41–50 of 131 posts
I think it's obvious what we must do next. According to every science fiction film or book I've ever read, we must capture them, confine them and study them in an attempt to learn their secrets and duplicate it in everyone else.
Or, like every religious book, we could round them up and stone them to death. I could go with either option, so lead the way!
It was peculiar to note that people who are short-sleepers also share a slight manic trait in their personality. While the article makes short-sleep cycles out to look like all sunshine and roses it is not all it is cracked up to be. I get between 2 and 4 hours sleep a night and on a good night I get 6. I have to monitor the sleep I am getting because if I allow myself to fall into a cycle of 2 hours for an extended time I start to have problems with my heart and abnormal rhythms. If the > 4 hours cycle goes on for more than a week I have to start taking medicine to sleep to ensure that my body is receiving an adequate amount of sleep. I see no negative effects if I get 4-6 a night, but it is probably safe to assume that short-sleep cycles rides the line between good and bad health. I never considered myself a short sleeper I just figured I have insomnia but never worried too much about it because I feel no different if I get 4 or 8 hours of sleep a night (if I can get 8) and the fact that my father and grandfather shares the trait and are healthy (grandfather is almost 90) . On the plus side, I experience more life and get more done which are really the only benefits to sleeping less.
Not saying that I'm one of the sleepless elite, but I seem to function best on 6 hours of sleep a day. Whenever I try to sleep more I just feel tired all day and when I sleep less ... well that depends on how much less. For optimum energivity I find an hour of sleep is best, just enough to reset your cycle. But you can't do this more than once at a time, the next day the whole 6 hours are needed. Don't have any idea…
Oh and anyone who doesn't want to sleep as much as they should, meditation is a great way of doing it. I managed to shave 2 hours off of my daily sleep need with 10 minutes of meditation ... so essentially I averaged 4 hours a day, for something like 5 years before I got out of the meditating habit for varying reasons. OK, I'll match your anecdote with one of my own. I meditate 40 minutes per day, and it hasn't shave…
The end effect is that I smashed a sleep cycle into a meditating session and essentially got polyphasic sleep.
Not saying that I'm one of the sleepless elite, but I seem to function best on 6 hours of sleep a day. Whenever I try to sleep more I just feel tired all day and when I sleep less ... well that depends on how much less. For optimum energivity I find an hour of sleep is best, just enough to reset your cycle. But you can't do this more than once at a time, the next day the whole 6 hours are needed. Don't have any idea…
Please, enlighten us, which reasons caused you to stop meditating?
I'm glad that I finally have something (albeit thin) to point people to when they feel the need to lecture me about my sleeping habits. As long as I can remember I've been happy with a mix of 4 and 6 hour sleeping sessions, two or three days of 4 followed by one night of more sleep (typically 6 hours) and then back to 4 hours again. Under the recommendation of my peers and physicians I have attempted to do 8 hour nig…
The only thing that I've found does make a difference is a short nap in the middle of the day, I find 1/2 hour in the day can easily make up for several hours at night. But that's where the cultural problem is, I've had office jobs where I could get away with taking a nap, but it would still be frowned upon, which is always a bit sad since it make it clear that many offices cultures would prefer the illusion of busy-ness over actual increased production.
I emailed the researcher, whose address was at the end of the article with the appropriate gene data (BHLHE41 on Chromosome 12) to see if my DNA is a match. The article said its a mutation, but maybe those with the mutation exhibit a certain codon pair. Its an amazing time when you can read an article about such a thing, and then cross check your DNA in a matter of seconds. Articles will have to start posting the raw…
This reminds me of the studies not too long about how some very small percentage of the population actually CAN multitask well. Then a very large percentage of the population used that as "evidence" to justify their existing habits. I see it here already.
I emailed the researcher, whose address was at the end of the article with the appropriate gene data (BHLHE41 on Chromosome 12) to see if my DNA is a match. The article said its a mutation, but maybe those with the mutation exhibit a certain codon pair. Its an amazing time when you can read an article about such a thing, and then cross check your DNA in a matter of seconds. Articles will have to start posting the raw…
Candidate number two for gene surgery (my current #1 being that color vision y'all talk about so much).