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The myth of the eight-hour sleep

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#161

Post by jmsduran »

Interesting article. I usually sleep from 7pm - 10pm, wake up and do stuff (like read HN), then sleep again from 3am - 8am, with just enough time to get ready for work in the morning.

Not too long ago I suffered from minor insomnia and lucid dreaming. It was awful, to the point where I started to dread bedtime. For me, my diet at the time (fatty foods + sugar + caffeine + alcohol) had a lot to do with it, so once I committed to a healthy diet, my body settled back into a consistent sleep cycle. I guess it's really what works for you.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#162

Post by kellishaver »

mmwako wrote: post #2

Oh my God. This could change my life. One lifelong problem I've got is sleeping. I have great trouble falling asleep, and my sleeping patterns are very uncommon: some days I sleep 12 hours, some 5, but I'm usually very tired because of this. However, I used to think I had a "gift" of being really creative and having my best ideas just before sleep, just waking up, and during insomnia episodes. However, I've discovere…

This happens to me, too, but I'd gladly trade all the good ideas in the world for a decent amount of sleep!

Starting from about age 12, but definitely getting worse as I get older, sleep is something I just can't seem to get right, no matter how I approach it.

I've tried getting eight hours of sleep, and it doesn't work. I do pretty good on six hours, but only for a while. Over the course of a few weeks, six becomes four, which becomes three, which is then two, and suddenly it's 3 days later and I'm still awake.

When it gets to the point that I find myself getting less than four hours of sleep a night, the only way I can force my body to sleep more, despite being very physically tired, is with medication. Of course, most sleep aids can't be taken for long periods of time, so that only helps for a short while.

Sometimes I don't get tired until 4am, and other times it's all I can do to stay awake at 6pm, regardless of whether I got up at 6:30 in the morning, or noon.

I've tried enforcing a rigid schedule, meditation, exercise, various sleep aids, antidepressants (Pazil, Zoloft), just "going with it", and as of late, melatonin supplements at the recommendation of my doctor. They helped for a few weeks, but then that, too, stopped being effective.

The closest I get to a normal sleep schedule is that about half the time, I can go to sleep around 4am and get up at 10am - but that's not really a very practical solution and there are 3-4 days a week where it's just not at all possible from a logistics standpoint.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#163

Post by redridingnews »

GFischer wrote: post #102
kmfrk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Observation: In the Philippines, most parents force their kids to take a siesta. These are taken around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. However, some parents fail to wake their kids up after 3 hours of sleep. In this case, these kids are up till the wee hours of the night, making their sleeping habits more complicated than it should be.

Regarding the article, I guess one should just do what works for them (their body). Some people find it necessary to get 8 hours of sleep, and some are okay with six.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#164

Post by xfhai »

There is some problem with the title of the article. It could also mean that you dont need 8 hours of sleep. Other point is the need for sleep varies with age. Babies sleep for very long time like 14 hours; old people need only 5 to 6 hours of sleep. The 8 hour sleep is for youth between 25 and 40 i think. Otherwise, very original point, I have never thought sleeping in 4-hour chunks was natural.

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#165

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #147
chollida1 wrote: post #33

My brother in law is a "sleep scientist" at UPenn. His recommendation is that sleep cycles typically happen in 4 hour intervals so it's best to sleep 4 or 8 hours a night. Getting up int he middle of a sleep cycle is often as bad as getting less than 4 hours of sleep. And going to bed drunk is the worst for your sleep cycle.

I can believe this. One time I had 2 hours to sleep where I normally get 7 or 8 a night. I felt way worse the next day then if I hadn't slept at all. It was like my fight or flight response went haywire and I felt jittery and anxious all day.

[deleted]

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#166

Post by vacri »

ars wrote: post #160
vacri wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 'it' refers to which reference? ref 1 seems to be a series of excerpts of articles ref 2 is a literature review of historical acounts neither ref 1 nor 2 is a scientific study, and according to the dates come from around 2000 ref 3 wiki article referencing articles from 2005, ref 4 is science journalism and refers to a 1993 study remaining refs are all studies from 2006+ So, yes, I didn't know it existed. I've ne…

> and universally accepted I didn't mean among practitioners, I meant among research, i.e. that there isn't significant criticism, which to me makes it accepted. It's normal for there to be huge lag between research and practice, especially since research is frequently wrong. I remember reading about this many many years ago, and it was written as if it had been known for even longer before that. But I guess the rece…

I'll have to eat humble pie here. The kind of comment you made initially has always been suited to the criticisms I've raised, in my previous experience. It's unusual for there to be substance behind that style of claim - so I apologise for my abrasiveness.

Thank you for the links. It's a fascinating topic. Sleep medicine and the theory behind it is really, really interesting. Actually conducting sleep studies - attaching things, watching people sleep all night, then finishing off your shift smelling people's morning breath... is one of the most boring jobs in the world :)

Re: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

#168

Post by GFischer »

yariang wrote: post #154
GFischer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not to detract from your main point, but I don't think Siesta is very common in Mexico and most other Latin American countries. I was born in Cuba, lived there for five years and lived in Mexico for about three or four. I don't know of a single person who regularly slept after noon. In fact, I had an opportunity to live in Barcelona for three months and while a lot of businesses do close down from noon to three, I go…

Ok, I did work for Bolivia for a time, and our Bolivian office closed for siesta, as did our main customer (the La Paz city council).

Same for a more rural area of Mexico (Toluca surroundings), they also did siestas there.

Googling a bit, acording to Time magazine, siesta was struck down in Mexico in 1944, so it's more a myth than reality now I guess (probably subsists in some more rural areas).

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850501,00.h...

My impression was that siesta still persisted in some countries, but that it tends to disappear as they conform to western work hours, and, as the Time article states, it does involve four commutes instead of two, so it's not workable in urban areas (btw, people who siesta still work the same amount of hours, I'm not saying they work less).

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