How much sleep do you need?

A

A4Ever

Knows where his towel is
Registered Senior Member
A// How much do you need? They say the average is eight hours a night. But I read someone saying he could do with four hours.

B// What are the consequences when you don't sleep the hours you need?

C// Is it possible to train your body and/or mind to be satisfied with less hours of sleep, or is it genetic?

D// Is too much sleep really bad for you? I heard it shortens your life.

E// Is the time for going to bed and the time for getting up important?
 
Heh! I need all from 18 hrs to 4 hrs. It depends alot. But I'm young, I can take it :)

The recommended sleep varies alot from 7 to 9 hours on average. There is not much agreement on this and little conclusive proof. There is need for sleep, but the most important thing is that it is regular. Go to bed at a certain hour, wake up at acertain hour.

Concequences of sleep deprivation are usually sluggishness (yes really), feeling hot/cold and even hallucinating. There are many examples of this. It has a very negative effect on your immune system like severe stress can do.

Too much sleep bad? Well, cats sleep alot, and they live to a max of 20 years :D But seriously, I don't know.

Sleep is an iteresting subject, and very biological, I might add. No sense in chaining it psychology.
 
I can't seem to find the average I need. It is mostly due to lack of discipline. I can't bring myself to go to sleep at the same hour every day.

Because I have varying levels of activity each day, it seems impossible to find out what I need.

Thanks for the reply, I hope there will be more.
 
my $.02

I usually get between 6-8 hours a night. I have also read that too much sleep in bad.

There was this other thing in the paper the other day that said teens naturally want to sleep between 2am and 10am. They said it was instinct to sleep these hours and possibly detremental to teens development to do otherwise.

SO for a while, the local school board was gonna make school start at 11 am and go until 5pm! :eek:
 
Normal sleep requirement is 6 - 8 hours. Sickness may require more. When I get flu, I usually get it in the weekend and sleep 12 - 16 hour days for 2 days then I am fine by Monday.

Too little sleep is bad, because the body can not repair all the damage and puts off long term minor clean up and repair work. And it is cumulative.
 
I find that sometimes I sleep as little as 4 hours a night for a while. Then I reach a point where I really need a good nights sleep. That may be up to 10 or 12 hours. After that I can go back to what ever.
 
During the work week I usually average between 6-7 hours. On the weekend I sleep in a bit and get around 8-9 hours. Any more than that and I feel like crap! I actually feel worse getting more sleep than I do getting less sleep. If I don't get enough sleep (like this past Canada day) I had a little less than 5 hours sleep and had to go to work. So after I got home and had dinner, I napped for 2 hours :eek: Then got up did a few things and eventually went to bed at my normal time. I caught up.
 
I saw this crazy ass study recently where the people who slept 6 hours were less likely to die in the next six months compared to people who slept 8 or more. That doesn't really say much to me, but it is very interesting.
 
Am now finishing a book called The Chemistry of Conscious States by Allan Hobson, a neurologist/sleep researcher. He says that the time needed varies per person. Some only need 3-4 hours a night, and some people actually need 9-11 hours a night. It has nothing to do with laziness, as our society tends to laud those who need little and scoff at those who need more as "lazy." So the answer is most likely "genetic."

Some high schools are starting to set their hours back to start later on in the morning because researchers have shown that teenagers require a lot of sleep and their natural circadian rhythm tends toward a later bedtime. Students in the early classes didn't perform as well academically, I guess.

kmguru brought up an interesting point about the flu and sleep, which Hobson talks about as well, his point being that sleep is one of the most effective healing agents and that it is crucial for mental and physical health, for learning and optimum performance during the day.

"Too much sleep" usually happens with depressed people (like when I get laid off - you all know what I'm talking about, right?), and this has more to do with the quality of REM sleep. The chemistry gets unbalanced, and too much REM sleep can actually be bad. The healing process cannot work right until this balance is corrected.

There was a research done on sleep deprivation with rats; they died with 4 weeks of no sleep. They died in six weeks with only their REM sleep interrupted.

On par with diet, sleep is one of the most important conscious activities that one can do to be responsible for their health.

John Le Coq
 
I recall reading about a study where a guy agreed to stay awake for 168 hours. Toward the end he began hallucinating (hearing strange sounds and seeing random flashes of color) and became convinced that the scientists were plotting to kill him. Then he went to bed, slept for 18 hours, and woke up fine.
 
Hey - they really were trying to kill me. That s**t wasn't funny at all.

A friend who read about sleep deprivation told me that the most common hallucination is fire, that the building is on fire, etc. There was an X-Files episode about this a long time ago.

John Le Coq
 
"A friend who read about sleep deprivation told me that the most common hallucination is fire, that the building is on fire, etc. There was an X-Files episode about this a long time ago."



Imagine the scenes if you kept all the firemen up for days then let them loose in the city?

Might be fun...
 
A) I probably need about 6 hours of sleep. If I sleep in too much my body gets weak and sluggish. It makes the day more sluggish as well.

B) If I don't sleep enough I feel tired and doze off alot. However, if I REALLY don't get enough sleep I am wide awake and hyper :confused: I am actually funnier this way.

C) I don't think you can train yourself to sleep less all the time. In the end it will catch up to you. I read somewhere, forgot where, that for every hour of sleep that you lose, your body remembers and tries to catch up on it sometime.

D) Too much sleep makes me feel weak and lazy.

E) I found that if I go to sleep at a certain time and wake up at a certain time I feel more refreshed. Like if I wake up at 7am and sleep at 10pm I would feel better than waking up at 11am and sleeping at midnight. The cycle depends on the person I guess. And with my work schedule and school schedule my sleep is never a constant.

I've also heard that sleep is not all that important. A guy was able to function properly using the powernapping method. He would do his work and fall straight asleep, for a few hours and wake up and continue his work and continue to do this. Talk about a messed up sleep cycle.
 
Sleep could be a thing that is built into our conciousness. I heard one theory that we only sleep because our ancestor do as they have nothing to do at night. Weird... but no entirely impossible if it's built into our genes...
 
That can't be right.

Sleep is where the body heals itself, may commit things to long term memory, plus its good for the immune system somehow.
 
What happens to your car if you run it non-stop? It burns out. Same for us humans. The body can not remain active constantly; doing so would break things. The body needs sleep.

How much? Generally sleep patterns follow well-researched and documented biological cycles. These are as follows:
Ultradian = Every 90 minutes.
Circadian = Every 8 hours.
Infradian = Every 28 days.

Those are rough, everyone deviates from the norm a little bit. Sleep runs in cycles of 90 minutes until you hit around 8 hours, which is enough for the body to recuperate from a day's activity generally.

There's a guy in England, a very old guy, who seems to get by on 15 minutes each night.
 
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