleeps more than average? Old people, sick people, and depressed people. I'm not surprised to find out they have a shorter life expectancy.
FreeBSD - the power to serve.
... there goes one of the last objections to my intraveneous caffiene drip!
|>
Here be Dragons
Terrorists are feared to have contaminated drinking water in many regions around the US. The FBI claims water containing high concentrations of dihydrogen monoxide has been found near Washington DC, San Fransisco, and Seattle. Millions are feared in danger. If you have fallen ill after drinking non-bottled water, you are urged to visit your local doctor for the latest antibiotics.
If I could tattoo one thing on everyone's head, it'd be: "Correlation does not equal causation!"
This study does not mean that if you sleep less, you will live longer. A correlation has been found, that's all. Maybe people who sleep less have better circulation, also linked with long life. Or maybe the space aliens who shorten life spend two hours a night doing it.
Point is, we don't know what's causing this effect, at least not from this article.
Did the researchers control for sleep apnea and other common sleep disorders in their studies? Untreated, sleep apnea causes people to sleep much longer than normal and can also cause heart attacks. Perhaps the long-sleepers who died young were simply suffering from sleep apnea?
All this living longer is killing me.
Note the phrase at the end of the abstract - "Causality Unproven". While I'm sure that they corrected for what factors they could, I think it's at least plausible that various illnesses that might cause you to require more sleep (for example, by reducing the quality of the sleep that you get) might contribute to higher mortality rates amongst those who get more sleep.
So the study hardly offers a prescription for longer life; on the other hand, it's a pretty impressive rebuttal to any idea that people who sleep less than 8 hours are going to have problems as a result.
The only way to reply, is, "Scientists have shown, the more you sleep, the better your chance of death is. Now, sleep tight, you've got school tomorrow."
Yes I know all slahsdoters are atheists or Wiccans or something, but it's meant to be funny, so mod accordingly. Not that it matters. I hit karma cap yesterday, ka-ching!
The increased risk exceeded 15% for those reporting more than 8.5 hours sleep or less than 3.5 or 4.5 hours
Dammit. I knew this was too good to be true.
I sleep twice a day for four hours at a time, with eight hours of wakefulness inbetween.
:)
Does this mean I will live longer, since I am not sleeping for eight hours per sleep session? But rather a total of eight hours in a 24 hour period.
It's 2am, and I have an 8am class tommorrow. Better hit the sack soon.
http://fanblade.dhs.org:27902
This article from CNN reports the same thing. However, in this article The National Sleep Foundation suggests that the study may be flawed, and will do nothing but cause the public unnecessary confusion and concern.
So does this mean that programs that usleep() rather than sleep() have longer lifecycles?
Something to really keep in mind when looking at psychological/physiological studies is that correlation and causation are two different things. In order to show causation, you need to do more than just show that two things are correlated. Just becuase those that happened to sleep less tend to live longer, doesn't mean that if you sleep less you'll live longer.
One of the best examples of the difference between correlation and causation is that when ice cream sales go up murder rates also tend to go up. So if you start eating more ice cream will you be more violence prone? Nope, it's just that in the summer both ice cream sales and murder rates happen to go up. Must be the heat or something.
02:50 EST, reading Slashdot. Story about sleeping. Or not sleeping. Not sleeping. Good thing I'm awake to read this.
Slashdot: Everything in Moderation, including Moderation itself.
The report seems to come to the conclusion that just because people sleep less and live longer, the former causes the latter. It seems much more likely to me that the amount of sleep you get is indicative of what type of lifestyle you lead. Active people are less likely to oversleep and active people usually live longer. Also, depressed people usually sleep more than happier people, and depression can be linked to whole range of health problems that can affect your lifespan.
;)
Another possibility is that people who sleep less get more done, and are therefore more likely to be successful in what they do. This means that they would have a higher standard of living, leading to a longer lifespan. These are just ones I've come up with off the top of my head, so I'd say that less sleep does not lead to a longer life, but just is indicative of a lifestyle that would.
Oh, and when you're awake you can watch for bears and enemies attacking your cave. Natural selection probably favors those who sleep less
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
I hope the next study they come out with describes how people who get drunk as fuck every day are quicker witted than those who don't.
--Metrollica
From this poll, we have learned that 100% of the living respondents also reported being awake at the time. Except of course for Rob, who suffers from somnopollescence, a rare and devastating disorder that makes you answer questionnaires in your sleep.
I don't get enough exercise, therefore I'm tired a lot.
Because I'm tired a lot, I sleep a lot.
Because I sleep a lot, I don't have time to exercise.
Quoting the article:
"The amount of sleep you get impacts how alert you are, your risk for accidents, how you perform at work and school," said James Walsh, president of the National Sleep Foundation (...)"There's much more to life than how long you live."
Bullseye. Interestingly, the article does not specify exactly how more sleep would decrease your lifespan.
Hey, if I can sleep 9 hours a day, be rested the next day, and live to be 80 and die, I will do it! Is there really anyone who would want to sleep 6 hours a day, be constantly tired throughout their lifetime, and then die at an age of 100 where last 20 years where spent in a bed with bunch of tubes going from their body and the 'beep...beep' sound of the EKG machine at all machine?
Makes me wanna sleep in more. And take naps. Three times a day.
I saw this on CNN, to summary this:
1) Elders are likely to take a nap, but the research only counts the #hrs you have slept during nights which doesn't include the afternoon naps
2) Bottom line, lack of sleep is not good for your health, so if you need sleep, sleep but oversleeping might not help you
3) Lack of sleep will get higher your chances getting heart dieases and diabetes.
kawai
You're right.. the first intelligent post in this whole topic so far. People who sleep less obviously have more to get up for.. and people who have more to get up for are happier and more active people.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Jon Katz
This gets very confusing because the older you get the less sleep you typically require.
Major backpeddling is a genetic feature I guess.
This may be off topic, but since we're on the subject of sleep... Why do we need sleep? Do any educated people out their know the biological reasons for why we need to sleep?
So, they found that people sleeping longer are more likely to die. So what. That says *nothing* about the actual effect of sleeping---more plausible is that the more sick (sicker? whatever) you are the more you sleep since you're body is trying (perhaps vainly) to repair itself/conserve energy.
correlation != causation
...when they come out with another study that says heavy sleepers live longer? You know it will happen. It always does.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Mmmm. Guess that would bring the premium down as I'm an 8 hours a night man. Bring it on!
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
There are many potential confounds for this study that can provide these results, most notably their use of cancer patients as subjects. Most studies to date indicate an average need for approximately 8hrs of sleep per night are needed for an adult. However, those folks that have poor quality of sleep caused by factors such as sleep apnea or pain management issues among others where the architecture of sleep and quality of sleep are radically altered would need to spend longer amounts of time "sleeping" or more appropriately time in bed to acheive the required rest due to poor quality of sleep. These causes of longer "sleep" times are themselves responsible for higher morbidity and mortality.
Finally it should be noted that for a long time it has been known that there is a high degree of variation in the amount of sleep required by people and most of the variation is due to self reporting inconsistencies. (in other words people underreport the amount of time they actually sleep for a variety of reasons) Actual sleep recording or polysomnography narrows this variation considerably.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I wake up, and the first thing I do is read slashdot where I learn that I've just decreased my life expectancy. That's a good way to start the week :)
True warriors use the Klingon Google
looks like most coders get to code for a few extra years...cool.
