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Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

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Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#121

Post by xiaoma »

stoney wrote: post #110
xiaoma wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do people with blue eyes reproduce more? I've not heard that before. I thought the ratio of blue to not blue eyes was due to the whole dominant/recessive gene thing (do I mean gene, or maybe allele? a long time since I learned this stuff at school).

Of course the trait was advantageous either in terms of natural selection, or more likely sexual selection. All the blue eyed people on earth can be traced back to a single ancestor living in the black sea region about 10,000 years ago. It is a recessive trait, but allele frequencies don't magically increase just because a trait is recessive. Without selection pressure, the ratio of blue eyed people would not have kept increasing after the emergence of the mutation.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-one-ancestor-h...

Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#122

Post by rsaarelm »

Swizec wrote: post #44
michael_dorfman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is likely due to different meditation techniques, mine is particular in that it is essentially lucid dreaming. When I actively practiced it took me 30 seconds to go into REM stage and stay in there for as much time as I felt like it. The end effect is that I smashed a sleep cycle into a meditating session and essentially got polyphasic sleep.

Is there a particular technique you can describe that brings about that effect?

Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#123

Post by liedra »

jerf wrote: post #98
mechanical_fish wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve met some of these people who insisted they didn’t need much sleep before and now I seem like an idiot for telling them that it they would probably feel better if they got more. Don't. If you insist on only giving advice that applies to 100% of the world you'll never say anything useful at all. I'm sure the studies do encounter these people. But studies use statistics. These people are on the far edge of the bell…

I suspect the problem with studying "long sleepers" is that the number of people who need, say, 12 hours of sleep "legitimately" is dominated by the number of people who need 12 hours of sleep due to a health issue, making them hard to identify and study. I've done the 12+ hours of sleep thing when I was a teenager, and only much later did I learn the health issue it was trying to tell me about.

I'd say you're probably right. I usually only need 8 hrs sleep, but when I'm sick, for example, I often find myself easily sleeping for 12+ hours (like this morning, oops! :).

Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#124

Post by Evgeny »

bound008 wrote: post #20

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…

BHLHE41 on Chromosome 12

Where did you get the gene number from? I don't see it mentioned in the article.

Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#126

Post by CamperBob »

jules wrote: post #89
jasongullickson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You may not actually need to sleep. I find that just lying down for 30-60 minutes in a dark, quiet room provides ~80% of the 'recovery' value of a real nap.

Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#127

Post by beagle3 »

ghshephard wrote: post #71
de90 wrote: post #65

Earlier 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…

Try radically changing your food intake (patterns and/or content). E.g., http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/12/interview-with... or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting ; When varying mine, I switch from periods of being a night owl to almost being a morning person, and from needing 8 hours to 6 hours (and also at different times - e.g. sometimes it's 2-9 am, sometimes it's 11pm to 6am)

Experimenting with yourself is cheap, interesting and rewarding. Not always easy, but definitely worth trying.

Also, read Seth Roberts at http://sethroberts.net/self-experiment/ - he (and his reader) report about a lot of experiments regarding sleep and mood; among those I remember: - eating lots of animal fat (bacon and/or butter) improves sleep. Standing on one leg for extended periods of time improves sleep (probably the easiest way to fatigue yourself into sleeping).

Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#128

Post by GrangalanJr »

David wrote: post #69
GrangalanJr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used total sleep deprivation to kick myself out of persistent low mood. So far it has worked every time. Not a method to use too often, of course.

Please tell us more! I'm very curious about this, because I know that if I don't have something regularly scheduled for morning or early afternoon I tend to sink into depression, and now I'm wondering if I could perhaps be getting too much sleep. I had thought it was either a) getting sleep at the wrong times (I'll tend to stay awake later each night) and thus missing out on sunlight, or b) that regularity itself pre…

I don't ordinarily sleep a lot, so I doubt that I could be getting too much sleep on a regular basis. And my mood doesn't ordinarily seem to be affected by how much I sleep or when I go to sleep.

The best way I can describe the effect is that for me it's like hitting a "reset" button in my brain. At first there's the tiredness and irritability that always go with not sleeping, but eventually I get a "second wind" and I feel normal, calm, and content. This generally lasts the whole rest of the day, until I fall asleep again.

The sleep deprivation treatment for depression used by some doctors in the '70s involved either total deprivation or waking the patients up around midnight, so that they slept only a few hours. I think I read that both worked equally well, but I have only tried the former. And as far as I know, nobody has figured out why it works for so many people.

Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#129

Post by michaelcampbell »

jergason wrote: post #84
michaelcampbell wrote: post #39

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.

Do you have a link to these studies? I looked around a bit and only found the ones claiming multitasking doesn't work.

That's what I was referring to. Did I misunderstand you?

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-resear...

Re: Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done

#130

Post by gamblndano »

Check out my new app coming to the App Store. It's called MultiSnooze. It's the ultimate alarm clock app. It allows you to press the snooze button multiple times as soon as you determine that you are going to be pressing it more than once anyway. Now you don't have to keep waking up. Roll over and sleep peacefully with MultiSnooze. multisnooze.com for details. Thanks for looking.
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