
Health dangers of sleep deprivation - pmoriarty
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/how-much-sleep-is-enough-sleep-deprivation-health-dangers-a8328126.html
======
brandonmenc
> Lack of sleep changes how insulin operates in your body and how quickly your
> cells absorb sugar. After a week of short sleep nights (say, five or six
> hours), your doctor could diagnose you with pre-diabetes, Walker says.

My father intentionally tried to sleep as little as possible in his 20s, 30s,
and into his 40s - sleeping four hours a night was common - in order to get
more done - and he ended up with diabetes.

Chronic and extreme lack of sleep was his only risk factor.

Don't screw around. Get your sleep.

~~~
Barrin92
the flipside is you really get a lot of quality time in in your 20s 30s and
40s. Doesn't that count for something? If you sleep five instead of eight
hours a night that's actually about two years of _additional_ lifetime even if
your lack of sleep kills you at 70 rather than 80, and I'd guess 10 years of
life reduction is way too pessimistic of a guess, and it's the bad years at
the end you're sacrificing anyway

I'm somewhat serious actually, I'm not convinced that sleeping your youth away
is actually a good trade-off. Not to mention that sport, a healthy diet and
checkups can probably mitigate the downsides to some degree.

~~~
brandonmenc
> even if your lack of sleep kills you at 70 rather than 80

If only it were that simple.

There's lifespan, and there's quality of life. Diabetes attacks both.

So, not only will you likely die earlier, you're at far greater risk for
developing a degenerative disease - possibly cognitive in nature. Or organ
failure. Or amputation. Or blindness. Or all of the above.

And if you don't, you'll still spend your remaining days worrying about it.

~~~
raugustinus
Such a shame the subtitle of the article is all about quantity. Quality of
life far outweighs quantity, but this subtitle probably serves better as
clikckbait.

------
arikrak
Based on the other sleep link posted here [1], this article itself warning
people about sleep might be the thing harming people's sleep and health.

It's fine to tell people who are doing other things instead of sleeping that
sleep is important. But many people don't sleep that well/long and I think
this message about getting 8 hours of sleep is very harmful to them, since it
causes anxiety and insomnia. It seems many people and cultures naturally sleep
around 6.5 hours not 8 hours, so people should not worry if that's how long
they sleep.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/20/cant-
sl...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/20/cant-sleep-
insomnia-identity)

~~~
Dylan16807
How does a culture have different sleep needs?

~~~
jonsen
Siesta cultures a.o.

~~~
Dylan16807
I meant quantity. That's moving some to a different time.

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joker3
If you drive while sleep-deprived, you're at a significantly higher risk of
being involved in a fatal accident. And it might not be you that gets killed.

[https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/best-cars-
blog/2016/12/d...](https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/best-cars-
blog/2016/12/drowsy-driving-worse-than-drunk-driving)

~~~
closeparen
Yep. We need to treat driving while sleep-deprived like driving while drunk.
This has some societally untenable implications: new parents, people whose
jobs/commutes/responsibilities do not leave time for enough sleep, people with
on-call jobs, etc. need to have their driver licenses revoked. But I can at
least set this standard for myself: if I haven't slept enough, I don't drive.

~~~
sillysaurus3
I don't think that will work. For example, I just admitted that this happened
to me in a sibling comment, and immediately my reflex was to delete it.

Then I thought better of it. We are all human, and we're all pressed for time.
We're not out partying. No one drinks to do their jobs.

------
alistproducer2
This is built on the premise that the modern 8 hour night is settled science.
To my knowledge this isn't the case. I'm not saying that depriving yourself of
sleep when you're tired is good, but I'm not so sure this should be taken with
more than a grain of salt.

~~~
pizza
> This is built on the premise that the modern 8 hour night is settled
> science.

What do you mean by this? Urging people to sleep enough is not really a new
and untested concept.

Is there a strong reason to think that frequently sleeping <8 hours is
unlikely to cause harm? I think it would still be prudent to give all the
studies in the article some consideration.

------
FrantaH
[http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-
walker](http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker)

~~~
pchristensen
One of the best (and most eye-opening) podcast episodes ever. Worth every
second of the 2 hrs.

~~~
FrantaH
I wish there was a transcript, it was really full of interesting facts. I
personally have a tinnitus so lack of sleep is big a issue for me so I
identified myself with a lot of things he said. I'm happy I discovered
Tryptophan lately, it really helped me to get good a quality sleep.

Btw, another great episode is [http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/peter-
attia](http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/peter-attia)

------
shoulderfake
Sleep is one thing I never sacrifice, everything else can wait/ be put off and
Im in my mid 30s. 8-9 hrs a night and I feel fucking great every day.

~~~
anoplus
I follow exactly the same rule. Sleep is maybe the greatest productivity
factor. Same for rest in general. If I don't rest, I know for sure I will pay
later adding "interest rates"

~~~
philfrasty
"...I will pay later..." this is so damn hard to grasp when you are young and
pulling all nighters every day.

------
agentultra
Tell it to my children, partner, co-workers, and the whole system.

Our society isn’t designed for average to poor people to be healthy.

~~~
nickstefan12
> Our society isn’t designed for average to poor people to be healthy.

The truth. Capitalism isn't about needs and wants but miseries you can
tolerate. Unfortunately a bunch of people raced to the bottom on lack of sleep
and now that's the level of misery required to compete...

