innovis

I've been sleeping alot less lately, sometimes 3 hours. On these days, I'm not OVERLY tired. On days that I sleep 6, 9, or more hours (weekend), I'm in a permanent stupor. I'm guessing that making up for lost time is negatively effecting me.

How can I get by on around 4.5 hours of sleep effectively?
What can I do to improve the quality of the quantity of sleep that I get?
Will one be more rested in a cold or hot environment?

Plummie

For most people, 8 hours is a full night's sleep. Your body needs time to regenerate cells and repair itself. Have you always slept less than 8 hours (like since you were a kid)?

Some people just need less than others, but I still don't think 4.5 hours a night is healthy. You should probably see a doctor about it.

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Rekna

I went from 10+ and being tired to 6-7 hours and being fully awake. Though i'm not sure how your body will function on only 4.5. You do need sleep. But if you want to improve the quality of sleep you get try this for a few months. Stop drinking caffinee entirely. Caffinee is a sleep inhibiter and for me it prevented me from getting good deep sleeps. Even if I didn't drink it for many hours before going to bed there was still caffinee in my body. So try this for a month or 2 (it may be hard if you are addicted like I was). Just get rid of it completly.

It is funny how the thing that I was using to wake me up throughout the day is the very thing that made me tired all the time.

JustJess

There's a theory I've heard that it's not just about how much sleep you get, but when you wake up that affects how tired you are. You go through 2-5 sleep cycles a night, and if your alarm goes off in the middle of one, you'll wake feeling extremely tired. But if you wake with less sleep but not in the middle of a cycle, you'll be just fine. Ideally, we would all sleep in short bursts throughout our 24-hour day, but as that can't happen... we DO need a minimum of sleep for our bodies to regenerate. That varies between people, but there are studies correlating people who don't sleep very much with higher incidence of illness etc.
Check out www.emedicine.com, it's really helpful. Might have to sign up for a free membership, though.

I actually blogged about caffeine and its affects - check it out. You'd be surprised and appalled at how long it sticks around. (Not an advertisement, just sharing research I already did!!)

Best of luck!

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newtx

I have read that if you can get 3-4 hours of quality sleep that you'll feel better than with 8 or more hours of average sleep. Can't get anyone I know to agree but it makes interesting reading. Google the topic and look for a site by Kaeper. (spelling may be off a bit) His site promotes his ebook but doesn't actually give you any how-to information. Maybe you have figured out on your own what he promotes in the book.

soccerchamp76

The best idea is to have a regular sleep schedule. You could be fine for 5 days on 4.5 hours sleep, but eventually your body will respond, and even with a night of 9 hours sleep, you will be tired as it is showing the effects of only 4.5 hours sleep for several days. Ideally, try to get 7-8 hours of sleep every night AND go to bed/wake up at the same time. This is the hardest part for college students and others with irregular schedules. You will find out that when you have a schedule, you won't even need an alarm clock and your body will naturally awake at the same time every day!

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seizei

You can carry sleep debt for up to 14 days, so even on those nights where you 'catch up' and get 10 hours sleep, rather than say 4 or 5, you'll still wake up tired.

If it isn't work that's interfering with your sleep, try real hard to get 7-8 a night, every night, and you'll notice a difference after a week or two if you keep it up.

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ASU2003

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...lyphasic-sleep

You can try this method of taking short 20-30 minute naps 6 times a day. I would be the type of person that would do that actually.

I am also having sleep issues. I have been waking up at 8am everyday of the week, but I am on the computer or doing other stuff until 2 or 3am, 5 days a week it seems like. I need to learn how to shut the computer off and go to bed before 11pm.

snowy

In my own experience, this theory has truth to it. Having to wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle leaves me groggy for the rest of the day. So I try to schedule myself for an 8-hour period of sleep (giving myself up to 30 minutes to fall asleep, therefore 7.5 hours of sleep, which generally fits my sleep cycle schedule). You have to figure out how long your sleep cycles are, though. Since starting shift work, my sleep cycle has shrunk from 1.5 hours to an hour. The best thing you can do is figure out how long you sleep before your body wakes itself naturally--and you can only do that without a sleep debt. It might be as little as six hours in some people. So get rid of your sleep debt first and then pick a bedtime. Go to bed at that time every night with a ritual that clues your body into the fact it's time to sleep. Then sleep until you wake up naturally. Do this for a week--by the end of the week you should have a good idea of what your sleep cycle is (in most people it's 2-4 hours of deep sleep followed by 1.5 hour cycles of REM sleep). But if you only limit yourself to short naps/4 hours of sleep, your body isn't getting the deep sleep it needs to repair itself, and it will catch up with you in the long run.

