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The myth of the eight-hour sleep

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Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#101

Post by subhobroto »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #71
adavies42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm basically immune to caffeine, afaict. i frequently come home late, drink a diet coke or whatever, and head straight to bed. i've gone back and forth between drinking a six pack of diet mountain dew a day and nothing and never noticed a difference. i can slam two bottles of Bawls (160mg) or eat 3 Fooshes ( http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/candy/6e27 , >300mg total) and still take (and want) a nap. if i gave mysel…

I doubt you're immune, just addicted. You say you can go a day without caffeine. I challenge you to go 3 days with absolutely no caffeine. Absolutely nothing, so no decaf, no chocolate. I bet it makes you feel horrible. If so, you're addicted, like the vast majority.

Regardless of the nature of addiction in his specific case, I can assure you there are people who don't get the rush from coffee (even without prior exposure, that can possibly increase your level of tolerance).

Me for example, I feel very sleepy after drinking coffee. This was against my expectation and I blogged about it the second time it happened to me: http://0x40.blogspot.com/2007/08/wheres-that-forward-biased-...

I was born in India and my family does not drink coffee, hence I was never exposed to it during my childhood, except now and then, at parties.

It was only at work that I tried it out regularly and because of the way it affected me, I had to give it up.

I even joke that a few cups of coffee would probably help me go to sleep (but I have never tried it out in practice yet)

It has been 4 years since I blogged about it and I would probably have drunk less than 5 cups since then, with none in the last year, so addiction is out of the question.

Sugar works very well to wake me up, but I have to look out for and handle the subsequent crash later.

On an (un)related note, I also have tremendous tolerance to alcohol. I found this out a decade ago when I could legally drink and would experiment with various spirits and liqueur. Since budget was limited, each of us in a group has a limited number of shots, and I used to feel awkward when my friends used to talk about "that dizzy feeling" and I did not experience any. It was only later that I found out what was going on.

This also means my options to reach the "state of bliss" is limited, and the cheapest way for me to reach that state is meditation.

I am not sure if both symptoms are related, but someone who follows this more closely can perhaps comment.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#102

Post by GFischer »

kmfrk wrote: post #51
hessenwolf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, don't Spanish people and sailors sleep in segmented blocks? Not exactly newsworthy, then.

Link to relevant article for people who are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siesta .

Siesta (midday nap) is very common in Bolivia, Mexico and other Latin American countries, but I'd hesitate to call it segmented sleep.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#103

Post by technel »

chollida1 wrote: post #84
kahawe wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4 hour intervals What about those 90 minute cycles that are also commonly cited in popular sleep-advice? Those wouldn't work into a 4hour schedule.

Honestly i don't know what specifically you are referring to. Are you referring to those sleep cycles where you have 4 90 minute naps a day instead of sleeping once at night? I'm not the subject matter expert, so I don't want to speak authoritatively:)

He's talking about REM cycles, which last 90 minutes. Generally people recommend that you sleep for an amount of time that is a multiple of 90 minutes so that you do not disrupt one of these cycles.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#104

Post by kahawe »

chollida1 wrote: post #84
kahawe wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4 hour intervals What about those 90 minute cycles that are also commonly cited in popular sleep-advice? Those wouldn't work into a 4hour schedule.

Honestly i don't know what specifically you are referring to. Are you referring to those sleep cycles where you have 4 90 minute naps a day instead of sleeping once at night? I'm not the subject matter expert, so I don't want to speak authoritatively:)

I was talking about whatever contemporarily popular science apps and websites like http://sleepyti.me/ are buying into.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#105

Post by drivebyacct2 »

ramLlama wrote: post #98
bryanlarsen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt you're immune, just addicted. You say you can go a day without caffeine. I challenge you to go 3 days with absolutely no caffeine. Absolutely nothing, so no decaf, no chocolate. I bet it makes you feel horrible. If so, you're addicted, like the vast majority.

Not necessarily. When I was in high school, I drank between 4 to 6 cups of coffee a day. It never affected me. The reason for this is twofold: It's just part of the culture in my family in India, and I really liked the taste. Fast forward a couple years and I am in college. I hate, absolutely detest the taste of any american coffee. I don't know what's missing, but I only enjoy coffee in India. I went from 4-6 cups a…

Sorry, but enjoying the taste of coffee doesn't disable the chemical addiction and dependency inherent to its chemistry.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#106

Post by pessimizer »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #71
adavies42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm basically immune to caffeine, afaict. i frequently come home late, drink a diet coke or whatever, and head straight to bed. i've gone back and forth between drinking a six pack of diet mountain dew a day and nothing and never noticed a difference. i can slam two bottles of Bawls (160mg) or eat 3 Fooshes ( http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/candy/6e27 , >300mg total) and still take (and want) a nap. if i gave mysel…

I doubt you're immune, just addicted. You say you can go a day without caffeine. I challenge you to go 3 days with absolutely no caffeine. Absolutely nothing, so no decaf, no chocolate. I bet it makes you feel horrible. If so, you're addicted, like the vast majority.

