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Comment by emerged | Hacker News Reader

I find it almost impossible to sleep more than 5 hours in one night, but I feel great all day and never feel tired. Exercise for a dozen hours per week and have good discipline with putting away the phone at night, etc.

We are always told how bad this is, but there is no solution offered which actually works and I've never experienced a downside. It would be nice to prove once and for all that it isn't harmful for us all.

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My friend is the exact same as you. She’s only slept 5 hours a day for her entire life. Any more and she actually feels groggy.

She pointed out one reason why that may be the case: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/03/410051/scientists-discover...

That's the same researcher being talked about in this article . They've identified more gene since then. That's the story here.

I'm fairly close to this. I used to require almost exactly 4 hours of sleep a night, and getting more or less than that made me feel absolutely abysmal, but over the years it's jumped up to 5.5 hrs/night with it being slightly more forgiving about the range (from 4-6 hours I feel decently okay, best at 5.5 and worse as I fall away from that, but outside of that band I feel completely horrid). I get more rest than this, but the extra hours of rest are usually laying down listening to music or the occasional audio book.

I think the biggest agent of change is my autoimmune disease which has worsened over the years and now requires of me more rest and sleep maintenance.

Got a cruel reminder of all of this sleep-related business last night with the bay area thunderstorm waking me after only 3 hours of sleep and the storm and heat keeping me awake until my body screamed for a rare noon siesta.

I'm someone who needs a lot of sleep, like 9h minimum, so that I feel good and energized during awake time.

I'd say, if you feel well rested, energized and just overall feel good when you wake up, you don't have any issue.

Similarly, I have found that every hour of exercise removes the need to sleep about an hour, to a certain point. Unlike you, though, several hours a week of exercise brings my nightly need to sleep down to 8 from 9-10!

I think it may depend on how strenuous the exercise is rather than the duration, but I have a similar observation. I normally sleep 6-6.5 hours at night. When I did p90x (45-60 minute sessions) a few years back, I would usually be wide awake after 5 hours. I suspect this is because I sleep really deeply when tired - I remember most of those nights sleeping dreamlessly.

That is a good point. As someone who naturally sleeps longer then 8 hours, my exercise is not as intense as it probably should be.

I’m going to guess that you’re under 30.

Similarly, I feel cheated. We were always taught growing up that kids need more sleep than adults and older people. As a teen into my mid 20s, I never slept more than 4 or 5 hours a night and felt great. Now, if I sleep less than 7 hours, I have to drag myself out of bed and feel sluggish for the first half the day.

Not the OP, but I am over 40 and I only sleep 5-6 hours a night. I am never tired during the day, never drink caffeine. I do a TON of cardio, especially massively long bike rides on the weekend.

It's interesting the parallels between us. I'm about 40 and sleep 5-6 hours a night. Never tired during the day, never drink caffeine (ironically, I sometimes drink it in the morning in hopes I'll crash and fall asleep). I do an enormous amount of cardio, on bikes!

It's 1:17am for me. I will be awake for another hour most likely. I'll get up before 8am and ride for a few hours. Never a yawn. It's really fascinating and I have no idea how to explain it.

You're a lucky b. :)

I'm really jealous of you. I need 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep. I would feel like a zombie if I got less than that. If I could only sleep 5-6 hours of sleep, I would do more things in my life: studying foreign languages, working on side projects, reading more books, etc.

It's all relative. I would encourage you to feel moderately lucky yourselves, some of us need 9-10 hours :-/

Nearly 40

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