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Comment by metasean | Hacker News Reader

Lack of sleep doesn't cause migraines for me, but I am and come from a family of long sleepers (9-14 hours a day it pretty typical).

I've been told point-blank that I just need to change my attitude because, according to this person, my inability to wake up refreshed with anything less than 9 hours of sleep is 100% because of my attitude.

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Do you work out a lot? In college i needed 10hrs, i would run to campus and back, swim 800m a day, 1hr weights 5 times a week. Now i just need 6hrs.

I would assume it has something to do with how much you learn as well. Children sleep more because they're constantly learning. Then we gradually move on to executing on knowledge rather than learning - think reinforcement learning in CS. It's natural to sleep less as you get older.

I've had periods in my life when I exercised extensively (U.S. Marine Corps) and other times, including now, when I definitely don't get "enough" exercise. Regardless, I've needed 9-14 hours of sleep a day to feel awake during the day. So no, exercise has never had even a moderate correlation with my sleep cycle.

Curious - have you done a sleep study? You may just be getting very low quality sleep due to sleep apnea or the like.

I've had several GPs check me and they each said I just need more sleep than "average". They've given me the standard spiel, about going to bed and waking up at the same time, keeping the bedroom dark and quiet, only engaging in subdued activities for an hour before bed, etc - each of which I've done for substantial periods. As life interfered with each of these, I've learned that –within reason– none of them noticeably effect the amount of sleep I need or the quality of sleep I get within a period of time.

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