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Plaid13

Personaly i have bad insomina and i have for years. if i get 5 hours of sleep im happy as hell about it and feel fine. Most of the time i get 3-4 hours and just feel kinda blah. then theres the times when i sleep 5-6 hours in 3-4 days and i feel like a zombie. so yeah you can get buy with 4.5 hours a sleep and feel fine but i know thanks to my wonderful sleep habits my immune system is a joke and i get sick all the time. I would never do it by choice. i would love to sleep 8 hours a night every night. So if you have the option dont try to get buy on less sleep.

darkangel

If it were up to me, I'd never sleep EVER. I just think it's such a waste of time. I guess I feel that way because it seems like all I ever do is work and sleep, with a little TV thrown in. Last night I slept from 7am-9am and then 1:30pm - 12:30am. You don't have to tell me that's a lot. I work graveyards, so that's quite normal.

Although question.. How come if I stay up during the night, I get more tired than staying up during the day? Does the sun have something to do with that? If I get up at midnight and stay up till noon, I'm already more tired than someone getting up at 7am and staying up till 7pm.

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hannukah harry

our body's natural circadian rhythms are attuned to the daytime. the things regulated by them are on a daytime clock, essentially. when you don't have a 'sleep at night, be awake during the day' schedule, it throws them way off and that's what you're experiencing.

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Rodney

Two members of my family did well on a 5-and-2 or 5-and-3 schedule. They'd go to bed long after midnight, sleep five, wake up and do the day, then catch a couple of hours in the early evening. I read later that, when humans are sealed in a totally light-neutral environment for a period of weeks -- daylight all the time -- that's the sleep pattern they fall into.

I met two people who got by on four hours or less, but one of them was diagnosed hyperthyroid -- he had all the physical symptoms. Everybody's different, so I don't know that it's possible for _you_ to get by on 4.5 hours, unless you nap in the afternoon.

That said, ways of getting quality sleep include:

* Keeping warm; warm blankets, but also warm air in the bedroom. You lose a lot of head through your heat and face. In my experience, it's difficult maintain a sound sleep when cool; you wake up at the end of your first sleep cycle, then have trouble returning to sleep.

* A milk snack before bed. Nothing major. I find that a small scoop of ice cream make a huge difference for me in how deeply I sleep. You didn't ask about calories, though :-) !

You say you're not _overly_ tired on your new regimen. But if you're not actually refreshed when you get up, you're really not sleeping well and will be working at less than peak efficiency. And may well be cutting into your body's reserves, as others have said, by giving it less time for repair. Again, if you want to sleep less at night, I'd suggest supplementing with a nap in the late afternoon.

Ilow

Some research done on behalf of solo around the world sailors has shown that some people function better with 20 minute catnaps while others do better with chunck of a couple hours at a time. Obviously this is not ideal for regular joes over the long haul, but it does show that people use sleep diferently.
Also while really overtired your body goes into REM sleep more quickly. I'm not familiar with any research that talks about peoples sleep cycles shortening though.
Form personal experience I know I felt the best when I was unemployed for a while and went nocturnal. I slept from about 4 or 5am (sunup) til about 11 or noon and felt awesome all day. I was still active during the day, just not working.
Stress is a big factor in sleep quality as well. many experts believe that a brief meditation before bed, even for just 10 minutes, allows you to remove stress that would normally disturb quality sleep.
Right now, grad school is my biggest sleep robber, but drinking too much fluid before bed is a close second as I always have to get up to pee during the night, sometimes more than once. (you know you're in trouble when you have those dreams that you're looking for a place to pee...)

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