Most likely this is due to inactivity. People who exercise regularily tend not to sleep for 12 hours at a time (at least in my experience). Its a correlation but it would be interesting to find out what percentage of the 8+ hours sleepers were very active people.
There was a good 4 minute piece on NPR's _All Things Considered_ on Friday. Here's a RealAudio link. The conclusion seems to be that the data is statistically relevant but its still a very small change to a small risk.
as it said at the bottom of the abstract, Causality is unproven. Thanks for pointing this out :)
got drum'n'bass?
http://mp3.com/vitriolix
We trolls need to find a new, disgusting site to link to.
The most telling quote:
So it's not exactly "sleep less, live longer".
OT bit: If you go to their main health page, you can see an article about vitamins being added to beer to make it more healthy. Cheers!
The sicker you are, the fatter you are, the more depressed you are, the more you will sleep.
Being sick, being fat, or being depressed directly causes shorter lifespans. Sleeping more does not cause shorter lifespans. On average, it may correlate. But that is another thing entirely.
What kind of Mickey Mouse scientists do they have working on these expensive research projects? Honestly, what kind of scientist doesn't know the difference between correlation and causation?
da Vinci sleep baby, it's the latest craze!
First posts and trolls are correlated, but as everyone is pointing out Correlation != Causation so you're not necessarily going to become a troll. I thought you'd be happy to hear that.
Though I admit it would be very nice if caffeine actually did lengthen life (as opposed ot just making it seem to be lived faster) ...
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
I hate this kind of cause and affect switching research. People who are lazy and sleep long are the same type of people who don't take care of
themselves properly, hence they liv shorter.
Its the same as "people who have a lot of sex live longer". No, people who are healthy, an physically fit have more sex.
Eskil
verse.sf.net
From the folks at ABC news:l eep_and_longevity020215.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/s
"'None of this says sleep kills people,' said Daniel Buysse, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist and the immediate past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. 'You should sleep as much as you need to feel awake, alert and attentive the next day...'"
"Sleeplessness produces health consequences that were not measured in the study,"
"The study relied on people's own reports of their sleeping habits,"
(very few reported that they had "CowboyNeal" hours of sleep)
"'You can choose to eat a Twinkie or a carrot, but I can't choose to sleep 12 hours or six -- I don't have that much voluntary control.'"
I dunno. It seems pretty obvious to me that, all else being equal, people tend to sleep longer when they are unhealthy because they are unhealthy. While I hesitate to use the term... Who am I kidding? I think people who are interpreting this as "Sleep less, live longer" are total Bozos, and I think the popular press is being irresponsible in their desire for a sensational story, as usual.
...that posting at 3:18am (EST) is good for my health!
See the forbiden post Here
Do all of the late night parties at university(ie. sleep deprivation) cancel out the ill effects of said parties?
I damn well hope so!
I think my life-expectancy might still be slightly in the negative ledger as a result of the party experiences, but it's nice to know there's a counter
Well let's see. I'm active & usually need 8 Hrs of sleep.But! I'm getting older so I should we decreasing.
I know I've read about this phenomena before. At the time, the article listed a bunch of celebrities - and I swear Calista Flockhart was one of them - who slept less, so they would live longer.
Oh, hold on (sobering up)... I remember now. (And you'll realise why Calista stuck in my mind)... It's that starvation diets also help you to live longer. Here is an article about it.
But if we sleep less, and eat less, what the hell are we supposed to do?
Next we'll find out sex deprivation helps you live longer too. (Sigh)
If your chance of dying in a given year is 1 in 100 and sleeping a few extra hours increases this chance be 50% then your chance of dying is 1.5 in 100.
I wouldn't worry too much about that.
my ex-girlfriend is ALWAYS sleeping around...
:)
she's gonna die young - that's what she gets for doing what she's doing!! hehe
my blog
Now all I need is beer, video games and hacking to be linked to living longer and I'm set.
;-)
ps - I mean what else am I going to do when its 3:20 in the morning... oh wait, we have slashdot for that
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
...Studies found that many people undergoing chemotherapy eventually die of cancer. The number was so high, in fact, that the only conclusion we can draw is that chemotheraphy causes cancer.
And tonight at 10: "Tylenol: headache in a bottle?"
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
So when I have kids, am I supposed to let them stay up late? Ok besides that... somethings I'd like to see *wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you know who you are research people* linked to living longer:
1)Beer
2)Video Games
3)hacking
4)the simpsons
5)smokes
6)anything else that a decent slacker needs
Now some stuff I'd like to see linked to a shorter life:
1)DMCA
2)homework and goddamn flowcharts
3)talk shows like springer
4)anyone that comes into the helpdesk i work at
5)anything that pisses me off
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
So the meaningless cycle of my life will find a way to perpetuate it's own pointlessness; Staying up late screwing around and suffering through mornings will cause me to be able to do just thought forever!
ha, just kidding.
Important to note however is that MANY studies (at this point it can't really be contested) point out that reduced sleep leads directly to memory problems. Personally I can say that I have slept much less the past few years and I have much trouble (yes of course this can be unrelated).
But honestly, find your perfect amount, but avoid for any reason getting too little. Yes we all do, and I do to so I'm not following my own advice, but I think remembering good things in my life is a little more important than dying from heart disease when I'm totally senile (85) rather than moderately senile (80).
I think perhaps you have assumed a certain statement from someone before he ellicited it. No one is guilty of confusing correlation with causation. The Washington Post Article deals with this point of yours head on; although it does allow some room for speculation. The study explicitly states your point. With the exception of a few trolls the comments thus far have been stating your point. And the /. summary doesn't make the assumption of causation either. The line "it appears that sleeping more than 8 hours carries a much higher risk" may connote a causation but its denotation is completely supported by the study. If people in a category are more likely to exhibit a symptom then if you are in this category you are in fact at a greater risk of carrying this symptom, unless there is additional data stating otherwise. The only place where causation is truly suggested is in the four word article title "Sleep Less, Live Longer." But this is clearly a throw away title designed to gather interest and not to carry useful information. Really there is no reason to chastise anybody in this case. Please save your criticisms for actions that actually demand such a response.
Oh, what a wonderful time we live in that science can tell us sleeping 6 1/2 hours per night gives us the best chance at living longer than everyone else. How on Earth did we manage to live these thousands of years before accurate time keeping? Oh, that's right... we slept when we were tired, and woke up (usually) when our bodies told us it was time to.
Things like this are all well and good, but I've got better things to do with my day than worry whether I'm sleeping an hour too long or eating too many calories to reach my genetically predetermined maximum life-span.
If that study is true, what's the point in living longer if I'm tired all the time?
that's what caffine is for
but I think I'd rather live less and feel better.
~Common sense is the most evenly distubuted of all things, everyone thinks they have enough, and wants no more
Is that "Causality is unproven." in the study. So while they may be able to say that there is a correlation between 7 hours of sleep and longer life spans, it is not deterimined whether the 7 hours of sleep is actually causing longer life.
It could instead be something completely unrelated to sleep, but rather related to some other behaviour that the 7 hour sleepers engage in.
