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Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

chicagotribune.com

71–80 of 309 posts

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#71
post #17

This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleepi…

Do something about it bro. If you want something you gotta take it. Nobody is gonna come offering you a dream work week. But the catch 22 is you gotta lose some sleep to find time to develop some systems to make passive income

That might work for the OP or someone who is capable of earning enough to set up systems to make a passive income.

But that's not a global solution to the problem. We can't all be lazy rent seeking drains on society.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#72
post #66
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people feel that humans have evolved over millions of years to do well in hunter-gatherer tribes and we have not genetically adapted yet in 6,000? years of civilization. If we think returning some habits of hunter-gatherer tribes would be beneficial, then we need to know what they are/were and not just wild-ass guess based on the Nobel Savage myth.

Many of the habits of hunter-gatherers would likely be absolutely unacceptable in today's culture. They were likely violently clannish/racist, completely male-dominated, hierarchical based on physical strength and appearance, and believed in gods/supernatural phenomenon.

What evidence is there to suggest that this is the case? It seems, instead, that those behaviors arose at a later point -- you need a certain level of captivity to have institutions like the patriarchy, bands can't enforce coercive structures....

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#73

the article states 7 hours is the minimum, but I seem to need a lot more. they state, if you can sleep after the alarm clock goes off, then you should sleep more. So, what if you get 8.5 hours of sleep but you still could sleep, after the alarm clock goes off? there should be some upper limit, maybe 9?

I recommend a 'Sleep' app on your phone. I set it to 7am and it'll wake me up anywhere from 6:30-7, depending on my sleep cycle. Never felt drowsy on 6:30 days.

How does an app predict your sleep cycle? Do you have the keep phone on you?

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#74
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but the 40h/week ignores commutes. For some people that's an additional 15h/week. Also hunger-gatherers lived right beside the people they knew. They just had to step outside to meet up with friends to socialize.

> with friends to socialize Or, sometimes, rival tribes to fight with and kill -- not everything is (necessarily) hunky-dory in every tribal society.

Well, the history of killing each other (and others!) in western civilization is nothing to brag about.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#75
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just diagnosed with sleep apnea this week after it wreaked havoc on my personal and professional life for the last 6. I couldn't work, couldn't engage in anything. Now I'm pretty much terrified to go to sleep every night as I know I'm probably not going to get any rest and wake up zombified. I heard the surgery was a hit or miss. Would you recommend?

CPAP is usually the first line for sleep apnea. I've been using one for the past couple of months. They've improved the masks so the really only annoyance is being tethered to the machine when you roll over but it isn't too bad. Another thing I've learned is the CPAP machines now phone home to the insurance company to give them compliance data on how and when you use the machine. Less happy about that.

You have a free market in healthcare, vote with your wallet.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#76
post #59
post #24

If you feel groggy in the morning or just not well–rested even after 7-8 hours sleep, get your sinuses & lungs checked. Could be sleep apnea, but in my case I felt congested all the time. What I thought was allergies was actually the linings of my sinuses inflamed to the point of closing off air passages. Unclear if the root cause in my case was acid-reflux into the sinus cavities or exposure to dust from ground zero…

I had so much shit that just sucked in my life the first 21 years of it. I always had sinus infections, I would constantly have what my friends and I call "poo-brain," where you just have slug thoughts and can't get your shit in order and your speech might even slur. Depression. Etc. Then I started taking fexofenadine (allegra) and fluticasone (nasonex) every day. After 2 weeks, nearly every problem I had vanished. N…

I used to do Allegra. But I started getting an irregular heartbeat. (It's called a premature ventricular contraction - basically, the nerves tell the ventricle to contract too soon after the previous heartbeat, and the muscle says "I just did that, I'm on my coffee break now", and the heartbeat gets skipped. The next heartbeat happens reliably, though, so it's not at all dangerous. But more blood has shown up at the heart, so the next heartbeat kind of hurts - kind of like when you swallow something a bit too big for your throat.)

Anyway, that all went away when I quit Allegra. Now I just use the fluticasone. But I had to get allergy shots for a while, because in my case, the problem was the cat that slept on my bed.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#77
post #17

This is one of the reasons I hate the eight-hour work day. Between that and all of the other shit you have to do in a day (commute, chores, eating, exercise etc.), it seems like there's little to no opportunity to just have a life. I know it sounds like first world problems (people used to work 100 hour weeks), but I think our culture needs to change before we can really put the onus on people to improve their sleepi…

for me personally the bigger issue is the actual 9-5ish work hours. I'm way more productive later in the day, so if the schedule would allow something like a Noon-4 pm/break/8 pm -midnight type breakdown I'm all for that. this is sometimes possible with telecommuting arrangements, whenever I'm able to do that I'm more productive, more rested and feel like my personal work/life balance is better.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#78
post #66
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people feel that humans have evolved over millions of years to do well in hunter-gatherer tribes and we have not genetically adapted yet in 6,000? years of civilization. If we think returning some habits of hunter-gatherer tribes would be beneficial, then we need to know what they are/were and not just wild-ass guess based on the Nobel Savage myth.

Many of the habits of hunter-gatherers would likely be absolutely unacceptable in today's culture. They were likely violently clannish/racist, completely male-dominated, hierarchical based on physical strength and appearance, and believed in gods/supernatural phenomenon.

So basically they where American? You're right, absolutely unacceptable by modern standards.

BTW, the first sentence is about 50% a joke.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#79
post #64
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I worry, this only gets rid of tiredeness but not fulfill the whole 8-9 hours of sleep.

From my experience, I'm better rested now than I was before I went bi-phasic. I personally believe sleep is simply a cleaning cycle for the brain, waiting 16 hours between cleaning cycles may be deleterious.

I wasn't speaking about better rested vs less rested.

You can totally lose symptoms of tiredness, only to wind up with dementia at later point in life.

Re: Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says

#80
One important thing the article doesn't cover: we now have good reason to suspect that chronic sleep deprivation can cause brain damage. Not just a long term decrease in function, but actual cellular damage.

In a major triumph of medicine, we now know that brain cells shrink during sleep (about 60% in rats), allowing cerebrospinal fluid to flow about 10 times as fast [1] [2], helping to cycle out built up toxins and waste products and eventually drain them into the bloodstream. It was previously a medical mystery how the brain was able to eliminate toxins without being connected to the lymphatic system (although it's since been shown that the brain is directly connected to the lymphatic system to some degree as well [2])

As far as I know, it's not proven that this contributes to the cognitive effects of chronic sleep deprivation. But it would make an awful lot of sense, and also help explain why sleep debt becomes more difficult to pay off the longer you let it sit around, and why the damage possibly even becomes permanent.

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24429-sleep-boosts-br...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system

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