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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.
...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?
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.
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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.
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...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
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.
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 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.
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.
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!
That is the most frightening "prayer" I could think of having kids say...
"Oh, I might die in my sleep tonight? I don't think I'm going to sleep tonight, Daddy!"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.
...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"?
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.
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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 :)
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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)
"'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.
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
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
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.
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...
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
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)
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.
Heavy sleeping indicates lazyness -> unhealthy lifestyle.
Look a monkey!
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.
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?
Sure you will live longer, but you won't remeber it.
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 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.
/tom
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
In other words, life shortening events can cause abnormal sleep habits, not the other way around.
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
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.
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I post this just to read other peoples comments and bam like 10 people who said basically the same thing.
Well, if it's any consolation, 9 of them did almost the same thing....
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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I have to think the hoopla over this is more to do with the press who picked this up and reported it without any kind of scientific context. The abstract itself says "Causality Unproven", and I'm not sure that the point of studying this is to establish causality.
I think it's legitimate to ask whether there is a correlation between sleeping and mortality. This is not the kind of seminal question the press is treating it to be; it's just another piece of information that can lead in more than one equally plausible direction. Most science done is of this nature -- not so powerful to draw conclusions from, but useful for directing future research towards getting some causal data. For example there was a study showing an increased risk of breast cancer for women working night shifts. Assuming its not a statistical fluke, then either female shift workers are being exposed to something, or are disposed towards something, or shift work itself is some kind of factor. Nobody knows, but it shows its important to look at these areas.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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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
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//
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.
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I really had been sleeping my life away!
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
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
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."