Its just like the insurance industry, the age group under 25(i think) has a much higher insuance rate than those past that age. While the statistics do appear to favor that, there is a MUCH tighter corrilation between accidents and number of years driving, than age. Obviously the relationship is the less years driving the more likely to have an acceditne. It just happens to be that most new drivers are under 25. Basically screwing those who start driving at 16 compared to someone who starts at 23.
This sig is a virus take it and use it.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
It has been proven that the amount of money that one makes has a direct correlation with one's lifespan. These studies were in relation to the common myth that married people live longer than unmarried... and they do, but only if they have more money. Generally married people do have more money, as they pool their money and are both able to respond to an individual medical emergency in the family, but when the study compared families with unmarried people with comparable incomes, married people actually lived 2 years SHORTER.
Perhaps those people who sleep less earn more money (more time on the job?) than those who sleep more, and thus are able to pay for better medical coverage and live longer.
-=Lothsahn=-
As a student at Stanford University, I'm currently in a course called Sleep and Dreams, taught by the world's leading sleep expert, Dr. William Dement. It's an awesome class; he's really hammered home the concept of a sleep debt-he's been doing research on this field since the early 1950's, and has pioneered the concept of a sleep debt: typically you need 8 hrs and 15 minutes; if you get any less, it goes into a sleep debt that gets progressively worse. He's provided lots of evidence; I'm inclined to believe him more. The course books are huge, but read the lecture notes if you're interested...
This is silly. Things that correlate in statistics cannot always be explained by a relationship based upon cause.
For example, Smokers tend to have lower IQs in aggregate, but smoking does not lower your IQ.
Or having afro-style hair does not result in you committing more crimes, even though those with african hair commit ten times as many violent crimes and get imprisoned for it.
Or the fact that believeing in Jesus does not make one become a criminal, even though an astounding 75% of prisoners in east coast prisons in the 1970s claimed to believe in Jesus.
Just because there is a correlations does not create a cause.
Genetically, those that sleep less may be much taller, or thinner (both of whch make you live longer).
Also old people sleep less, and being old is a strong indicator of living longer. (self fulfilling statistic).
I will not get modded up because merely mentioning Jesus or Blacks, or Old people, or Thin, or anything non-politically correct results in a damned Troll markdown or worse.
science never wins.
What does that say for those of us that stay up for 36 hours, then sleep for 10? Other than the fact that we don't have a clue what time of day it is... ;-)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I should do pretty well then.. I usually sleep from 12->7 (optimum 7 hours :), dont smoke, and rarely drink to excess. Just need to cut down on the greasy food (everyone has a vice) and get some exercise, and I could live forever ! Bwahahah :)
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I'd like to sleep right now. But I got work to do so I won't be going to bed till 10 pm tonight. Hmm, thats over 24 hours. Yay
Yeah later we will learn the study was sponsored by Coke, Jolt, starbucks and every other big caffine selling company.
Long live caffine!
yeah it says AC, I have had user names but forget them cause I find login pointless and anoying.
Babies sleep 12 hours or longer per day while old people sleep 6 hours or less per day.
If you do the study this way (asking people at different ages how long they sleep, then look at mortality) you get obvious result that long sleep = early death. People who died at age 2 slept probably more than 12 hours/day.
If you look at it the other way and ask for the rest life expectancy you would get exactly the opposite result: People sleeping longer have statistically a longer rest life expectancy (because they are younger, but this study ignores age, so we can ignore it, too)
I believe it's the third Dune book where, after spending the entire night talking and debating with Duncan Idaho, Stilgar looks out at the rising sun and says, "To stay awake all night is to add a day to your life."
(Okay, Stil, how come it's 4 in the morning for me, I can't sleep, and I feel like a fukkin corpse? :-) Blah, I hate insomnia.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
So..before getting attacked by "correlation != causation"...
Does this mean that ThinkGeek is the fountain of youth? (Bawls, Jolt, mints...you name it)
I suspect that the subjects in the study underreported the amount of sleep they got by about 1h. I also suspect that the people who slept unusually much in the study probably already had a medical condition that then later killed them.
...correlation is not causation!
I doubt they took into account the natural sleeping patterns of different age groups.
Heavy sleeping indicates lazyness -> unhealthy lifestyle.
Look a monkey!
Because the ppl in the study seemed to live longer when they were sleeping only 7h, this doesn't mean that they live longer because they sleep only 7h.
The need for long nightrest might be an indication for an underlying disorder that caused the shorter lifespan and that is harder to pinpoint....
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
I agree completely with roffe.
Think about it, who do you know that sleeps 8+ hours a day, other than the elderly and sick (both groups who at more likely to die than the average person)? And from my experience, the "average person" generally has more important things to do than spend 8+ hours a day sleeping. So as roffe said, sleeping 8+ hours a day is more likely a symptom of someone trying to maintain their health, because they are in danger of dying.
To put it another way, when I had mono I was sleeping 12 hours a day, and the hours I was awake, it felt like I was dying. And it wasn't like I had to force myself to sleep, my body was naturally making me sleep longer so I wouldn't end up dying. And gee, would you guess what? When I got better, I went back to my normal 6-7 hours of sleeping!
Does anyone want to fund my study? I'm going to see if age has anything to do with death.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Now that im studying for a big exam i decided that till i give it i will not go to the gym (the test is thursday and i have only missed one week of workout so far, not a big deal). What did i found after stopping working out for a week?
- Im gaining weight although im eating basically the same food (the diet is low carbohydrates and with excersice it worked like a charm)
- I need more sleep, i feel drowsy whenever i dont sleep more than 8 hours and im constantly taking cat naps
- My headache and backpain that were gone when i was excercising are back again, with a vengeance.
So what is my point here? the point is that people that have healthy lifestyles tend to need less sleep and to live longer. People that dont have so healthy lifestyles (or have illness that prevents them from having a good health) tend to need more sleep and tend to live shorter lifes.So in my (totally uneducated) experience, sleep is a symtpom of how good your health is.
Me not know english? that's unpossible!
Everybody has a purpose in life, maybe mine is to lurk in slashdot.
Everybody should learn this rule by hearth.
according to this study, if you wear a special kind of ring on your pinky fingers while you sleep, you will live forever!
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
It's evolution, guys (n gooorls)!
.. is just a bad substitute for coffee..
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
And less to do with being a walking zombie..
I find that in my own cycles of health I tend to sleep more as I begin to get out of shape and get very little exercise. On occasions where I am in good health (like when I was in the military) I slept on average a much shorter period of time and had still felt rested.
If you think about it, eventually the combined lengthening of days by global warming and increased lifespan from less sleep will cause you to barely break even. Add on to that the increased likelihood of getting skin cancer by the buckets of UV rays that will hit us, and the only way to even stay alive will be to stay inside and never sleep.
:)
I guess it's never been a better time to be a geek!
Perhaps the study is flawed, but in a discussion with friends/loved ones I am going to use this as fuel for my fire as long as I can. Sleep is nice, but being awake at all (well not quite all...) hours of the day and night are a lot nicer. IMO.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Sure you will live longer, but you won't remeber it.