I'm also the kind of person who can drink coffee at night, or can have a couple of cups of coffee after dinner, and not notice any effect on my sleeping. I'm definitely not addicted, because I rarely drink coffee on weekends - so the last three day period I went without coffee was this past weekend.

I usually go to bed between 9:30 and 11:00, and I drink my coffee black if that makes a difference. Maybe it's all the sugar that's keeping people up (or it could be that different people have significantly variant biochemistries; who knew?)

edit: I knew I remembered seeing this...

http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/02/7562142-coffee...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666311...

Abstract: "We explored whether caffeine, and expectation of having consumed caffeine, affects attention, reward responsivity and mood using double-blinded methodology. 88 participants were randomly allocated to ‘drink-type’ (caffeinated/decaffeinated coffee) and ‘expectancy’ (told caffeinated/told decaffeinated coffee) manipulations. Both caffeine and expectation of having consumed caffeine improved attention and psychomotor speed. Expectation enhanced self-reported vigour and reward responsivity. Self-reported depression increased at post-drink for all participants, but less in those receiving or expecting caffeine. These results suggest caffeine expectation can affect mood and performance but do not support a synergistic effect."

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#107

Post by chollida1 »

kahawe wrote: post #104
chollida1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly i don't know what specifically you are referring to. Are you referring to those sleep cycles where you have 4 90 minute naps a day instead of sleeping once at night? I'm not the subject matter expert, so I don't want to speak authoritatively:)

I was talking about whatever contemporarily popular science apps and websites like http://sleepyti.me/ are buying into.

Ah, in that case I don't know, but I will ask.

Their latest research indicates that a full sleep cycle lasts approximately 4 hours, which does fly in the face of the older sleep data.

it's entirely possible that their hypothesis will turn out to be incorrect.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#108

Post by shrub »

onemoreact wrote: post #22
mmwako wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks Charlie! How did you find out that you were hyper-sensitive? In my case, I don't drink colas, but I love that hot coffee in the morning...

Ideally, you should keep a sleep journal for 30 days before you try to change anything about your sleep habits. As to the actual experiment don't drink any tea/coffee/colas for 30 days and see how it effects your sleep patterns. PS: And I do mean zero for the full 30 days if you have any caffeine you have to start over.

This could be a solution for me.

Drinking tea is part of the culture of my family, so I started drinking it at a very young age (as soon as I could hold a cup?) with 3/4 milk and 1/4 tea. As I got older, the amount of tea increased until there was no milk left. These days, whoever I visit, it seems I can always count on being offered a cup of tea.

When I started having all sorts of issues sleeping at a young age, it just didn't occur to me or anyone that it could be the copious amounts of tea. Doctors ran tests on my blood numerous times and didn't find anything. They asked me all sorts of questions (even if I was pregnant at the tender age of 15, which shocked young innocent me), but caffeine never came up. Strangely, sending me to bed earlier resulted in tossing and turning even longer into the wee hours of the morning. Sleeping pills just resulted in feeling strangely dazed, but still not sleeping.

These days I have stopped drinking tea/caffeine after a certain hour in hopes of getting more sleep, but I still drink a cup of coffee in the morning and I still have troubles getting to sleep (takes a couple of hours no matter hour exhausted I feel). Maybe it's time to cut out the caffeine completely.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#109

Post by terhechte »

downx3 wrote: post #25
roqetman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar here, but I've found that as long as I don't drink caffeine after 3pm, I sleep well. Any later than that and I wake at 3am or so. Made such a difference when I discovered this... I lost a serious amount of grumpiness.

I must be seriously broken. I can even enjoy a cup of coffee at the bedside and still sleep. Not that I do that often. Falling asleep for me is easy. I pretty much always wake up about four hours later. Then sometimes I remain wide awake for another few hours. After which I'm ready for sleep again. The second bout is pretty glorious. This does mean however, that I need to pretty much put 11 hours aside each night, if…

It may be the coffee that's helping you to sleep. Some dutch (based on the region) have the habit of drinking a good cup of coffee in the evening right before going to bed. I tried this a couple of times. Around 5-10 minutes after the coffee I felt incredibly tired and had a really fantastic sleep. It's as if the coffee helped me fall into deeper sleep. However, when I'd wait too long after having the cup of coffee, it'd take me hours until I could finally fall asleep.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#110

Post by ramLlama »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #105
ramLlama wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. When I was in high school, I drank between 4 to 6 cups of coffee a day. It never affected me. The reason for this is twofold: It's just part of the culture in my family in India, and I really liked the taste. Fast forward a couple years and I am in college. I hate, absolutely detest the taste of any american coffee. I don't know what's missing, but I only enjoy coffee in India. I went from 4-6 cups a…

Sorry, but enjoying the taste of coffee doesn't disable the chemical addiction and dependency inherent to its chemistry.

Ah, that was an unfortunate ordering of sentences. I was just giving an explanation for my consumption rate, not a reason for why I wasn't affected. I should have proofread that. I'm sorry.
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