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Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

nature.com

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Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#41

Post by sparsely »

esafak wrote: post #25

So you can concentrate your energy on maintenance tasks, like memory consolidation and physical restoration, during the down time during which it is cold and dark -- when you can't effectively hunt and stay warm. If you did not do that, you would have to constantly allocate some energy towards these tasks, at the expense of more urgent ones. And the higher up you are in the food chain, the less risky it is to rest.

Which maintenance tasks, why does it require us to be unconscious, why can't we apply constant energy towards them? Lots of interesting questions to answer

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#42

Post by [deleted] »

sparsely wrote: post #41
esafak wrote: post #25

So you can concentrate your energy on maintenance tasks, like memory consolidation and physical restoration, during the down time during which it is cold and dark -- when you can't effectively hunt and stay warm. If you did not do that, you would have to constantly allocate some energy towards these tasks, at the expense of more urgent ones. And the higher up you are in the food chain, the less risky it is to rest.

Which maintenance tasks, why does it require us to be unconscious, why can't we apply constant energy towards them? Lots of interesting questions to answer

[deleted]

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#43

Post by devinprater »

mikeweiss wrote: post #13
trollbridge wrote: post #5

Some people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.

Yes, I'm one of the people that needs a solid 7-8 of sleep or else I easily become agitated, and anxiety and OCD kick in quickly ... Would love for this to not be the case, if there was a way for me to need less sleep I would be very interested

Really? I thought I was the only one. Everyone around me seem to do fine with a good 3-5 hours of sleep. Before I lost weight, even if I had a good 7 hours of sleep, I'd still fall asleep at work. Now, even if I do get sleepy, a little moving around fixes things.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#44

Post by Damogran6 »

trollbridge wrote: post #5

Some people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.

I sleep 5-6 hours a night. I also seem to be bi-phasic...on the weekends if I wake up after 5 hours, hang around for an hour and successfully go back to sleep, the second cycle is the sleep of the dead. Like, I don't move. Wake up with limbs fallen asleep, a deep divot in the memory foam...and a lot more rested.

(as an aside: have CPAP, apnea is not a factor.)

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#45

Post by hersko »

devinprater wrote: post #43
mikeweiss wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm one of the people that needs a solid 7-8 of sleep or else I easily become agitated, and anxiety and OCD kick in quickly ... Would love for this to not be the case, if there was a way for me to need less sleep I would be very interested

Really? I thought I was the only one. Everyone around me seem to do fine with a good 3-5 hours of sleep. Before I lost weight, even if I had a good 7 hours of sleep, I'd still fall asleep at work. Now, even if I do get sleepy, a little moving around fixes things.

3-5 hours a night??

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#46

Post by [deleted] »

EncomLab wrote: post #20

The generations in my family are full of people who had dementia/Alzheimer's/auto-immune disorders. They all had anxiety, and they all had sleep disorders - I'm certain there is a connection among it all. I joined a Stanford study and had a spinal tap sample submitted for testing - in theory I am "unlikely" to develop anything for the next 20 years - but that only gets me to my late 60's :(

[deleted]

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#47

Post by netrap »

john61 wrote: post #15

I have just read this book and found it very interesting and helpful: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-...

I've seen this book talked about a lot. However, I also have heard that there is some big holes in the research. Take a look online.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#48

Post by throwaway7893 »

swatcoder wrote: post #29
api wrote: post #17

Whatever sleep does, it's something nature has had a tough time optimizing out despite the extreme vulnerability it creates and the sacrifice of a little under half an organism's waking time. That should tell us it's something incredibly important that's hard to do any other way. Edit: on the other hand... if Earth had two suns and rarely had periods of darkness, you wonder if maybe there would have been more evoluti…

Alternately, sleep is the optimal ultra-high-efficiency survival state and wakefulness only exists to give creatures enough time to get their affairs in order so that they can safely return to dormancy. It's easy to think of sleep as a compromise to be defeated because we're culturally preoccupied with the achievements and pleasures of wakefulness, but that's really just us claiming personal preference for one narrow…

I think one of our goals is to reduce entropy in the Universe, and being awake lets us do 100x more of that than if we were in low power mode

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#49

Post by Spellman »

trollbridge wrote: post #5

Some people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.

There are a very small minority that seem to have a genetic component requiring less sleep for them (4-6hr).

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/03/410051/scientists-discover...

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#50

Post by bkandel »

jader201 wrote: post #26
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife needs 8-9 hours, whereas I can get by just fine with 5-6. She is a very light sleeper who will wake up 3-4 times every night; I can sleep through almost any noise, and never get up in the middle of the night. My son takes after me -- he seems to need significantly less sleep than other kids his age, but he's an extraordinarily deep sleeper. Anecdotal, but I think that sleep depth might have something to do wi…

I used to get by fine with 5-6 hours, too, until I started getting 7-8 and realized how much better I feel.

I think this is pretty common! More sleep makes everything better -- attention, immune system (getting colds less often), mood, etc.
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