DailyDirt: Sleeping Might Not Be Over-rated
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
It’s still a bit mysterious why sleep is so necessary. Some people seem to need more than others, and there’s at least one guy who claims he doesn’t need sleep at all. Here are just a few more tidbits on the topic of sleeping, for all of you sleepyheads and night owls.
- Sleeping for only 2-3 hours per day with a polyphasic sleep schedule sounds like a difficult regimen to maintain. This diary of a polyphasic sleep experiment ends after about 5 months, and it’s not too hard to imagine why more people don’t try it. [url]
- About 1-2% of the population consists of “long sleepers” who need at least 10 hours of sleep at night in order to function normally. Sleep duration varies widely and could involve genetic factors. (Surprise!) [url]
- If you think you’re special and don’t need as much sleep as anyone else, maybe you are or maybe parts of your brain are shutting down while you’re awake and you don’t even realize it. At least in sleep-deprived rats, scientists can observe “local sleep” where parts of these rat brains shut down while the rat is still conscious. [url]
- To discover more interesting articles on the human mind, check out what’s currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]
By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
Filed Under: local sleep, long sleepers, polyphasic sleep, sleep
Comments on “DailyDirt: Sleeping Might Not Be Over-rated”
polyphasci sleep!
sleepin only a couple hrs/day sounds good to me! but the part whre you can’t stay awake for 8hrs straight puts a pretty huge monkeywrench in the works.
could always try this one
http://xkcd.com/320/
Re: could always try this one
nice xkcd find….
Re: Re: could always try this one
If it worth knowing, XKCD has done a comic about it.
They're special
“where parts of these rat brains shut down while the rat is still conscious” – sounds like most politicians…
Re: They're special
Not really. It said parts of the brain, not the whole thing.
i am the 1-2%
i need 12 hours of sleep to function normally.
Narcolepsy suffer confirms that restful sleep is not over rated
I suffer from Narcolepsy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy
When I sleep I go into REM sleep nearly instantly so my brain never gets any restful sleep.
The only way I can get good restful sleep is to take expensive medication Xyrem which is a form of GHB, one of the “date rape” drugs.
Re: Narcolepsy suffer confirms that restful sleep is not over rated
thankfully, you’ve found something that helps you get some restful sleep..
I’m definitely in the 10+ to function range. Glad to see there’s research to back me up.
Re: Re:
I keep thinking I would be happier with something like a 26-hour day.
Re: Re: Re:
I keep thinking I would be happier with something like a 26-hour day.
Most people’s natural clocks are set to about 25 hours for some reason, so you’re probably right.
Vitamin D3
I’ve had various degrees of insomnia and have tried over the counter med’s, marijuana (inhaled and digested), Homeopathic’s, alcohol, and prescriptions that caused very negative side effects. The one thing that did help the most was Vitamin D3 which helps produce melatonin in the body.
The shorter sleep schedule sounds appealing, but I can never fall asleep that fast.
SmartSleep project
Hi, guys. I am a polyphasic sleeper for almost 2 years and I sleep 4,5 hours a day. Me and my friends made lots of experiments on this fied and we want to share our experience. We decided to create a mobile application that would be an essential guide to polyphasic sleep experience for everyone.
We alredy have a functioning prototype that we use in our everyday life, but we need funds to finish it and launch to pruduction. So we created a company on kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/222464008/smartsleep-first-application-for-polyphasic-sleepe
We apreciate any feedback, proposals and contributions. If you have any questions please contact us.