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The Shorter Your Sleep, the Shorter Your Life: the New Sleep Science (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A "catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic" is causing a host of potentially fatal diseases, a leading expert has said. In an interview with the Guardian, Professor Matthew Walker, director of the Centre for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, said that sleep deprivation affected "every aspect of our biology" and was widespread in modern society. And yet the problem was not being taken seriously by politicians and employers, with a desire to get a decent night's sleep often stigmatised as a sign of laziness, he said. Electric lights, television and computer screens, longer commutes, the blurring of the line between work and personal time, and a host of other aspects of modern life have contributed to sleep deprivation, which is defined as less than seven hours a night. But this has been linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, obesity and poor mental health among other health problems. In short, a lack of sleep is killing us.
Eight hours or more work days are killing us. Learn more on the news at 23:00.
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Actually, that is an interesting point, but should be presented from the other side.
You're assigned a certain amount of awake time at birth, but sleep deprivation means you reduce that waking time bit by bit.
It's basically an advert for the guy's book. He's probably right, though.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
You are assigned a certain amount of sleep at birth. If you don't use it all up, it's added to the start of your dirt nap.
I thought TFA might work out to that, but it turns out it doesn't - greatly increased risks of many diseases that'll take you out way sooner.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And if you try to use all your awake time consecutively, this is what happens.
By sleeping 10% more, you can extend your life by 4%.
If you consider: SLEEPING = LIVING
If not, then you have lost 6% of your life to sleep.
Longer you sleep, your life will extend by exactly the same number of hours you slept. So there is no net new active hours added to your life.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Learn to get to bed and go to sleep early enough to get the requisite sleep. Stop all this bullshit about 'Muh biologies' as an excuse to stay up later. And then complain that the school day* starts too early.
Aside from getting a head start practicing what will be required in one's employment career, I concur that late nights and less sleep are very unhealthy (based on my anecdotal observations). I have been involved with several groups that split between members preferring daytime activities to those who preferred later in the evening. Over the course of a few decades, the apparent age difference of the earlybirds vs the night owls has really started to stand out. With the 'sundowners' (to borrow a term from dementia studies) aging about 10 to 20 years more in appearance than the early risers.
*I suspect that this may be the faculty as much as the students. When I went to high school, some of our teachers came from a segment of society that felt it necessary to close the bars every night. And then bitch when they had to put up with the little monsters first thing in the morning.
Have gnu, will travel.
And yet the problem was not being taken seriously by politicians and employers
Why should politicians and employers be involved? Because you're a bunch of kids who need daddy to tell you what to do?
Electric lights, television and computer screens, longer commutes, the blurring of the line between work and personal time, and a host of other aspects of modern life have contributed to sleep deprivation
Yeah, anything but personal choice to do more stuff and sleep less, then make it up by taking stimulants.
My wife and I go to bed at a reasonable time each night (10PM) and get up at 6AM, no need for an alarm clock. Yes, it takes discipline.
Do you have ESP?
Like we need ANOTHER reason for corporations to automate.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Extending life by 4% is equivalent to 1 hour a day. Sleeping 10% more, assuming you sleep 6 hours, is 6.6 hours, so you gain 0.4 hour. If you extend an 8 hour sleep by 10%, it's 8.8 hours, so you gain 0.2 hour. So either case is a win. I'm guessing you posted the above without getting enough sleep. :)
All scientific studies of increased or decreased human lifespan due to a specific factor are BS. There are way too many confounding variables over a human lifetime to make any claim credible.
I have no love for either politicians or bosses, but is this really their problem? I suppose if you have a job where you have to work for 16 hours a day, your employer is definitely taking away your sleep time. I don't think that describes too many people.
I think most of our sleep is being lost from OUR choices. We stay up late binging on netflix, or playing games, or otherwise entertaining ourselves. We pack our day with work, kids stuff, entertainment, commute, etc. We kind of bring on a very busy, very hectic schedule and sleep is just sort of sandwiched in there.