Every health class I've taken since elementary school has told me that active people need less sleep than sedentary people. From what I remember, people that excercise on a daily basis need about 6.5 to 7 hours of sleep, compared to 8-9 for an average person. Considering this fact, it seems obvious that people who sleep less live longer. I'm surprised that the researchers conducting the survey haven't considered this.
The amount of sleep that is good for any given individual is not necessarily that which is good for everyone. I would need to see the entire article, not just the abstract, to see if they controlled for variations in individual sleep patterns. Perhaps the people who slept 7 hours per night lived longer on average than others because they had always slept 7 hours per night; while those that slept less or more did so from some recent cause. But I've digressed...
There are cases known of people who slept very little, yet lived to an old age. "William Dement (1974) described a Stanfort University professor who slept only 3 to 4 hours a night for more than 50 years and died at age 80." Ray Meddis (1977) found a 70-year-old retired nurse who slept an average of 67 minutes a night and didn't complain about not sleeping more and didn't feel drowsy durring the day or night.
Too little sleep, compared to your normal cycle, can be bad for you too. There is a condition known as fatal familial insomnia in which people at middle age stop sleeping altogether. These people die 7 to 24 months after the insomnia begins (Medori et al., 1992).
In conclusion, I'd say it's best to just sleep as long or short as your body feels the need to, and you should be healthier than adjusting your sleep cycle needlessly. Of course I'm an undergrad, so I could always be completely wrong.
Appologies for any misspellings, I'm not looking at this as I type.
All quotes, pertinent info, and citations taken from:
Rosenzweig, Breedlove, & Leiman (2002). Biological Psychology (3rd ed.). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.
"I swear I won't break you if you let me take you where the willows never weep" -- Switchblade Symphony
2 or 3 hours is enough for anyone.... any more and you are just being greedy!
Did Rip Van Winkel sleep for one hundred years? Look how long he lived!
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
Every 36 hours I sleep for 12..
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
hah well anyway I'm not getting any sleep tonight, so this article is moderately redeeming.
when come back bring pie
I was about to have a good nights sleep but then I saw this story and by the time I posted this comment it was past 2:30 and the worries about the hazardous effects to my health of sleeping in will keep me up all night so I won't get any sleep. Thanks /. for keeping my health at heart!
I stole this Sig
This brings a whole new dimension to the "Send & Receive" button. I'll train my finger to be in good shape by 2010 :-)
Wait a minute, CmdrTaco said he was clicking the button every 5 secs the other day, maybe he knows something we don't?
When I see people complain that IB CompSci is hard, I laugh, because it is only hard if you arent organized. The people in the IB who complained a lot were always the ones running around like headless chickens and complaining how HARD everything was for them instead of actually working.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
... but couldn't it be that people sleeping shorter actually do so because they have something to look forward to, because they enjoy life so much they want to restart it as soon as possible?
I think one thing has proved itself to significantly lengthen life: a lust for life.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Everybody knows that sleepy people are depressed loners, anxious to get to the next day in the hope that it won't be as depressing. Of course when that never happens they kill themselves.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
Note that the article also found that people who smoked and drank didnt complain of poor quality sleep etc., suggesting that the negative association was down to the fact that they drank and smoked rather than all smokers being antsy, or whatever.
Link here: abstract.
It would be nice to know the average sleeping time of /. readers. I myself sleep about 4 hours / night (I need to have time to study more and more!) on weekdays and 11-12 hours on weekends.Sleeping is fun, but it's more fun to learn about microkernels and such.
This is another case of the wrong conclusion being drawn from statistics.
I'll give another example:
People living near HV power lines have a higher chance of getting cancer.
Incorrect conclusion:
HV power lines cause cancer.
The failure is not looking at the whole situation. Further investigation reveals that most people living near HV power lines also live alongside superhighways, and the cause of their higher risk of cancer is exhaust fumes.
In the case of sleep: most people who sleep more than 8 hours a day are unhealthy "slobs" who also eat badly and don't get any exercise.
People who sleep less than 8 hrs a day are usually succesful people who also happen to enjoy sport and a good diet.
Don't mix correlation with cause...
About 15 years ago I read an article about the sleeping habits of the Japanese. The thing that stuck in my mind was what it said was a common phrase amongst elementary school kids there - "pass on 4, fail on 5". As in, pass your classes on 4 hours sleep, fail them on 5.
Ever since, I've been joking that the reason that Japanese folks live longer isn't diet, or health care system, but lack of sleep. According to this study, it's no joke - there really is a correlation between life expectancy & sleep.
BTW, regardless of whether the study is accurate or not, I don't see that people who sleep a lot have anything to be smug about. Say you live 72 years. A person who averages 6 hours a night is going to spend 6 more YEARS awake than someone who averages 8 hours. I don't know about you, but I can get a helluva lot done in 6 years, even if slightly sleep-deprived.
Posted on the wrong story, sorry
You should sleep "well" rather than "long".
Your body assimilate magnesium during the paradoxal phase of your sleep.
Sleeping is important to assimilate knowledge, to recover from psychological ans physical stress of the day.
It is possible to learn how to sleep. There are good books out there.
Computer people don't like sleeping in general we think we loose time to code and do stuff at home.
In fact it starts when you are young, in the evening you go to bed and your parents are awake, because they watch TV... when you wake up your parents are already awake because they have important things to do... this way children tend to dislike going to bed because they want to mimic their parents.
The point is: human body enter a sleep phase every 1h30-2h(you stretch yourself, you are tired, you don't really follow what people say to you, you "scratch your eyes" etc.) You have to learn how to detect these moment at home and then go to bed, because if you don't, you won't sleep until the next phase.
When you are used to this you can reduce the time spent in your bed to 7-6 hours (if you usualy sleep 9 hours)
The next stage is learning to do "flash nap" usualy 30seconds minimum to 5 minutes maximum. doing this you can recover before a meeting, interview, etc.
Buzy people with a monster schedule do that.
Politics, CEOs...
This way they can sleep a few hours a night (3-4) and do several flash nap when the find the time to do it because they can sleep exactly when they want to...
Sleeping is very important. An European study shows that children before the age of 13 sleeping 9-10 hours have fare less difficulties at school...well, just because each morning they are ready to learn and assimilate everything school has to offer to them.
Wow, according to this study and considering the hours I sleep, I should be dead already. Every minute I am awake is a minute in my pocket. Woohoo!
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Look at it this way, even if you don't live longer by sleeping less, at less you'll have tons of fun hallucinating your balls off!
/tom
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
at this rate, I'll die next week!!
As the saying goes:
"Sleeping is the practise of being dead."
Therefore our sleep-inclined brethren are probably just much more skilled, practised and well-versed in the art of dying.
In other words, life shortening events can cause abnormal sleep habits, not the other way around.
Slashdot sure snapped up this story in no time :)
But assume this story is true for a second. It would mean not only do insomniacs live for more years, they also get more out of each day. If you sleep 6 hours instead of 8 hours, you're also spending an extra 6.7 years awake, assuming you live until 80. So overall combined with the article findings, this means 6 hour sleepers are awake for 10 years more than 8 hour sleepers during their lifetimes.
The average age of the people in this study was late 50s.
I believe it's pretty well established that the need for sleep decreases with age.
