Comment by fakeer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fakeer | Hacker News Reader

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Depends upon during which period you sleep. E.g. if you sleep between 10/11pm to 6/7am, which is the best period to sleep IMHO, then 7-8 hours is very good.

But even if you sleep 10 hours from 2am to 12 in the afternoon, it's far from enough or healthy.

A siesta is a nitro pack. Don't miss that in the game; especially if you live in a hot climate. I feel like blessed with a lot of bliss after I rise form my nap in my office sick bay(dorm/resting room/whatever) (I'm already smiling :-) ). My manager doesn't appreciate my 30-45 min nap everyday after lunch, I don't give a damn!

>>will be sleeping 24 years in our lifetime.

Indeed. So will we be peeing. So, what about recycle the water and keep it in our system itself. Will save the time of drinking water and then peeing. Double bonanza! This is absurd. You can't live life by remaining awake for longer period. For one, your life shortens and number and period of sunsets, sunrises and rains will not shift towards more if you start remaining awake more.

>>“Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr.”

Now, either my biological clock needs a fix and everybody I know around me or his. Really.

My personal sleeping habit: I sleep at 11/12pm and almost everyday wake up at 6/7am. I never set an alarm unless either I've a VVI appointment - like with a doctor, a meeting or a flight to catch.

> But even if you sleep 10 hours from 2am to 12 in the afternoon, it's far from enough or healthy.

Why? Are you suggesting that the later in the day I fall asleep, the less healthy the sleep becomes?

Yes. That's what I am suggesting.

Look, I am not a doctor or neurosomething and what I have said above in that statement is based upon my experience, other's and articles I've read. Besides, it's a well known fact that you need to rest your body and mind by sleeping at night at the right time and not just anytime.

This is not a well-known fact. What makes it the "right" time besides your opinion?

According to ancient Chinese wisdom, a day is divided into twelve 2-hours slices, and one is supposed to be:

- falling asleep during the slice from 9pm to 11pm

- remaining sound asleep during the slices from 11pm to 1pm and from 1am to 3am

- waking up during the slice from 3am to 5am

I feel if this ancient Chinese wisdom were accurate, you could substantiate it with some kind of study, and the "Ancient Chinese wisdom" part would be merely an amusing anecdote relevant to the data.

Feel free to get one of this http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/黄帝内经 and knock yourself out.

While 我一点儿回看中文 I hope you appreciate that a poorly referenced Chinese wikipedia article isn't really a contribution to this conversation.

The article is about how little study has been done about sleep:

> One of the biggest problems I’ve discovered is that sleep is such an over talked topic. We get the general idea that we know all about it: how much we need of it, how it impacts us and why this or that happens when we sleep. Once I took a step back to really think about where our knowledge about sleep comes from, I realized that nearly all of it is based on hear-say or what my mom told me when I was in elementary school.

I was merely quoting some well-known wisdom (among Chinese) (but not well-followed) from an old book [1] written based on actual clinical experiences. And it also happens to support fakeer's suggestion. If that's not up to some scientific standards, at least it is one step above "hear-say" and "what my mom told me", don't you think?

This is such a complicated subject, and I doubt there has been any concrete study that can conclusively prove anything. For me, the point of the article is to provoke exactly this kind of discussion.

[1] That's what the wikipedia article is about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_discoveries

Scroll down and look for Circadian rhythm.

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