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Maybe You Don't Need 8 Hours of Sleep After All (theatlantic.com)

schwit1 writes: You've heard of the Paleo diet, but the next big thing in health may well be the Paleo sleep schedule. A UCLA researcher studied three hunter-gatherer and hunter-farmer groups -- the Hadza in Tanzania, San in Namibia, and Tsimane in Bolivia, "who live roughly the same lifestyle humans did in the Paleolithic," as NPR reports -- and determined our ancient ancestors may not have slept nearly as much we thought, and may have actually slept less than modern Westerners. "People like to complain that modern life is ruining sleep, but they're just saying: Kids today!" Jerome Siegel tells the Atlantic . "It's a perennial complaint but you need data to know if it's true." Siegel found that members of the three aforementioned groups sleep between 5.7 hours and 7.1 hours per night. That's less than is recommended for our health, yet the groups seemed very healthy indeed. (And if you're feeling insomniac, some earlier Slashdot stories about sleep are also pretty thought-provoking.)

6 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Depends by The+Real+Dr+John · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is not science, this is anecdotal. Neuroscience has shown recently that the brain moves waste products, excess transmitters and toxic products out during sleep via the paravascular glymphatic system. Just because people can get away without lots of sleep, especially when younger, does not mean that there are not long term health consequences from doing so over extended periods of time.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

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    A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
  2. Segmented Sleep by transporter_ii · · Score: 5, Informative

    And odd sleeping patterns did carry over into the Western world, too. It's called segmented sleep and there are tons of old books that mention it. What we are doing now came about as a result of the industrial age, when we started to have to work 8 - 10 hour shifts.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

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    Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
  3. Re:Biphasic Sleep by taiwanjohn · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's also evidence that our "natural" sleep pattern is two segments per night: first a "deep" sleep, followed by a midnight wakeful period called a "watch" (or "vigil" in Latin), and then a second sleep segment in the wee hours before dawn. This pattern was interrupted by the spread of artificial lighting technology in recent centuries, which allowed people to stay up and be productive when it would otherwise have been too dark. Apparently the practice of sleeping through the night in one go is a fairly recent development.

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    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
  4. You also do not need to bathe every day either by sanf780 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Bathing or showering can also be harmful. Every time you clean your skin, you are eroding one protective sheet of your skin. Add chemicals on top of that! Isn't the real world scary?

  5. Re:Depends by TWX · · Score: 3, Informative

    P.S. I'm new to slashdot and I don't have much technical or scientific cred. What kind of ettiquette can I practice so I don't ruffle any feathers? Besides R'ingTFA. I've posted anonymously a few times and got downvoted in rather short order. I like being able to talk to people with experience in tech and science sectors, though.

    Having an actual login will automatically give your posts higher default moderation than posting anonymously. Given that users are semi-randomly given the opportunity to moderate, and that users can set the default moderated-level of visible posts such that they can ignore posts below certain thresholds, posting a 1 with an account or at 2 with an account in excellent standing will mean that your posts are visible to more people and more moderators than anonymous posts at 0 or at -1.

    For dealing with trolls, I find that if a troll comes out of left-field with something stupid and there's a hole in their argument, drive your metaphorical spear into that hole. Over on Bash.org there's an IRC chat log of someone attempting to disparage a straw-man by claiming to have caught the straw-man doing something; the person that built the straw-man is called-out by someone else pointing out that they too would have had to have been engaging in the same kind of behavior in order to have caught their straw man in the act. Example is here. Crude, but funny.

    Otherwise, have a thick skin and don't worry about the trolls too much. Go back through your comments and reply to people that have replied to you so that it remains a discussion rather than simply a drive-by broadcast.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  6. Re:"You've heard of the Paleo diet" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oh ffs, you damn marketer.

    >Don't eat convenience foods, don't eat junk food with sugar and HFCS and other crap. Eat meat and vegetables.

    That is BASIC! This sort of 'diet' has been around awhile, been followed by anyone with an ounce of gray mass, and no amount of stupid re-branding by folks like you will make you the inventors of clean lifestyle.

    Get off your fucking high horse.