So, don't start setting your alarm earlier just yet.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I am a college student. I go to bed between 11:00 and 12:30 every night and wake up between 6:30 and 7:30 every morning without an alarm clock. In fact, I often wake up earlier and just sit in bed waiting for 7:00 or so to get up. The secret? I like to go running. The better shape you're in, the less sleep you require.
Plus, there's this awesome pride thing that comes from beating the Evil Alarm. I HATE that noise!!
Um, this seems like a rather obvious link to me - the people who are sleeping longer in their study are also lazier in general, i.e. lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, and all that other stuff associated with dying young, usually from heart disease.
This doesn't prove that people who sleep more die young, it proves people who are lazy (and probably fat too) die young.
When you're sick, you're told to sleep a lot, or you sleep a lot because there's nothing else to do because you're sick.
People in hospital beds sleep a lot.
People in hospital beds also tend to die more often than people who are not in hospital beds.
People who are depressed tend to sleep more.
People who are obscenely overweight tend to sleep more, seeing as they are bedridden.
All of this is probably enough to skew the statistics by a few hours.
Additonally, does anybody really really treasure those last 10-15 years of your life before you keel over? Personally I'm not really concerned about it right now.
Another recent study showed that sleeping less would increase insulin resistance, which would definitely shorten lifespan. And that study actually showed probable causation, unlike the 'study' referenced above.
It continually amazes me what passes for science in the fields of nutrition and sleep. Most of the studies I've read in these two areas would not get a passing grade in a high school science class.
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
Sleep less live longer? hmm
Well their results may correlate well but does this prove the hypothesis that sleeping more is the cause of an earlier death.
NO WAY! Correlation does not imply causation.
Here are some things to consider, was there something else physically wrong that made people sleep longer. Or possibly people who sleep longer have less time to exercise or socialize.
I'll give an example. People who use Nictotine patches are more likely to die than the "normal" population. Wow nicotine patches kill, dude. Wrong you'd be assuming a causal effect. The real thing that is killing them is that someone whose using nicotine patches is most likely a smoker.
Veramocor
Veramocor
Well don't I fell like the fucking asshole (few good men)
I post this just to read other peoples comments and bam like 10 people who said basically the same thing.
oh well
Veramocor
There was an intersting study done by a scientist at Monsanto where he observed increased life span in animals who were fed a restricted tryptophan diet. Very nearly to the same extent as calorie restriction achieved.
;)
Now. Melatonin is derived from Seratonin. Seratonin is derived from tryptophan. Seems logical that supression on the melatonin axis is the beneficial effect here.
He also noted that taking seratonin antagonists, there are a few out there, helps some cancer patients in remarkable ways.
It is definately worth more study if you are interested in life extension, and loath engaging in calorie restrictin
It also seems likely this is the case as insomnia could very well be related to lower melatonin levels, perhaps they have an enzyme "deficiency" which is relulting in their hormonal cascade having low melatonin with normal tryptophan consumption.
I suspect that from a sample group of 1.1 million, its quite possible to have a few diagnosed depressives in the sample. If thats the case, then sleeping more than 8 hours is a symptom of a disease, not a health risk. Depressed people are more likely to commit suicide.
The abstract even comes with a disclaimer:
"Causality is unproven."
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
It is known that the heart has a certain 'beat limit', animals like mice have fast heart beat hence their short life span, where as animals such as elephants have slow heart beats hence a longer life span.
Now, if you spent more time sleeping in your life, that means more time at a lower heart rate (while sleeping) hence longer life span (in terms of heart beats anyway, you might die from something else). Is there some truth in this?
People that are less healthy need more sleep? Oh oh I got another one! Since cats sleep a lot they don't live as long as humans? Too much sleep = Freddy's coming to get you!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
The important news here is for those people who
were forcing themselves to sleep longer than 7
hours a night because they thought it was
important to their helth and would make them
live longer. This is evidence that they can stop.
The other important thing in there was a strong
correlation between sleeping pills and death.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
.....
Basically you clear your mind of thoughts... and start to compose a peice of music. For me clasical music seems to work best... The music for me ends up being pretty complex.
.....
I just imagined that I went to a doctor and he said I had a brain tumor.
(Thank you. Another show at 10 and 12. Tip your waitress. If you don't get the joke, don't mod it - I took off the +1 already!)
30% of the time that a correlation is reported, there is an accompanying causation. r = .3 is too high a correlation is ignored. Therefore, we can conclude that correlation is one of the Main causes of causation, and thus cannot be ignored.
God is real unless declared integer
But rather than associating insomnia with increased risk of death, it appears that sleeping more than 8 hours carries a much higher risk.
... with those subjects "sleeping" more than 2700 hours consecutively being in the highest category of mortality rates. =)
Toles: what's the mortality rate of a corpse?
if yes, i've got a big problem.. i'll die young ;-))
CONCLUSIONS: Patients can be reassured that short sleep and insomnia seem associated with little risk distinct from comorbidities. Slight risks associated with 8 or more hours of sleep and sleeping pill use need further study. Causality is unproven.
for those who need the definition for causality:
Pronunciation: ko-'za-l&-tE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Date: 1603
1 : a causal quality or agency
2 : the relation between a cause and its effect or between regularly correlated events or phenomena
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Frederick Nietzsche
I took his class and it was very interesting. One of the most memorable things that I learned is that there is no single "right amount of sleep" for everyone. Some people need more, others need less. The range that he reports is 2 to 10 hours a night. If you need 6 hours a night then that is what you need and 8 is too much. If you need 9 then you had better get 9 and getting less is harmful. Here is what his website has to say on the subject.
One of the other very interesting things I learned in his class was the concept of sleep latency. He has developed tests that can actually measure how sleep deprived a person is. Once you accumulate sleep debt it doesn't go away until you make that sleep up. Thus if you are a person who needs 7 hours of sleep a night and one night you only get 4 hours of sleep you will be sleep deprived until you make up that 3 hours that you missed. You can do the next night by sleeping 10 hours or you could continue to sleep 7 hours a night and run around sleep deprived for months until you make up the sleep.
I would trust his opinion more than some researchers who do not specialize in sleep and merely noticed a correlation while conducting a study that wasn't related to sleep or sleep disorders. On the subject of life expectancy he actually mentioned in class that life expectancy is correlated with the amount on sleep that you need each night. Someone who needs only 4 hours of sleep each night, he used President Clinton as an example, will have a shorter life expectancy. This directly contradicts the study mentioned in this article.
Lasers Controlled Games!
As reported in Globe and Mail article today The study wasn't specifically designed to consider the effects of sleep on longevity, and that it was skewed by the number of people who sleep more than eight hours because of medical problems. It didn't ask participants whether they napped in the afternoon, and it didn't watch them sleep; it just asked them to recall their sleep pat- terns.
So the conclusion is suspect, and thank heavens for that. We'd hate to think it might have become politically incorrect to curse the alarm clock.
Also when it comes to statistics I always ask myself whether the n's justify the means.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
in this case I think I'll just throw caution to the wind.
"Women sleeping eight, nine and 10 hours a night had a 13 percent, 23 percent and 41 percent greater risk of dying, respectively, than those who slept seven hours, the study found."
I thought everyone's risk of dying was 100%...
