Candidate number two for gene surgery (my current #1 being that color vision y'all talk about so much).
Oh I'll gladly trade color vision for this. Rainbows are overrated.
Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
81–90 of 131 posts
Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you exercise most days? Do you at least a similar wake up\sleep time for a month? And another obvious about drink enough water\food? All have a huge impact for me. I can go on much less sleep when I do hard exercise that day.
Re: Hard Exercise - Bizarre. I work a mostly sedentary silicon valley lifestyle, with the addition of 2-3 miles walking a day, and typically get 5-6 hours of sleep a night, going to bed around 2:00 - 3:00 AM and getting up around 9:00 AM. Recently, though, I started a linear progress novice strength training program (Squats, Dead Lift, Bench Press, Overhead Press) - three times a week for 40 minutes. My sleep pattern…
I've done Starting Strength.
Starting Strength is raw lifts involving the entire muscle toolchain until you can't do anymore. It works your body in a total, basic way that most Americans haven't ever done.
So you'll be sleeping alot as your body gets used to it. You'll notice incredible increases in everyday strength--as if the entire world, including you, lost a significant fraction of its mass over the course of a few months--and the desire for sleep will subside.
Of course, I still have my original sleep problem...
Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#83"A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhibitions. 'These people talk fast. They never stop. They're always on the up side of life,' says Dr. Buysse."
Reduction in sleep is a known symptom of abnormally elevated mood, whether hypomania (elevated mood without psychotic symptoms) or mania (elevated mood with psychotic symptoms). For most normal subjects, as has been demonstrated by studies of unusual sleep patterns in armed forces personnel, reduced hours of sleep or disrupted daily sleep cycles seriously degrade performance of many tasks involving judgment or multitasking--without the subject of the experiment being aware of the degraded performance.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+mania
Note that controlled reduction of sleep has been shown experimentally to elevate the mood of depressed persons. In other words, if a person has had a prolonged period of depressed mood, and begins reducing hours of sleep (especially if a light box turns on to help the person wake up on time in the morning), that can bring the person closer to normal mood.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sleep+depression
Following up on the interesting comment posted first by mechanical_fish, there surely is a range of variation of "natural" human need for sleep, with most people concentrated in a band of needing approximately seven to eight hours of sleep a night, and some few needing significantly less, and some few needing significantly more. But social pressure and environmental conditions for sleep induction (electric lights in the evening) in current society probably result in most people getting less sleep than what they need to perform at their best when awake and to maintain good health.
Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#84This 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.
Do you have a link to these studies? I looked around a bit and only found the ones claiming multitasking doesn't work.
Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luckily evolution is already doing the work for us.
How would that work? Non-sleeper's children are more likely to survive?
If not requiring a lot of sleep has an advantage in our society (which presumably it does) then all else being equal, a non-sleeper will produce more offspring. This is just evolution 101.
Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luckily evolution is already doing the work for us.
How would that work? Non-sleeper's children are more likely to survive?
Even a small differential in reproductive rates would lead to a rapid increase in the prevalence of the trait. Just look at the example of blue eyes -- 15000 years ago nobody had them and now nearly 7% if the world's population do.
Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#87I 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…
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Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#88Given that the trait is genetic and extremely advantageous, why doesn't a much larger portion of the population have it? Is there a significant downside?
Maybe no downside in these modern times but perhaps back when we still lived in caves and only had fire and a full moon now and then to light our ways I can imagine them short sleepers to be quite bored out of their skulls.
Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had a similar experience, since I hit my teenage years I rarely sleep more than just a few hours a night. At that time I would typically sleep 3-4 hours a night, and then really crash on the weekends. But as I got older I needed less and less weekend sleep. Whenever I try to go to bed earlier or sleep in to get close to 8 hours (even for extended periods of time) I find that I'm just as tired, if not more so tha…
Absolutely, if I can go "lights out" for 30 minutes during the day (between 1:00pm and 2:00pm works best for me) I can eliminate the need for the "catch-up" sleep.
I've tried this but I am unable to fall asleep unless I'm extremely tired (and I do mean very tired, one night without sleep is not enough). How do you fall asleep within half an hour?
Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done
#90Not 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…
When I stayed in a zen monastery a while back, I averaged 6 hours of sleep a night, and always felt refreshed, but out in the regular world, even with daily meditation, I need about 8 hours of sleep. So I think that the environment and meditation techniques must play a part.