One can argue that a 40 hour work-week is no longer really that important, but I have no reason to believe that even if we went to a 20 hour workweek we would sleep even 5 minutes more. We'd just find more stuff to pack in there. In contrast I probably could say "I'm too sleepy, I'm going to show up for work in a few hours" and my boss wouldn't give a crap as long as I got my work done. It'd come off as all kinds of horrible, but I have some karma to burn. The problem is that it wouldn't fix anything. I'd sleep in, go to work, do my job, then come home and do the same bad thing that cost me sleep previously, only later, to later hours...
The article mentions I think only one point where work schedules are directly responsible: night shift workers with disrupted circadian rhythms. There is evidence that we are more ready to sleep at certain times of the day. That might push some groups to later hours than others. But that's not likely to solve the real problem.
"And yet the problem was not being taken seriously by politicians and employers"
In America, perhaps you need to consider an employer's interest in this issue as finding the tradeoff between maximum profit and maximum employee productivity.
Why are politicians involved? Some right being violated? Our politicians are mostly in the business of violating our rights already. No more work to be done there.
Really, looking to government to solve the problem is usually THE PROBLEM.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's the number of complete 90 minute sleep cycles! Cruddy protein folds get repaired. Brain processes and problem-solves the day's events via dreaming. Boners get exercised. (No, it isn't having to pee in the morning, its happening to wake up, having to pee, during this period.)
Obesity (apnea), type II diabetes (excess sugar needing to pee, and neuropathy pain) all cut into this until you are lucky to get one full cycle.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You are assigned a certain amount of sleep at birth. If you don't use it all up, it's added to the start of your dirt nap.
I thought TFA might work out to that, but it turns out it doesn't - greatly increased risks of many diseases that'll take you out way sooner.
But it would still be simple for the study to say "adults sleeping 6 hours per night lose a median of X years off their life." They don't say anything like that, so it is impossible to know if you are likely to lose more waking hours in your life than you gain by 40 waking days worth of time you gain each year by sleeping two hours less. If you sleep 6 hours instead of 8 each day for 40 years, you have gained just over 4 years of time. So the question is whether the health problems they studied are likely to reduce your life by more than 4 years on average.
The study also keeps throwing in statements such as "predicted to live only to their early 60s without medical intervention." But they don't state what medical intervention means here. Many of the problems mentioned in the study are caused by rising blood pressure. Does this mean that with blood pressure medication these adverse effects of sleep deprevation go away? And if they don't go away, are the effects diminished?
Considering there are real benefits of sleeping a little less (more hours in each day), you need to be very specific when describing the downsides. Worthless statements such as "twice as likely to have a heart attack" are meaningless without knowing whether medication affects that increase, what are the chances of surviving that heart attack, etc.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Like someone else already commented here ... I don't get why any of this SHOULD be a problem for politicians or employers to address? Hopefully, as an adult, each one of us is capable of making our own decisions about how we live our daily lives.
Even the biggest work-a-holic has to sleep sometime, and he or she can opt to go to bed a little earlier if the core problem lies with expectations they're up bright and early to report to the job. A person can only do so much in a day (or night). There's diminishing returns on trying to cut back on sleep to squeeze more functional hours out of the day.
I went through an especially difficult stage myself, because I had a pre-teen daughter who just would NOT wake up on her own in the morning to catch her bus to school. We fought to get her into a different school than our home district, which had the side effect that she had to be up and out the door by 5:45AM or so to catch the bus that went out there. Meanwhile, I worked for a company with offices spread out over multiple time zones, and was expected to work later in the evening because west coast people needed assistance at 4 or 5PM their time, while I was on the east coast. Trying to accommodate both of those needs was really limiting my sleep.
But even then? I just had to make a habit of getting ready for bed each night ASAP, instead of doing any of the other things I would have liked to do. I learned to put everything else off until the weekends. It sucked, but I got through it and then summer provided a break. Now, she's much better about waking up on her own when her alarm goes off so I don't have to deal with it.
7.5 or 9 - you'll wake at the time your body is ready to. I have long suspected that 8.25 was the arithmetic mean of reported sleep spans and since the public hates decimal points, it was short-handed to 8, which is exactly when you should not be waking.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Rule of thumb: one hour of sleep before midnight equals two hours of sleep after midnight. So yes early to bed early to rise.