Couple of points.
First... this does not mean that "IF you sleep less you will live longer"
It just means that there is some relation between lifespan and sleep. It could also be that those who live longer tend to have lifestyles that involve getting up earlier.
Or that, for some reason, those predisposed to along life just plain sleep less.
Also... not getting your 8 hours? Think you can get by on 4 or 5 hours a night? I've heard people say that...
Studies show very conclusively that you basically need 8 hours of sleep a night. If you don't get it one night, you'll make up for it later. When you don't sleep enough, you accumulate a 'sleep-debt' that the body WILL pay off eventually, even over a span of months.
Stayed up on speed for 3 days? You might not sleep for 24 hours straight afterwards.. but you WILL catch up over the next few days.
Timothy's post blows. How the hell did this get onto Slashdot?
One thing that the Washington Post article didn't mention was that the average age of the people in the study was 57.
It is common knowledge that as people get older they sleep less. I would hypothesize that if you are over 57 years of age and sleeping more than 8 hours per night, you are likely to be at least somewhat unhealthy.
I therefore don't see why this study would be applicable to healthy young people.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
Other studies have shown that different people need different amounts of sleep to function best. The "average" is between 5 and 10 hours of sleep.
If you really need 10 hours of sleep, and you believe in the old "8 hours per night for everyone", you will be tired all the time. You'll probably sleep in on weekends, which disrupts your sleep cycle, and makes you even more tired when you get up on Monday.
On the other hand, if you should really be sleeping 7 hours per night and you get 8 or 9, you will also feel tired. Many people have found that a gradual, planned cutback of the number of hours they sleep has led to increased energy. This has also been used as an effective treatment for depression.
The important thing is to figure out how much sleep you need, and keep up (as near as possible) a steady sleep schedule, even through the weekend. You should also avoid things like alchohol and caffeine up to several hours before bedtime, as these will decrease the quality of your sleep, though they might not keep you awake.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Anyone looking to buy stock in Jolt cola in hopes they found the fountain of youth should read the final line of the abstract.
Causality is unproven.While it is an interesting finding and deserves to be looked at further. The big problem is that data was originally collected as part of a Cancer study and like most cancer studies it only looks at data over a relatively short period of time (6 years). So the tagline should more accurately read,
People who sleep more or less than 7 hours per day are more likely to die in the next six years.
Going back to the original point, the only mechanism they propose to account for more sleep causing correlating with increased death is that people with sleep apnea (stoping breathing while asleep) have higer mortality rates. However they also point out that people with sleep apnea do not necessarily sleep longer.
So basically they have no clue as to why.
The more active you are, the more quickly events seem to pass you by; and by consequence the slower you seem to age relative to the rest of the world; giving you a seemingly longer life.
:)
I thought it was:
sleep less = age faster
Maybe you're just living longer because the years go by faster?
The trojan number (see Numberwatch for definition) 1.1 Million begs several questions:
1. How many people died?
There were 1.1 Million people in the study, but in order to determine the increased morbidity, someone had to die.
2. How were the sleep habits of 1.1 million people evaluated?
I am fairly confident that they weren't watched every night be researchers. Most likely the sleep habits were self reported. As other sleep studies have shown in the past, self reporting of sleep habits are far from accurate. People who think they get no sleep often get the most, while those that think they get lots of sleep sometimes get the least.
3. Did they actually interview 1.1 Million people?
That is a lot of people or did they data dredge these people out of multiple studies.
15 percent means a correlation of 1.15.
Unless the increased risk exceeds 100%, you needn't worry. Fact is until it gets to 200% the correlation is pretty suspect. Even then chance is still likely to be the cause.
At 15% the researchers should be shot for reporting a connection.
tnt
brad
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
Alot of the "layabout" types I have met seemed far more interested in spending 12+ hours in bed than actually doing anything with there life.
It isn't just a lack of joie de vivre; hypersomnia (sleeping a long time) can be a sign of serious chronic illness such as major depression.
The press is picking up on this as a "sleep is bad for you" story. In fact, another interpretation that fits the observation equally well is that health people require less sleep than people with chronic illness. In that case, it would be very unfortunate if people take this to mean they can improve their health by reducing the amount they sleep, because this would very likely injure it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I love corelational studies. They follow the principle that, if you stare at a set of numbers long enough, your brain's propensity for arbitrarily ordering things that have no real order will allow you to produce any answer you are looking for and more. You end up with results like these, answers to questions nobody asked.
The number of participants, 1.1M, is also very scientific, indicating that whomever did the study has no idea what the hell they're doing. See, statisticians would have us believe that you need about a thousand subjects to get a result roughly within 3% of the truth, as long as those one thousand subjects are representative of the entire population. Somehow I don't think that is the case here.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
A new study found that most people who are alive aren't dead yet. The correlation: alive is not-dead. So the best way to stay alive is to not die. The researchers note however that correlation is not causation!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
... could it possibly be that people with longer natural life spans need less sleep? (ie, it won't behoove you to get less sleep) mlylecarlin
In fact the original article spoke of correlation. Not cause. But as you amy see above this psot is totally redundant.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The study failed to factor in lifestyles.
Could it be that those who sleep too long also don't excercise, eat fried foods, and drink too much?
I wouldn't place too much credence on this report.
According to Einstein, time is relative. So some one who spends their life traveling through space would come back to find everyone else had aged faster than him. Same thing with sleep--if I get less sleep I spend more time running around, and time (appears) to move slowly for me and faster for all those sleepyheads layinging bed.
steve
Vote Quimby.
If this correlation is true, what controllable factors cause a person to sleep longer each night?
Some of the answers are well known:
All interfere with your body's ability to reach the deepest levels of sleep, so it takes longer to have the same amount of rest. At least two of the three factors are also associated with shortened lifespan.
Is the study totally worthless? No. It proves that you don't need to subject yourself to a dozen separate tests to determine how well you are managing these long-term risks - keeping track of the number of hours you sleep is sufficient.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Did you read the original article? There are some interesting swipes against the National Sleep Foundation:
---
'Kripke, whose study was funded by federal tax dollars, said doctors' recommendations that everyone get eight hours of sleep a night may have been influenced partly by companies that make sleeping pills. He cited a report from a public relations firm representing the maker of the medicine Ambien, which gave the National Sleep Foundation money to alert people about an insomnia "public health crisis" as part of a marketing campaign.
Both Buysse and Walsh have served as paid consultants to sleeping-pill makers, but both denied being influenced by that. Walsh said most researchers in the field have accepted consulting fees from the companies, because "99 percent of the funding to support this type of research is from pharmaceutical companies." '
---
Now, you can put whatever weight you want into this suggestion of bias. But at least the Washington Post, unlike CNN, alerted us to what *might* be exacerbating the conflict between the scientists here.
Why was this story accepted? It's not news, it's amusement equivalent to the perpetual energy machine story. It should have been written that way (ie. sarcastically or something). Why is it an amusing story? Because the study violated so many statistical and common-sense experimental safeguards that it's not even funny (or is).
The WPost article even mentioned a lot of the problems with the study.
However, the article makes the common, and serious, mistake of implying that correlation implies causation. And it so obviously does not in this study - this study was only a correlational study.
