Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
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Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
1–8 of 8 posts
Re: Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
#2Interesting study, bad title. The claim is that getting 6 hours per night is as bad as not sleeping for two nights.
The other interesting aspect is that the people who got six hours night after night underreported their fatigue. That fits with my experience. Several years ago, I started missing out on a lot of sleep (young kids, trying to learn programming while working a full time job). When I finally started sleeping enough, I felt like I was fully awake for the first time in years. Before, I would notice I was truly exhausted, and sleep more for a day or two, but I was never actually catching up, just taking the worst of the edge off.
Re: Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
#3What about people that naturally only need 6 hours of sleep? Are they tricking themselves to believing that?
Can you condition yourself to only need 6 hours of sleep and get a full nights rest?
Re: Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
#4[deleted]
Re: Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
#5What about people that naturally only need 6 hours of sleep? Are they tricking themselves to believing that? Can you condition yourself to only need 6 hours of sleep and get a full nights rest?
Yes, you can be fully rested with much less than that actually, according to polyphasic sleep theory.
The problem is that you have to sleep multiple times in a 24-hour cycle. The simplest version is the biphasic pattern or "siesta", where you take a nap in the middle of the day, as was traditionally done in Spanish cultures. The more extreme versions involve brief sleep periods evenly spaced out during the 24-hour cycle.
As should be obvious, the problem with this is that our culture doesn't permit it. Good luck finding a job that'll let you take a 1-hour nap in the middle of the workday (in addition to your lunchtime).
Re: Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
#6Interesting study, bad title. The claim is that getting 6 hours per night is as bad as not sleeping for two nights. The other interesting aspect is that the people who got six hours night after night underreported their fatigue. That fits with my experience. Several years ago, I started missing out on a lot of sleep (young kids, trying to learn programming while working a full time job). When I finally started sleepi…
I agree the title is misleading. I sleep 6-7 hours most nights, but I never go 2 weeks straight on that because I inevitably end up "catching up" at some point.
Re: Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
#7The study [1] is from 2003 and has been cited over 1600 times. It had errata in 2004 published in the same journal (Sleep), but I haven't been able to find them.
[1] http://www.med.upenn.edu/uep/user_documents/VanDongen_etal_S...
Re: Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All
#8What about people that naturally only need 6 hours of sleep? Are they tricking themselves to believing that? Can you condition yourself to only need 6 hours of sleep and get a full nights rest?
Yes, you can be fully rested with much less than that actually, according to polyphasic sleep theory. The problem is that you have to sleep multiple times in a 24-hour cycle. The simplest version is the biphasic pattern or "siesta", where you take a nap in the middle of the day, as was traditionally done in Spanish cultures. The more extreme versions involve brief sleep periods evenly spaced out during the 24-hour cy…
It depends on the kind of work you do and on your boss. I think people working in software companies have great freedom in their time management and can easily extend the lunchtime to get a nap after lunch.