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Comment by Raphmedia | Hacker News Reader

And I only slept 3 hours tonight. However, I've came to master my sleep cycles. Had I slept 3.5 or 5 hours, I would be dead tired right now. I wonder if it's long enough for the brain to clears itself. I tend to sleep only a few hours all month, then I get tired once a month and sleep for around 12 to 14 hours and feel good for the next 30 days or so.

I'm probably killing myself. Or perhaps I've found the perfect sleep schedule for me.

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>perhaps I've found the perfect sleep schedule for me.

I think that's the point we miss as a structured society: different sleep schedules for everyone. Personally I can't live without a 20 minute siesta every day, which remote work allows. I go crazy having to go to an office.

I used to work in a lab. I discovered napping with my head on the microscope. I had to work on positioning just right but it was fantastic for the 2pm doldrums.

Everyone is different, and most medical studies are based on averages. If it works for you...

Some people can only concentrate for 4 hours a day. Others 12. There's a mean in there somewhere.

Some folks can eat a dozen cheeseburgers a day and not get fat. If (when!) I eat 2 a week my pants get tight. Different things for different people.

I think it's important to remember that just because someone can do something doesn't mean that it's healthy or optimal to do so. I could and did eat fast food every day, but despite being thin and feeling fine, had a poor lipid panel.

Similarly, I suspect that deviating from the norm (evolutionarily) has consequences that may not be immediately realized. After all, humans are 99.9% similar genetically.

If you slept "a few hours per month" you'd be dead.

There's certainly an increased risk of death from e.g. falling asleep at the wheel, but I'm not aware that sleep deprivation can kill you outright. People have gone without any sleep for extensive periods and recovered quite normally after a couple nights' sleep.

It may be that people recover normally with some sleep, however if you don't get that sleep you will die (after you start to hallucinate and then that progresses to dementia). Fatal familial insomnia, is named Fatal for a reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia#Treatme...

I think the other point here is that it's physically impossible to stay awake long enough to die of sleep deprivation unless you actually have a condition preventing sleep.

Diseases with similar causes such as CJD also involve hallucinations and dementia and don't involve lack of sleep, so I'm not 100% convinced that it's the lack of sleep that is causing the death in these cases, although it's an interesting data point.

I agree. Fatal familial insomniac's death is brough about by neurodegeneration caused by prions. Another non-fatal illness which inhebits sleep for extensive periods is Morvan's syndrome [0] for which there has been EEG recordings showing no sleep for 4 months [1] and showing no imparement of memory or intellectual performance!

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morvan%27s_syndrome [1] http://sommeil.univ-lyon1.fr/articles/jouvet/la_recherche/pr... [in french]

I'd be skeptical of what you claimed. There are similar diseases to FFI which involve dementia, hallucination and death -- but don't involve insomnia. The insomnia might just be another symptom.

Besides which, if you deprived yourself of sleep to that point, I expect you'd just go to sleep.

I think he meant "a few hours a day for a month".

Yes, sorry.

In one of Michel Jouvet's[1] experiments for developing the drug modifinil, he deprived cats of sleep until they drowned in a vat of water. On average, the cats managed to survive 35 days with only micro-sleep[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Jouvet

[2] http://psychology4a.com/sleep8.htm

That is very cruel.

It's so cruel I thought he was joking. Seriously, depriving cats of sleep until they drown? Good god...

I think he means per day

Woops. Meant that as "a few hours daily all month long, then a long long sleep once a month".

Do you worry about dreaming less?

In other words, do you think dreams are useful (giving solutions to the day's problems) or just "garbage collection"?

I very rarely dream.

Or perhaps I simply don't remember them.

When I do, they seem very vivid, but not quite lucid. I'm not sure what my take of dreaming is.

I never dreamed anything useful. They are pretty much huge hallucinations / movies if you ask me.

I get better results meditating than dreaming. (I really need to meditate more.)

Or perhaps I've found the perfect sleep schedule for me.

If you don't need an alarm clock, then, yes, maybe. You could try to measure your reflexes along the month, it's possible you've learned to ignore fatigue.

You must have an extremely sedentary lifestyle. If I don't get at least 8 hours I don't have energy to do shit. I can't lift, walking to/from work sucks, doing anything sucks really. I'd only sleep less if I worked remotely + didn't have physical obligations.

Yes and no. Working in an office, but I go to the gym 3 times a week, 2 hours each time. I also take public transportation to go to work which require me about one hour of walk daily.

I also spend all that not sleeping time with friends in bars and clubs.

I never needed much sleep. My mother had to ground me because I wouldn't sleep or wouldn't stay in bed. After a while I would simply get tired of laying still not sleeping and I would read books or watch tv.

I used to be a sleep walker as a young child too...

> 3 times a week, 2 hours each time.

You're wasting your time if you're not recovering properly, aka sleeping enough.

Nope. Getting decent muscle gain, lost a lot of weight and generally look healthier. Me and a friend always go together. He is the kind of guy that can't live without 8 hours of sleep.

We are equal in pretty much everything. He beats me in some points, I beat him in other.

Yes, I would agree that sleep deprivation would be bad. However, what I am saying is that I'm not feeling tired in the slightest.

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