Poll: Sleep Debt - Possible Health Risk - Do you get enough?
- Thread starter LaughingJester
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There are those who would say that sleep is for the weak. I don't know, but I do believe that depriving yourself of it MAKES you weak, so there you go. Here's the thing. If I naturally awaken from slumber - unaided - after a shorter-than-recommended ammount of time, that's not unhealthy. My body said DING! on its own.
"WHY DON'T YOU GET SOME SLEEP!?"
"i slept last july!"
Gotta love "outbreak". Anyway as i write this, i am in fact not sleeping at 3:08 am gmt, and running out of options, hell, i'm almost thinking of screwing sleep altogether, and playing rogue leader till i have to go to college in the morning. Me and insomnia have an on off relationship, but i usualy claw back enough sleep to think straight when i get breaks from the usual stressful issues that stop me sleeping.
"i slept last july!"
Gotta love "outbreak". Anyway as i write this, i am in fact not sleeping at 3:08 am gmt, and running out of options, hell, i'm almost thinking of screwing sleep altogether, and playing rogue leader till i have to go to college in the morning. Me and insomnia have an on off relationship, but i usualy claw back enough sleep to think straight when i get breaks from the usual stressful issues that stop me sleeping.
My mum and dad used to argue alot through the night so I suppose it might be somthing to do with that I dunno.LaughingJester said:
I generally sleep about 6-7 hours a night on a good night, about 5 if a deadline is looming. I sleep for about 10-11 hours on the weekend though. So, I'm not doing too bad at the moment, but I could stand to improve it a lot.
I sleep the bare minimum of 6 allocated by the army to ready my body for future beat downs, but I indulge myself on the weekends with 8 or 9 hours worh of sleep.
Every time I hear someone say that we need 7-8 hours of sleep I laugh my ass off. The instant you graduate from high school, that idea goes out the window. Right now I get about 4 hours of sleep a night(if I'm lucky). I'm under so much stress from school and everything else that I either can't sleep, or have to stay up to study.
When I had severe anaemia I would sleep... all the time. 14 hours a night during the weekends (would've slept more but someone would always wake me up). During school days I would sleep at school and when I came home I napped for about 3 hours, eat something and go back to bed and wake up in the morning for school.
After I got hospitalised for anaemia my sleeping pattern became more normal, I think. Now I sleep about 9 hours a night? Not sure.
After I got hospitalised for anaemia my sleeping pattern became more normal, I think. Now I sleep about 9 hours a night? Not sure.
I work mostly in the evenings and at night so I sometimes don't sleep for like 2 or 3 days at a time when I need to do a festival or something of that nature only to crash down and sleep like a full day.
There's a lot of data to support sleep debt theories, but there's also lots of data that throws these theories out the window.
In high school, I would go to bed at 2-4AM and wake up at 6:30-7:30AM without fail. No alarm clock needed, and I was never late for school. I never felt bad about it, never had trouble focussing, got straight As and even had time to write two novels in the time that I spent not studying (and I didn't study or revise, so that was just about all the time). One thing I did notice though, if I stayed up for at least 30 hours I would stop having useless thoughts (mental state akin to meditation) and my mathematical abilities became extremely refined (e.g. Being able to multiply or divide huge numbers or solve complex equations in an instant, literally). The longest I ever stayed up was around 85 hours, however this trait remained consistent the entire time.
In college (studying the IB), I would go to bed at 12-1AM and wake up at 6:30AM on the dot, every day. I actually used an alarm during this time because I had to travel a long way each day and would get an extra 2 hours of sleep on the bus each way (at least when I didn't get disturbed by the 3 all-girl school groups of kids that piled in every morning.... Damn noisy creatures). Arguably this was a much more healthy sleeping pattern, but I didn't notice any difference to only getting 3 hours of sleep. I still did just as well in college.
University was much easier and I could sleep in every day, so no matter when I went to bed, I would get up at 9-10AM. These days I go to bed at 12ish, and wake up any time between 7:30 and 11AM, depending on how my body feels. I still sleep on busses and trains, so maybe I'm getting too much sleep these days. Either way, there is no impact on my mentality or physiology. The only difference is that if I get less than 4 hours of sleep, I get snappy for 40 minutes after waking up. Otherwise my mind is as sharp as ever, and my immune system better than most (before entering high school, I would always have a cold or flu or something, but afterwards I almost never got sick unless it was something major).