I come here for the love
"Electric lights, television and computer screens, longer commutes, the blurring of the line between work and personal time, and a host of other aspects of modern life have contributed to sleep deprivation"
All of which, with the possible slight exception of commutes which may be out of their control, are about GROWN ADULTS who aren't able to take themselves to bed on time.
Literally, people, I'm the most gadgety person in the whole of gadgetdom. And I switch them off, turn out the light, and go to sleep no problem at all, after using them for between 8-16 hours a day, every day, for my entire adult life.
If you're not going to bed because you're up doing stuff, stop it and go to bed.
Time for a nap. Because my life depends on it.
Better known as 318230.
If you sleep 6 hours instead of 8 each day for 40 years, you have gained just over 4 years of time. So the question is whether the health problems they studied are likely to reduce your life by more than 4 years on average.
That's A question. Another would be the degree to which 8 hours vs 6 improves your quality of life during your waking hours. I'm in a better mood all day if I get 8 instead of 6. At 3 or 4, I spend the day miserable and would gladly trade a couple of waking hours for sleeping ones.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
You're assigned a certain amount of awake time at birth, but sleep deprivation means you reduce that waking time bit by bit.
I've had chrono-reassignment surgery. I've always felt like an immortal, but baby, I wasn't born that way. I'm now able to live longer by sleeping less.
Just another day in Paradise
And let's add that we're gaining hours during our productive years, and when we can most enjoy them by sleeping less. I doubt I'll care as much when I'm not able to run, jump, cycle, swim, etc. For over 40 yrs., I've typically slept less than 5 hrs per night. Now, about to turn 59, I can't do some of the things I used to...the knees just aren't what they used to be...running, climbing, etc. And neither is the pecker...what used to be all nighters are now one and done. I won't give a shit if I can live to 100 when I'm no longer able to enjoy it.
Just another day in Paradise
Another [question] would be the degree to which 8 hours vs 6 improves your quality of life during your waking hours. I'm in a better mood all day if I get 8 instead of 6. At 3 or 4, I spend the day miserable and would gladly trade a couple of waking hours for sleeping ones.
That is certainly another important question when determining how much you should sleep. My wife really needs 7-8 hours to be happy, while I don't see any noticeable benefits with more than 6 hours. So she ends up getting an hour or two of extra sleep than I do each night. But considering I just went on blood pressure medication last week it's likely that reduced sleep does have some adverse affects. Then again my father and grandfather had heart attacks, my stressful work schedule has been messing with my workouts and diet over the last six months, and I'm nearly 40 now, so who know how much of a factor sleep is in my current health issues.
But while your question is important for someone to make a decision about their sleep schedule, it is not a question which is relevant to discussions about this article since it isn't related to their findings.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Lifespan year> awake years. Opportunities like seeing the next president or your great-grandchildren.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Lifespan year> awake years. Opportunities like seeing the next president or your great-grandchildren.
Agreed, but is 1 lifespan year > 10 awake years? I would say no, but couldn't tell you what I think the actual ratio is. And it would be different to different people. Some may say 1 lifespan year 1 awake year since they feel they will enjoy that year more in their 30's than they will in their 80's. I personally think I would take 1 awake year in my 30's over a decade of lifespan years after senility sets in (if ever).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"Seriously. I just tell people Iâ(TM)m a dolphin trainer. Itâ(TM)s better for everyone."
Space shuttle door gunner usually works for me.
Have gnu, will travel.
Lifespan year> awake years. Opportunities like seeing the next president or your great-grandchildren.
I've seen enough presidents. Every time I think I've seen the worst possible one a worse one follows.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
this is why i just sleep until i don't feel like sleeping anymore. only a loser gets up to an alarm.
after Trump, don't tell me you are not curious ; )
love is just extroverted narcissism
after Trump, don't tell me you are not curious ; )
All I know is, Kanye West has postulated running for President. I'm not ready for the capital to be renamed Westington, DC by executive order.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Capitol rather.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You haven't been paying attention. Trump claims to thrive on 4 hours sleep a night, and there is a small minority of people like that. It's not a jab, the author is just making a reference to the well-known behavior of a well-known person.
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