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Comment by dbingham | Hacker News Reader

I could never do this. Because even with really good sleep hygene and good early bedtime habits, the earliest I ever wake up is 6:30 am. And those are rare days. More often bedtime will slip to 10 pm or later and I will awake naturally between 8:30 am and 9:30 am.

I'm just not a morning person, no matter what I do. And I'm a 9 hour+ sleeper, so I need those sleep hours.

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> I’ve always figured out that there 24 hours a day. You sleep six hours and have 18 hours left. Now, I know there are some of you out there that say well, wait a minute Arnold, I sleep eight hours or nine hours. Well, then, just sleep faster, I would recommend.

- Arnold Schwarzenegger

AFAIK it's pretty well established in the literature that some people naturally just need less sleep. We're not all made the same, we have different genes. There's this saying that humans have 99% identical DNA. What this fails to convey is that you and me probably have different versions of the majority of our individual genes (even though they might differ by just a single letter of DNA). In other words, genetic variation in the human population is huge, and it does have a measurable impact on sleep, stamina, personality, etc.

I don't want to sound like a biological determinist, but It's not all about willing yourself to do amazing things, there is some amount of biological reality we have to deal with as well. Consider that now olympic sprint runner prospects get tested to know if they have fast twitch muscle fibers [0], and if they don't, they basically can't compete, they're considered not worth training. For some reason, people like to imagine that things like sleep and motivation are different, they forget that the brain is a physical organ.

[0] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/what-makes-the-perfe...

> And I'm a 9 hour+ sleeper, so I need those sleep hours. Most people need at least 8-8.5 hours (as in 99.999%). He does too, just doesn't realize it.

>He does too, just doesn't realize it

He didn't say what time he went to bed or how many hours of sleep he got

We can estimate. Assume that the OP needs 8 hours, like most of us do. That means a 9pm bedtime for adequate sleep. The OP mentions that the first call is at 7am. Assuming a 40 hour workweek, with an hour for lunch, that's a 4pm clock-out. This gives OP 5 hours in the evening/afternoon and 2 hours in the morning before work, and an hour for lunch, for a total of 8 hours 'off'. This is a very do-able schedule for morning people. Mixing kiddos into this is not too bad when they are young, but as they turn into teenagers, this is likely to shift towards later hours as the teenagers shift too.

Personally, my natural times are a 8am wake-up and an 11pm bedtime. I need the extra hour and I'm a night-owl. Couple that with a mandatory 8am stand-up and 6pm 'clock-out' time for my job's work schedule. It's ... less than fun in Corporate America.

I do ok with 7. I’d sleep longer but my back starts to hurt if I’m in bed too long.

I get up at 5am to avoid traffic.

I switched to a futon-style very firm mattress several years ago. Now any time we go out of town my back feels miserable in the morning. I honestly don't know why people subject themselves to the torture that is the modern box-spring mattress.

I think people would have much less back issues if they spent the two weeks it takes to sleep on a firm surface. Its all about learning to actually distribute your weight across the surface area of your body.

But I guess I am also relatively young and fit (I.e. 30 and not overweight or obese), so maybe I'm just not representative of the average person.

That's great if you sleep on your back but side-sleepers aren't going to be happy on a hard mattress, the shoulder becomes a single point of contact with the bed. I'm not convinced that people accustomed to sleeping in one orientation can easily change to the other. Although I would be curious if anyone has anecdotes about that.

I've always been a side sleeper. (6"2, 175 pound, early 30s male).

Due to a random medical issue (which has since become much more manageable), I got bad chest pain from sleeping on my side.

Despite this, I absolutely couldn't get a good nights sleep on my back, despite months of having to to. I end up being awake until I fall asleep from exhaustion and then waking up again after a few hours. It caused a lot of other problems as I was only getting between 3-6 hours sleep for weeks.

Months later when my condition improved, I went back to side sleeping, and even when it was still causing me pain, I slept much, much better.

Just an anecdote and I'm sure people are unique for things like sleep, but my own personal experience is that it isn't easy to switch.

That said, I actually like a hard mattress despite being a side sleeper.

Well I’m a near 50 overweight guy (yeah, I know...) and sleeping on the side (if I sleep on my back I snore like hell).

If I sleep on a too firm mattress, I confirm my shoulder starts to hurt during the night. When I’m sleeping, I can rest for several hours, even the whole night, without moving or changing side.

But on firm mattress I wake up several time during the night to change side.

About the orientation, it’s really strange, and I cannot explain why, but it depends. And I mean the side is VERY important, as I can’t fall asleep if I’m on the « wrong » side.

But it’s not always the same side. And sometimes it lasts for weeks or even month. And one day I switch for no reason I can find, because it’s impossible to fall asleep on the side I’ve spent weeks sleeping on.

Strange.

Side sleeper here, i have very firm mattress. Shoulder pain is probably not because of the mattress, but because of weak muscles. Training your upper back/shoulder muscles just a bit will help a lot. I had a shoulder injury (bar/pub accident, yup.) which caused me to avoid using certain muscles. Got pain in my shoulder as well. Fysiotherapist recommended some excercises and it disappeared.

I have a firm mattress because i had a sore back, which in turn caused me to wake up tired.

A sitting non physical profession is the cause of all this. Sometimes i do have a sore back, but going to the (climbing) gym fixes it for weeks.

I'm a side sleeper with an "ultra firm" mattress and soft mattresses mess up my whole alignment. I never get sore shoulders or hips, even if I sleep all day like I recently did. I can also reliably switch to back sleeping, which I usually do when I'm sick because of congestion.

It's all anecdata, but I think people are just different.

At 5'11", I fluctuate between 115 and 120 lbs and cannot comfortably sleep or sit on any hard surface. It feels like my bones are touching stone directly, and sometimes causes parts of my body to fall asleep. It also doesn't help that I sleep on my side.

Fairly certain I'm an outlier as well, but a soft mattress seems to give my body the contour and padding I lack naturally.

Same height, used to have similar weight. I can vouch for this.

Best bed I ever had was a 10 inch futon mattress placed on top of a decent air mattress, using an old quilt to protect the air mattress from anything poking it.

Sleep deprived people can't tell how impaired they are. Sleeping only 7 hours a night has serious long term mental and physical health consequences, and is affecting your productivity short term. If you don't believe me, read Why We Sleep, it's a great investment in your future health.

Source for this? I personally need 9+ hours as well but am constantly told I sleep for too long.

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, it's the most mentioned book on sleep recently. According to this book there is no such thing as sleeping "too much". Sleeping a lot is correlated with higher mortality, but that is because sick people tend to sleep longer in order for the body to recover, not because sleep in any way causes ill health.

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