Plus, all the other mistakes - no randomized subject selection, no compensation for self-reporting inaccuracies, etc.
And we call this news...
last week i read an article that eating eggs can make you healthier and more energetic. last night, the tv told me that eggs cause heart attacks and make your thing fall off.
the human body is a delicate and complicated machine. each one is different from the last. i'm a firm believer in the fact that this alone outweighs any validity that statistics and surveys lay claim to. what about super heroes? what happens when they don't sleep? mutants? bwah!
#dlf
is that health people require less sleep than people with chronic illness
This just shows that things aren't cut and dried either. Though I totally agree with your comment, I'd like to point out that some manic people (or manic-depressive) can go through very active phases and require very little sleep. Yet they are not entirely well.
One theory I had heard suggested this is a form of illness that befell Winston Churchill during WW2 (and the Blitz particularly). And the claim was made that his inexhaustible energy was part of what kept Britain glued together and probably could not have been supplied by a normal,healthy individual.
Humans are pretty complex.... jumping from datum to conclusion is often like trying a triple jump on a bed of nails... kind of likely to be painful.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Just more evidence that stationary (biological) clocks run faster.
Trash science. There is no correlation between the amount of time spent sleeping and the amount of time one lives. It's the lifestyle that dictates both.
Shit, Duncan's alive???
I only just made it through Dune. I didn't think he survived.
Time to pick up the next couple books, I guess...
Kinds of citrusy behind the wretchedness.
hawk, who hopes never to do that again, and needs to figure out which red wines are giving him sinus headaches
Most pinks/blushes are crappy blends of two junk wines, but some are made by a shorter term skin contact.
hawk
>it'd be: "Correlation does not equal causation!"
Well, almost. The back of the hand or eyelids, or the back of the person in front's head . . .
I tell my stat classes that they should chant "correllation does not imply causation" several minutes each night, and offer a bonus point on the last test for remembering to work the mantra in . . .
hawk
Sorry, I misspoke; I was referring to science as an institution of people, not the disclipline itself. The slashdot article only mentioned a correlation, but the Post article, as well as the researcher, inferred that getting less sleep will make you live longer. I don't bother to check if my posts are redundant or not. It's worth the loss of karma not to sift through hundreds of comments.
BAH! I throw my pillow at you!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
When more fire engines respond to a fire, there is more damage. Should we outlaw fire engines too?
This doesn't mean that sleep and lifespan are directly related. They need to look further at the activities of the people. Perhaps the people with less sleep get more exercise...
Less sleep makes you live longer. More sleep makes you live longer.
Cabbage prevents cancer. Cabbage causes cancer.
Alcohol is good for your body. Alcohol is bad for your body.
Marijuana kills brain cells. Marijuana doesn't kill brain cells.
Why don't we just give up on the whole idea of science and agree with nothing really does anything, and that these studies are just generating a lot of random data for the sake of creating interesting newspaper articles?
Got Rhinos?
Being awake more makes it seem like you live longer?
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
It seems to me, people sleep different lengths of time on different nights, depending on the circumstances.
For example, I caught a cold on Friday night. I slept for several hours more than usual on both Sat. and Sun. night. I probably could have gotten up sooner, but I chose to go back to sleep when I woke up once or twice, knowing that the extra rest would help me get over the cold more quickly.
The rest of last week though, I know I got less sleep than usual. I woke up tired each morning, and could barely get out of bed.
Well, if you take the *average* of all of this, I bet it shows that I slept approximately 7 to 7.5 hours per night. Therefore, I'd be doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, according to this study. In reality, I probably got too little sleep all week long, causing me to get sick - and then tried to make up for it over the weekend. Not exactly a recommended sleep cycle!
Just because there appears to be a correlation between sleep hours and longevity, even a statistically relevant correlation---one which cannot readily be attributed to chance---does not mean that there is a cause and effect relationship. There is no reason to conclude that sleeping less will prolong one's life, because it's not clear that sleeping longer shortens it. Assuming that the finding is valid, it's possible, and IMHO more likely, that there is some common cause which gives rise to sleeping more and living less, and merely sleeping less won't eradicate that cause. We can probably rule out the third possibility that longevity causes less sleep, however. :) :)
We can probably rule out the third possibility that longevity causes less sleep, however.
No we can't. The older you are, the less sleep you need (on average). The older you are - the higher your life expectancy (measured from birth) is. If you are already 50 years old, you can't be someone who has died before 50. The life expectancy of someone who is 50 is higher than that of someone who is 20. Did the study's authors bother to correct for age? If not, then the above would be a serious confounding factor.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
MAO inhibitors are dangerous - they can cause EXTREMELY high blood pressure (i.e. levels which can be lethal very quickly) when combined with many drugs and common foods.
As for rats living longer, we can with very near 100% effectiveness cure cancer in rats. Too bad humans are different than rats (although in the case of lawyers, perhaps not much) and what works in a rat doesn't always work in us.
Also, let's say nootropics become popular. Now those too poor to afford them, those who are allergic to them, and those who want to live a natural lifestyle are placed at a disadvantage - perhaps serious enough where they could be denied employment - and forced to go on public assistance or starve.
Good bye freedom of choice, and hello to more inequality.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
If there is a direct relationship between sleeping less and living longer, then I WILL NEVER DIE!!!
I AM IMORTAL, BOW BEFORE ME YOU SLEEP ADDICTED FOOLS!
MWHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
And now I will lock my enemy in a death trap and head off to have a leisurely lunch chortling, "No one can stop me, I can not fail!"
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
You onlythink I'm kidding...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
When reviewing reviews or reports of scientific studies of late (very little review of the actual study has been accomplished here), I'm always bewildered by the number of assumptions made. In this case, the most blatant one to me is that living longer is in and of itself a desirable thing. Life must be measured in many many more ways than numbers of years before this study could be used to make any conclusions whatsoever. The people who died younger may very well have had more enriching lives. Those who slept less and died older might have never been happy or satisfied with their life in all of that time. We just don't know from the information given.
HA. I'm surprised I'm not already dead. Waking up at 3 in the afternoon is fun, really...
LOTR: Elijah Wood is a munchkin asshat. Yes, asshat. LOL.
We are taught that consumption of salt is bad for us due to studies that showed a relationship between consumption of salt and blood pressure long ago. In truth, consumption of salt will only cause a significant increase in blood pressure in an identifiable (though still tough to identify) 25% of American population who apparently carry a gene that causes salt sensitivity. The percentage is even lower in other populations. They weren't careful enough in the original studies to identify all of the population factors (yes probably impossible), so we've been stuck with a blanket advisory. Another example is given in the original studies showing that PCBs are cancerous. As is true with many cancerous agents, PCBs apparently interact with a genetic flaw or vulnerability that is more dominant in some populations than others. The original studies were done with Asian (primarily Indian) populations which are not exactly a melting pot of genetic diversity. Studies after that time showing that those populations were as much as 100 times more likely than populations of European descent to develop cancer from PCB exposure have not made it through to popular understanding. The truth is, almost any hydrocarbon substance is probably cancerous to those with the right genetic flaw for the substance to interact with. To be "scientific" a study must be able to isolate all cause and effect. In truth, very little of what we label as "scientific fact" is truly that because we understand so little of the cause and effect in massively complex systems like the human body and psychology.
