

How much can an extra hour's sleep change you? - nickpyett
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24444634

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joonix
Doesn't matter for me. I hardly get much deep sleep due to anatomical issues
essentially blocking my airways. I can't afford the surgery (even though I
have insurance) nor will my government contribute to it (even though it would
increase my productivity multiple times over, meanwhile they throw trillions
at universities offering useless degrees).

But yes, we have a culture that doesn't value sleep. I know of people who
schedule emails to be sent in the middle of the night just so they appear to
be working all the time. Construction can begin at 7AM in NYC, waking up
hundreds of people in surrounding buildings. Gas leaf blowers emit one of the
most stressful drone sounds out in the suburbs, causing stress to dozens of
neighbors, so one man can clear a pavement of dead leaves quicker.

And just this morning over Manhattan, a helicopter hovered at 6AM for at least
an _hour_. An hour, sitting there, hovering, for God knows what reason,
awaking possibly _thousands_ of people early, causing possibly _millions_ in
lost productivity today.

~~~
peacemaker
You can really feel the anger in your comment and it resonates with me. I am a
light sleeper and constantly amazed at what we as a society deem acceptable
when it comes to noise at certain hours.

Why does the fire truck needs to blast its horns at 3am on a Tuesday going
down a large empty street? There is no need and in some countries that would
be against noise pollution laws. Doesn't seem to matter here.

Leaf blowers and lawn mowing at 7am on a Sunday are also a major annoyance yet
I understand that some people, especially older people, like to get up early
and who am I to complain that they do?

They say having a major lack of sleep is comparable to being intoxicated yet
there are no protections in place to prevent it. Instead we wax on about
"pulling an all-nighter" like it's a competition on who can be the most sleep
deprived.

We live in a strange world.

~~~
frankzinger
I am also a light sleeper. I lived in the centre of the city for almost three
years. I used to get woken up at all hours. I started off with earplugs, but
those hurt my ears. Eventually I started shutting my windows and curtains and
putting a powerful fan on and it really works well.

Edit: a bonus one gets with the fan is that it also cools you off during
summer when a shut window might have caused problems otherwise. (Aircon is
uncommon here.)

~~~
peacemaker
Yes, when I lived on Powell street in SF (right on the cable car tracks) ear
plugs were essential but they can become a crutch too. I've also come to the
same conclusion as you about having a fan in the room.

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Peroni
I will. As soon as my son becomes a teenager I have every intention of
remaining asleep beyond 7AM. Until then, I'm at his unlimited, energetic
mercy.

~~~
esw
I'm right there with you. Thanks to my infant and a merciless cat, it's been a
couple of years since I've slept past 4:30am. I try to get to bed early as
often as possible, but it's hard to simply 'give up' and go to bed at the end
of a long day when you've finally got a moment to yourself.

~~~
chrismonsanto
Do you have an automatic feeder for the cat? I use the Crown Majestic (search
on Amazon) and it works pretty well--my cat stopped sniffing my face at 6am...

~~~
mulletbum
I bought the same feeder in the hopes that this would occur, but it seems my
cat just can never get enough. So I run into the trade off between health (my
cat's) and sanity (my own). I would still suggest the feeder to everyone to
try however, it really is a well made product that could easily fix bad habits
in your animals feedings.

~~~
ag80
My threshold for the number mornings the cat on a diet begins the wake-up call
is rapidly approaching the point at which I get around to building some sort
of time-release RFID tag access-controlled (two cats, only one on a diet)
feeder.

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ExpiredLink
> _So we asked seven volunteers ... The volunteers were randomly allocated to
> two groups._

Ahem

------
dkl
_Deep sleep sounds restful, but during it our brains are actually working
hard. One of the main things the brain is doing is moving memories from short-
term storage into long-term storage, allowing us more short-term memory space
for the next day. If you don 't get adequate deep sleep then these memories
will be lost._

Compacting garbage collection.

~~~
elmilagro
Yeah, if I drink any form of caffeine, this deep sleep is less effective. I
can tell if I am on a caffeine binge working all the time, my days blur into
one.