Sleep probably depends on the person, so guidelines are useless. Just sleep as much or as little as your body feels it needs.
In high school, I would go to bed at 2-4AM and wake up at 6:30-7:30AM without fail. No alarm clock needed, and I was never late for school. I never felt bad about it, never had trouble focussing, got straight As and even had time to write two novels in the time that I spent not studying (and I didn't study or revise, so that was just about all the time). One thing I did notice though, if I stayed up for at least 30 hours I would stop having useless thoughts (mental state akin to meditation) and my mathematical abilities became extremely refined (e.g. Being able to multiply or divide huge numbers or solve complex equations in an instant, literally). The longest I ever stayed up was around 85 hours, however this trait remained consistent the entire time.
In college (studying the IB), I would go to bed at 12-1AM and wake up at 6:30AM on the dot, every day. I actually used an alarm during this time because I had to travel a long way each day and would get an extra 2 hours of sleep on the bus each way (at least when I didn't get disturbed by the 3 all-girl school groups of kids that piled in every morning.... Damn noisy creatures). Arguably this was a much more healthy sleeping pattern, but I didn't notice any difference to only getting 3 hours of sleep. I still did just as well in college.
University was much easier and I could sleep in every day, so no matter when I went to bed, I would get up at 9-10AM. These days I go to bed at 12ish, and wake up any time between 7:30 and 11AM, depending on how my body feels. I still sleep on busses and trains, so maybe I'm getting too much sleep these days. Either way, there is no impact on my mentality or physiology. The only difference is that if I get less than 4 hours of sleep, I get snappy for 40 minutes after waking up. Otherwise my mind is as sharp as ever, and my immune system better than most (before entering high school, I would always have a cold or flu or something, but afterwards I almost never got sick unless it was something major).
Sleep probably depends on the person, so guidelines are useless. Just sleep as much or as little as your body feels it needs.
Either sleeping too much has the same effect, or I would be twice as worse off if I slept less. I often sleep for 10 or more hours, but I sleep at weird and ever changing times. (Sometimes I wake up at 10am, sometimes I go to bed at 10am)
I work 8 to 6. And real physical work, pot this wishy washy sitting behind a desk and spending two out of ten hours on my feet. Out of ten, I averagely spend about eight or so hours on my feet, constantly lifting stuff. I usually go to bed around 10ish, and actually fall asleep around 11 30. Wake up next morning at 6 30. I can lie in bed for hours on weekend, but not actually sleep. Suffer from all above symptoms. Think I need a better job.
My textbook on biological psychology (Biopsychology by John Pinel) prefers another theory. It states that this sleep debt thing is not true and there are no cognitive deficits at all. Instead it claims that it's not the amount of sleep you get itself, but the amount of sleep you are used to. Basically, if you wake up and go to bed at the same time every day, you could very well sleep four hours. And that's not even counting alternative sleep cycles (bi- or polyphasic). So regularity is much more important than the quantity.
Though apparently people who sleep 7 hours per day live the longest. Of course, while there is a correlation, the cause is not clear as far as I know.
Personally, I used to sleep 6 hours in school and 9 whenever I could get away with it. I tried polyphasic sleep for some months, but I couldn't really get into the rythm. It was also very inconvenient. Currently I managed to decrease my need for sleep from 9 to 7-8 hours. So my anecdotal (read: useless) evidence supports the theory favored by my textbook.
Though apparently people who sleep 7 hours per day live the longest. Of course, while there is a correlation, the cause is not clear as far as I know.
Personally, I used to sleep 6 hours in school and 9 whenever I could get away with it. I tried polyphasic sleep for some months, but I couldn't really get into the rythm. It was also very inconvenient. Currently I managed to decrease my need for sleep from 9 to 7-8 hours. So my anecdotal (read: useless) evidence supports the theory favored by my textbook.
Not sleeping as a kid/young person... won't affect you right now... but if you keep it up until the 40's... you're in for a short life! Mostly heart diseases, and I don't mean like a 5% risk increase... we're talking like 60%... so i'd consider that before saying "I don't need sleep".