------
NKosmatos
Original article from Business Insider with links to statistics:
[http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-much-sleep-is-enough-
healt...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-much-sleep-is-enough-health-risks-
dangers-of-sleep-deprivation-2017-11)

------
brennebeck
In 2016 I was diagnosed with idiopathic epilepsy — essentially epilepsy with
little/no explanation for the cause. Prior to my diagnosis I had horrible
sleeping habits. Though we have no official evidence, my neurologist and I
both think that years of abusing sleep was a large factor in my development of
epilepsy. Finally, sleep and fatigue are major triggers for my seizures (if I
don’t get a good nights rest then I’m much more likely to have an episode).

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Rinum
Where do naps fall into this? Does a 6 hour sleep + 2 hour nap later compare
to 8 hour sleep?

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arkona3
> The World Health Organisation and Walker both recommend about eight hours a
> night as a good baseline.

I’ll take the shorter lifespan and bet that more diseases will be cured in the
future. The extra hours of life I get every day will ultimately allow me to
afford treatment.

~~~
fyfy18
Good for you if it doesn’t cause you any problems, but if I don’t get enough
sleep I really notice my mood and productivity dips. Everyone is different, so
just don’t enforce the same regime on others.

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tcgv
Interestingly enough, this study seems to go on the oposite direction as this
one from 2002:

\-
[http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/health/sleepstudy.h...](http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/health/sleepstudy.htm)

> _" individuals who now average 6.5 hours of sleep a night, can be reassured
> that this is a safe amount of sleep. From a health standpoint, there is no
> reason to sleep longer."_

------
barhum
Dr. Walker has actually stated that very few people can operate with 5 hours
of sleep due to genetics. Most of us need between 7 to 9 hours of sleep.

~~~
eigenspace
You're also more likely to get struck by lightning than be one of these
people.

~~~
detritus
In bed?

------
mjberg01
After struggling with this problem while a student at Notre Dame I started a
company to solve my own problem.

To that end - we've developed a behavioral therapy program combining
neuroscience, sleep health products, hardware, analytics, and coaching to
improve sleep. It's designed to make long-term changes to help you improve the
quantity, quality, and regularity of your sleep.
[https://puresomni.com](https://puresomni.com)

If anyone has sleep specific questions let me know.

------
alorimer
> men in Japan who sleep less than six hours a night are 400-500% likelier to
> have a heart attack

Seriously? People who sleep less might be at risk of all sorts of health
problems, but not necessarily because they sleep less - people generally sleep
less because they're doing [strenuous or destructive activity]. And it's much
more likely that partying / working late into the night causes health
problems, rather than solely the lack of sleep.

Correlation ≠ causation

~~~
vertexFarm
I'm sure they control for that. I doubt the people doing the study are unaware
of the most basic cognitive biases.

------
mattfrommars
I find 8 hours of sleep excessive.

I'm always battling myself to sleep less than 6-7 hours every night but my
body always manages to get better hold of me.

Sleeping more than eight hours gives me a headache and getting fewer than 6
hours sleep makes my entire day feel drowsy.

But I'll take feeling drowsy than a headache as it's been shown that working
in sleep deprived state improves 'creativity'.

~~~
shin_lao
Headaches may come from poor sleep position or lack of caffeine.

If you get your sleep in order, you should sleep the same amount every day and
wake up without an alarm clock.

~~~
gnulinux
See this doesn't work me. Even when I sleep 7 to 8 hours every night with
alarm, when I put off alarm (say, in long holidays) I naturally sleep 7 to 8
hours a few days then suddenly I sleep very long (>= 10 hours) which
completely screws my Circadian rhythm since it makes me harder to fall asleep.

~~~
BigJono
Same thing happens to me, if I have so much as a day or two without an alarm I
just careen off into ridiculous sleeping patterns. I have to set alarms during
the weekend just to keep on course. If I have a week or more off I start to
run off 25 hour days with ~9-10 hours sleep a night, and turn completely
nocturnal in a couple of weeks.

~~~
gnulinux
Same, but I also need to note that I have a life-long insomnia that attacks
every now and then which might be affecting this pattern.

~~~
BigJono
Interesting. I've got the opposite problem. I can't even remember the last
time I woke up in the middle of the night without an extremely loud alarm
clock, and I feel like absolute death if I try and get up with less than 8-9
hours sleep.

------
Paianni
I have to sleep at least six hours in order to stay alert for the entirety of
the following day. Any less results in segments of the day when I'm zoning in
and out, though it's not continuous.

Normally I can get an 8-9 hour sleep, sometimes even longer, at the end of the
week, so I'd say I'm ok.

------
wenbert
After we had our son, my sleeping pattern has changed. I sleep early at around
730PM. Then wake-up at around 8 or 8:30PM. Then sleep around at 12:30-1AM.
Wake up at 7AM.

I get to take some sort of power nap for the day. And when I wake up, I feel
fresh. Does any one else have a similar routine?

I'm not sure if it's healthy, but I do not feel tired or deprived at all.

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agumonkey
good night

~~~
AznHisoka
Moon.

------
codersbrew
I sleep therefore I am.

~~~
fao_
I dunno why you're marked as dead (FYI: your posts haven't been showing up for
over a year at this point), this isn't a particularly _bad_ comment.

------
himom
Going to sleep. Peace.