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robg
With our technologies for stress monitoring, I've been amazed at how much naps
seem to reduce stress. You go from being pretty high to pretty low within
twenty minutes.

~~~
elwell
Naps usually leave me feeling like crap with a headache; especially on hot,
dry days or if I had just eaten.

------
jbrooksuk
My FitBit tells me that my average sleep time is 7.5 hours. That's pretty good
for me since I'm a light sleeper. My girlfriend moving in bed wakes me up.

Worse than that is that if I do have a lie in, or I sleep longer than 8 hours
— yes, I recorded sleep before my FitBit — I'd end up with headaches all day
and night, worsening my sleep the next night. 7.5 hours seems to be my perfect
sleep duration.

I've never been able to have a lie in, even when growing up with my parents
and going through puberty. I'd want to lie in, but my parents would have me up
by 8:30 every day. 9AM on rare occasions. I wonder if that's got anything to
do with it.

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frogpelt
I often wondered about sleep recommendations that focus on the amount of time.
I realize that if you try to sleep for seven hours instead of six you are
likely to get more sleep. But my problem is that not every person is getting
the same quality of sleep in that period of time. If I sleep seven hours I may
be getting as much rest as another person who sleeps six or a person who
sleeps eight or nine hours.

Sleep is another of those things that is not one-size-fits-all and I guess
having a sleep study done is the only way to find out for sure what you need
individually.

~~~
crazcarl
There are some products out there that attempt to measure sleep quality via
leaving your phone on the bed, or wearing a bracelet. I'm not sure of the
accuracy, though.

I hope these will get even better (maybe a non-intrusive headpiece that can
measure brainwaves?) in the future.

~~~
pa5tabear
I have the Sleep Bot app and it measures movement and sleeping time and graphs
the data. It doesn't give any analysis, however.

Do you have advice for a better analysis of my sleep each night?

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landakram
I know there's a lot of research in the effects of sleep deprivation on
health, but the study referenced in the article had only 7 participants,
segmented into two groups. Doesn't that seem like a really small sample size?

~~~
jbkkd
Agreed. Although seemingly true, this article makes you wonder twice whether
this has any scientific basis.

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dorfsmay
Note that you can use it to your advantage too. Bad allergy? Sleep less, it'll
raise your corti??? and reduce the effect of the allergy. Not a long term
solution, but works well when you are at the pick of it.

~~~
ryusage
I think it would be the opposite effect actually. Sleeping less, according to
the article, seems to increase inflammatory and immune system responses, which
are what cause allergies. So sleeping more, presumably, may decrease a
person's allergic reactions.

Of course, this whole article is based on a really small sample size...I would
take it more as a suggestion than a solid scientific result.

~~~
dorfsmay
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9415946](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9415946)

Sleep deprivation increase the levels of cortisol which is in part why you
tend to put on weight when not sleeping enough. Cortisol is an anti-
inflammatory.

I wouldn't be surprised if chronic lack of sleep increase inflammatory, due to
some other mechanism, but for sure, short bouts of sleep deprivation has
worked wonder for me to stop allergic reactions (I'm talking sleeping less
than 4 hours/24 hours period - I usually need between 7 and 9 hours).

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cliveowen
I don't believe all of this claims about sleep. I sleep 10 to 12 hours a night
and I always feel like shit. Even when I had to go to school, I used to sleep
8 hours a night and I was drowsy for most of the day.

~~~
skizm
> I don't believe it when research claims X because of personal experience.

That's a horrible way to look at any research conclusion. Have you considered
you are possibly oversleeping? 7.5 hours might be a magic number (exactly 5
rem cycles) as opposed to 6.5 which will put you waking up in the middle of a
rem cycle. Studies can be faulty for a whole bunch of reasons but dismissing a
body of work because your little n=1 experiment didn't sync up with their
conclusion is just willful ignorance.

~~~
cliveowen
I don't see how one can oversleep, if you don't need anymore sleep you just
wake up, that's how it works.

~~~
skizm
First of all, that has nothing to do with the point I made in my last comment;
which is you can't dismiss peer-reviewed research based on personal
experience.

Second, that is not how it works. There are varying levels of sleep. Some
better than others. When your body doesn't need to go through rem sleep
anymore it is sufficiently rested but that doesn't mean you feel like a ray of
sunshine and immediately jump out of bed. There are other factors which make a
person want to stay in bed longer than they should which leads to shitty non-
rem sleep. Too much of this makes you feel groggy.

