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Comment by vasco | Hacker News Reader

> Since I was younger, I have always been obsessed with time and how to save more of it.

> This is probably why my body got used to sleeping just 4-6 hours per day, and today I find myself reflecting at 4 AM in the morning on what I could have done better

You can die up to 30-40 years earlier than you would've by playing this game of training yourself to sleep less. Heart failure from accumulated sleep deprivation is a big deal.

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Indeed. I earned a nice stress-induced LAD heart attack at age 46 in no small part due to cheating my body out of sleep in order to attain unreasonable productivity.

But think of all the value you generated for the shareholders!

In my case it had less to do with unreasonable demands from management and more as a result of my own workoholic mentality and unrealistic expectations.

I feel like I am making better life choices when well-rested. Think about it. To be well-rested 95% of the time has a huge impact on a knowledge workers 25-year retro.

That’s why they’re writing their retrospective now?

No you can't, e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep21480

The abstract of that article concludes: "The results suggested that 7 hours/day of sleep duration should be recommended to prevent premature death among adults."

Your link shows a U shape around 7 hours for all cause mortality, which says you're wrong.

Previous common advice was 8 hours sleep. The graphs show that 5-6 is about as risky as 7 hours and 4 hours is as risky as 9 hours. Given this info it seems that 4-6 hours is not the a huge risk factor.

The parent claimed that you "can die up to 30-40 years earlier than you would've" which is completely insane and unsupportable. The review I linked shows that short sleep is associated with a 1.01-1.07x increased risk -- closer to a single year of expected lifespan decrease compared to optimal.

I'm the parent. You seem to mistake population level effects to single person events. For a reduction of a few years in a global population, a bunch of those people will be walking around and suddenly drop of heart failure and die 30 years earlier than they would. You should look up additional papers on this subject to get a better idea than a single random metastudy. There's plenty available on the effects.

I'm not saying if everyone sleeps 1 less hour a night they will all die 40 years earlier, but if you start sleeping 4-6 hours a night consistently you will have problems, and if you're unlucky you might have an accute heart issue that may take your life. There's no reason to play with sleep in extreme ways.

On average not wearing a seat belt reduces global life expectancy a certain amount. But for the guy laying on the tarmac spit out of the windshield it takes 40y of his life.

This is dumb. Of course anything can happen. You could die from tripping on the stairs. Certainly someone has died very young by falling down the stairs. But it's obviously stupid to suggest to people that they avoid stairs, and it's obviously alarmist to phrase this as, "taking the stairs could take 30-40 years off your life."

Check out the book "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker.

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