Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist • Hacker News Board

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#21

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

cowmoo728 wrote: post #9

mamurphy wrote: post #3

Great article. Sleep is important. I liked that the article went out of its way to dispel several of the "but four hours is fine" myths. Two of my favorites: >some people are short sleepers: You can do a test to find out if you have genetic makeup that makes you a short sleeper. That’s rare, though, so by and large, people are not getting enough sleep. Blunt and effective. The outliers who really do fine with just a…

I used to habitually play bullet and blitz chess online, which confirmed the necessity of sleep for me. After a 6 hour night of sleep I noticed my rating would drop significantly the next day, and after several low sleep nights in a row it would take days to recover completely. A graph of my bullet rating over time clearly showed the periods of low sleep. Most people don't have a measurement that objective. After I s…

> I used to habitually play bullet and blitz chess online, which confirmed the necessity of sleep for me

60-minute games made the same apparent to me. Instantaneous drops and rises, solely resulting from sleep (or the lack thereof).

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#22

Post by syassami » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 4:51 AM UTC

hoodwink wrote: post #19

Is there some way I can test if I have this short sleeper gene? I have a hard time sleeping more than 5 to 6 hours and these articles all make me think I’m going to die early, lose memories, and every other affliction possible.

check 23andme

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#23

Post by telesilla » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

If there is one thing in this world I'd like to see, it's the worker's right for an afternoon nap: I really would become highly anxious if deprived long-term of my siesta.

I've been lucky in most of my environments to find somewhere to close my eyes and sleep for 10-15 minutes - I just need somewhere to lie down or recline and something to block the light: if I'm tired enough sound doesn't bother me. Some people tell me they just don't fall asleep quickly enough and don't bother to take any time to rest, so it's good to see the scientist here mention quiet-time and meditation as options.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#24

Post by lerie82 » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:04 AM UTC

I know tons of people who rely on 5 hours or less of sleep and are fine. Life is too short to spend a third of it asleep.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#25

Post by Izkata » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:04 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #10

Small quibble: the headline should be "in bed for more than eight hours" The expert says 8.5 hours in bed (trying to sleep) to sleep 8, since we don't sleep the whole time. So, if you have an accurate sleep tracker, "8" is still the number.

Was ready to say the same.

Over 8 hours of sleep starts reaching into the "hell no" territory for me, typically resulting in a headache all day. But I'm usually in bed before then, so it does work out much closer to what I actually go for.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#26

Post by jfim » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:05 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #18

anxiousguy wrote: post #8

I believe I'm one of the "short sleepers" they mention in the article. I've bought wirstband mostly to track my sleep patterns. Even though article says that devices like fitbit are not accurate enough in tracking different phases of sleep, my goal was largley to see how much time do I spend sleeping. In the last four months, I average out at 6,1hrs. 90% of the time I will wake up before the alarm and will sleep the…

You mention you bought a wristband. Tracking my sleep is one of those things I want to start doing. Do you have any recommendations? I don't particularly want to remember to put it on every night. I know Nokia launched a mattress pad recently ( https://health.nokia.com/gr/en/sleep ) but I'm concerned about how reliable this is if I don't sleep exactly on top of it. (Plus I don't know how this could actually tell anyt…

Not the parent, but I've been using the Oura ring (https://ouraring.com/) for almost a year and it works very well for sleep tracking. It's a sleep tracker above all, and has rather limited exercise tracking. It tracks resting heart rate, sleep phases, body temperature, and breathing. There's also an API to download data from their cloud service, although I haven't tried it.

I haven't yet received the newer model, but it seems to solve the issue of limited battery life in the previous model and the ring is also significantly smaller.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#27

Post by f_allwein » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

telesilla wrote: post #23

If there is one thing in this world I'd like to see, it's the worker's right for an afternoon nap: I really would become highly anxious if deprived long-term of my siesta. I've been lucky in most of my environments to find somewhere to close my eyes and sleep for 10-15 minutes - I just need somewhere to lie down or recline and something to block the light: if I'm tired enough sound doesn't bother me. Some people tell…

Quite common in China, actually.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#28

Post by f_allwein » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:15 AM UTC

> Bose just released an earbud that you can sleep with, for example

Wait, what? These are 249.95$. Why not just use simple earplugs? In Germany, we have Ohropax, made from wax, which sell for less than 3€ for a set of 12: http://www.ohropax.de/en.html

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#29

Post by tudorconstantin » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:20 AM UTC

cowmoo728 wrote: post #9

mamurphy wrote: post #3

Great article. Sleep is important. I liked that the article went out of its way to dispel several of the "but four hours is fine" myths. Two of my favorites: >some people are short sleepers: You can do a test to find out if you have genetic makeup that makes you a short sleeper. That’s rare, though, so by and large, people are not getting enough sleep. Blunt and effective. The outliers who really do fine with just a…

I used to habitually play bullet and blitz chess online, which confirmed the necessity of sleep for me. After a 6 hour night of sleep I noticed my rating would drop significantly the next day, and after several low sleep nights in a row it would take days to recover completely. A graph of my bullet rating over time clearly showed the periods of low sleep. Most people don't have a measurement that objective. After I s…

I use online chess tactics problems to assess how good my brain is that day. I estimate there's a 300+ ELO variance, perhaps even more, in my performance between when I'm tired and when I'm rested.

300 ELO points between 2 players means that the higher rates one wins about 9 out of 10 games against the lower rates one. A huge difference in performance.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#30

Post by Teeer » Sun, Jun 17, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

f_allwein wrote: post #28

> Bose just released an earbud that you can sleep with, for example Wait, what? These are 249.95$. Why not just use simple earplugs? In Germany, we have Ohropax, made from wax, which sell for less than 3€ for a set of 12: http://www.ohropax.de/en.html

We have cheap earplugs too. These are earbuds, as in they play music through them