Men sleeping eight, nine and 10 hours a night had a 12 percent, 17 percent and 34 percent greater risk of dying within the study period.
That's an incidental, not causal relationship.
Guess what, as people get older (and even RETIRE) they sleep longer. Older people die more frequently.
Nothing to see here, move along.
--- Mercutio was right.
You're thinking of MAO-A inhibitors, not MAO-B inhibitors. The jury is still out on selegeline in terms of its ability to extend life and brain function in humans, but it only causes generalized inhibition of MAO (including MAO-A) at high doses. Hypertensive crisis is not a risk factor in taking selegeline.
But speaking of all this, one category of drug which generally does seem to extend life in humans is ACE inhibitors. This appears to be an effect above and beyond the blood pressure lowering effect of the drug, as it seems that other antihypertensives don't extend life as well as ACE inhibitors do. So, the moral of the story seems to be: if ACE inhibitors control your hypertension, use them instead of the other alternatives.
C//
don't misconstrue my comments as saying anything else, but 90% of the time reports skip over this "minor detail" that correlation say nothing about causation. there is no evidence that sleeping less will cause you to live longer.
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Try fourteen hours a day. I've been there, which is why I understand the flip side of this issue. This was the reason I had to drop out of MIT -- I couldn't handle the course load and sleep fourteen hours a day; the worse part is that my schedule kept slipping later until I'd be waking up in the middle of the night. That was decades ago before they had any kind of agreed upon and effective treatment for major depression. The only option the doctors I saw had for me was years of psychoanalysis (needless to say with money I did not have).
Fortunately, after a couple of years my illness went into remission and I was able to get a job (it wasn't my field, but back then anyone who had ever seen a computer could get a programming job), and subsequently I was able to handle the illness without medication; instead of full blown depression episodes I'd have periods of lower energy and productivity. Finally over the years even those became more mild, and eventualy went away. I haven't had any significant depression symptoms for years.
When I saw the Tom Hanks movie, Survivor, I was blown away. That is exactly what recovery from major depression is like. Looked at one way, this thing destroyed my career plans, my relationships. On the other hand, I found a new career path, created new relationships, and the knowledge that tommorow always brings a new opportunity.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
People don't think this way when NHTSA tells us all the mumbo jumbo of people talking on cell phones causing more accidents, etc etc etc....
Gee, all those accidents I've witnessed my whole life were caused by people wearing clothes, so maybe we should be safer drivers by driving naked.
Heck, I've been sleeping in my boxers for the past 26 years, but everytime I sleep naked, I sure feel a whole lot better in the morning. Maybe sleeping naked is good for your health. Or maybe it was the woman I was sleeping with....
I would correct your false assumptions about Selegiline and MAO inhibitors in general but Courageous did it for me.
If you read my comment more carefully you'll find that I mentioned a need for research into the life-span enhancing effects of Selegiline. By no means did I say that rat research made for conclusive results in humans. However, the effects of Selegiline as a neuroprotector in humans and as an effective Treatment for Parkinson's disease has been proven. Further, Selegiline greatly increases the time a patient with Parkinsons can go before they have to start supplementing L-Dopa to enhance what little dopamine production they have left.
As for your assertions about natural states of human-ness and unfair advantages; that's your hangup not mine. It's an inconsistant hangup at that. So are the poor not going to be able to afford nootropics or is everybody going to be forced to take them? You can't have it both ways. Not that I think any of your dystopic scenarios will come to pass. First, we do not live in a natural state now, otherwise we would not be at the top of the food chain. Second, why would anyone NOT want to be happier and smarter? I don't know about you but I've NEVER had anyone complain to me, "Gee Kalabajoui, my life has been nothing but one happy day after another, I sure hope that I have a miserable day soon. Not to mention, I'm too damned smart!" Do you really think that humanity's natural state of stupidity and misery will lead to equality? Who are you or anyone to tell me whether I can or can't, should or shouldn't enhance myself by whatever means I see fit anyway?
I really had been sleeping my life away!
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Correlation *is* causation
u r/ correlation.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~smueller/HappyHo
The number was so high, in fact, that the only conclusion we can draw is that chemotheraphy causes cancer.
I'd draw the conclusion that less toxic avenues of treatment should be explored before resorting to chemotherapy.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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Kramer tried this and he ended up in the river...
Sleeping less will kill you!
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so if i never sleep am i immortal? :)
What irritates me about this entire /. discussion is the number of people who stride in here yelling about how the causality is unproven, as if it's some huge revelation that the scientific world hasn't yet caught on to.
Right now, we *can't* prove cause and effect for *anything*. All we can prove is correlation. That's IT. This is nothing new in the research world, and the authors of this piece know this (probably better than most of the people posting here).
DD.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
You ask : How do I test it ?
:
Simple, ask the people who suffered from depression or people who deal with them.
My experience and the current practices on the subject of depression lead to two comments about your theory
First, depression is generally caused by unconscious thinkings that come from the past (recent or not) and that you cannot consciously deal with. That's the reason it is advised to talk with a psy. It is important to understand what's happening and so, to think deeply.
Secondly, in a situation of crisis, thinking deeply only shows how bad the situation is (if it is) or can be (if you are depressed, you see things more bad than they are). At that point, it's better not to think.
Conclusion : avoiding to think (about one's situation) can be easier but only postpones the real solution of the problems and make it harder to solve.
The fact that depression is not socially accepted leads people to hide it and therefore to make it longer to get out of.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
My theorem on statistics of this type...:
Studying an amount of objects with results(lifespan) of the behaviour (sleep cycle) automatically have two sides;
1. The objects have choosen the behaviour (sleep cycle) and are producing the result (lifespan)
2. The objects don't chooose the behavior, but the majority of the objects prove that the result(lifespan) is directed by the common behavior(sleep cycle) of the objects.
This "news" only considers the 1. posibility, the objects themselves produced the results. I've not once seen an article on this subject that states that the object themselves choosed the behaviour to produce the results, it was the result of the behavior that produced the result.
So the conclusion is 50% wrong. choosen sleep cycle (less sleep per day) is _not_ 100% proven for longevity, "people that sleeps less hours per day is proven to live longer". The story only states that people that sleep less in one day probably lives longer, but not necessary by those people's needs. It may be that people that live long, also needs less sleep.... the study or article that references to this study is missing some vital information in my opinion...
In all liklihood, I expecttype and quality of sleep will ultimately turn out to be a strong predictor of health, but not the absolute quantity
Probably the case. I have to admit one of the best rests I ever had was sleeping on a beach in Varadero (or in a hammock) with a nice 27 C temp and a lovely sea breeze (and having just had a lovely meal and dos cervezas!). That 2 hour nap probably refreshed me more than many 7-8 hour nights at home.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
This article is actually a bunch of bull. The study actually came out few weeks, ago, and did not completely say that. The article suggested that at this point, there is a possibility that this could be true. Though quite a bit more research must be done.
Sounds like everything else research comes up with, jump to the first conclusion as soon as one appears and take it as truth until someone decides it is time to prove or disprove the theory.
Any, if this is true I should be dead already or any minute n.......
Sorry I am no english Prose writer, sorry for the confusion.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
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