Thread: Do we really need 7+ hours of sleep?

Yea it is possible to feel energized off of less than 7 hours of sleep, is it healthy? I'm going to go with no on that one. However, conditioning your body to a specific sleeping schedule is totally possible. I have a friend that had a 7 hour part time job every day after school. He wouldn't get back home until 11 most of the times and that left him with 5 hours of sleep each night because he would also get up earlier than normal to work out before school. I asked him about it one day, "How do you do it?". His reply was, "I've been doing it for a while now man to the point where it doesn't affect me anymore. I feel just as good as someone whose gotten 7 or 8 hours of sleep".
I really think that this in some way affects your sleep debt regardless of the fact that you could be used to a sleep schedule like that of 5 hours a night. And if you're trying to get good at Lucid Dreaming, 7 hours or less of sleep a night is not ideal to daily lucids. According to recent studies, teenagers alone need 9 to 10 hours of sleep a night but school highly interferes with that. Adults need 7-8, I've seen the hours for which they need to sleep vary on multiple sites.

To sum it all up, if you adjust yourself to a certain sleep schedule, and go to bed and wake up at the same times every night/day, you'll feel energized after some time because your internal clock will have readjusted. However, our natural unaffected internal clock for sleep runs by daylight. Sleep starting at sundown, and ending at sun up. That was before we had electricity though.

I guess it's virtually impossible for us to reduce on need for sleep, as we would have to overcome thousands of years of what evolution has given us. The consensus among recognized scientific studies on sleep says that 7 hours is required to maintain good health, that much we can't change. Although it is possible in some cases to "store up" your sleep - suppose you know you're going to be deprived of sleep in the following week because of work or something like that, you can sleep more during the weekend to sort of accommodate for the inevitable deprivation.

I sleep around 4 hours everyday and I feel fine, well not great but fine. It took me 3 years of sleep deprivation to feel fine on 4 hours. There are days I sleep for no more than 2 hours and that is still extreme for me and turns me into a zombie. I guess I'll stick to 4 hours.

I can fall asleep whenever I want to And I have naps too. Naps might be keeping me alive.

^^hard worker?

I feel best when i sleep 6 to 7 hours. If I slept 9 hours I feel much worse then if I slept 5.

Hard worker also trying to have a lot of fun and relaxing free time in a day ends up sleep deprived... I might start my polyphasic sleep experiment in a few weeks. Will try and see if it helps with lucid dreams too.

I've heard of a man in Ukraine, who quited sleeping decades ago. After his wife died. Not sure if it's fake, there was no research on him afaik.

I wonder if sleep can be replaced by meditation. As a kid, I thought I did not sleep "at all". Every single night, I used to lay on my back until morning, thinking, hallucinating. But 8 hours did not feel like 8 hours and I was not bored. In the morning I felt as if I had just woke up from sleep. I was probably not a super human as I used to think. Sadly I was actually sleeping and I was just "aware" all the way through.

In my case so far that would be a no. I do not function well and am irritable if I get any less than 8 hours with 9 being ideal. Even then I'm gulping down coffee all day. When I try biphasic sleep what will happen is I'll take a 1-2 hour nap and then continue to sleep a full 8 hours for the core session lol.

I agree dave, this past thursday and friday nights I only got 3 hours of sleep both nights. I cannot express just how tired I was. I was so disoriented and felt like I could pass out any second. Definitely not ideal lmao

Originally Posted by OneUp

I agree dave, this past thursday and friday nights I only got 3 hours of sleep both nights. I cannot express just how tired I was. I was so disoriented and felt like I could pass out any second. Definitely not ideal lmao

I'm guessing that work and school are mostly to blame for sleep deprivation. There aren't many other reasons I can think of why someone would put themselves through that.

Originally Posted by davethewarrior

I'm guessing that work and school are mostly to blame for sleep deprivation. There aren't many other reasons I can think of why someone would put themselves through that.

Your guess is right. When you have to wake up at 6 in the morning for school, then go to school for 8 hours, then work until 11 AND hit the gym after that. Of course the gym isn't necessary, but you have to find time for the things you love otherwise time will pass and you'll never get in the work you wanted.

Originally Posted by OneUp

Your guess is right. When you have to wake up at 6 in the morning for school, then go to school for 8 hours, then work until 11 AND hit the gym after that. Of course the gym isn't necessary, but you have to find time for the things you love otherwise time will pass and you'll never get in the work you wanted.

I used to have such a lifestyle before I decided it wasn't doing much for me and I started to defy it. People now call me lazy and socially irresponsible for blatantly switching priorities. I put the sleep and going to the gym first and anything else second. Of course I don't have much money with this lifestyle but I am happy and healthy so that's good enough for me.

Originally Posted by davethewarrior

I used to have such a lifestyle before I decided it wasn't doing much for me and I started to defy it. People now call me lazy and socially irresponsible for blatantly switching priorities. I put the sleep and going to the gym first and anything else second. Of course I don't have much money with this lifestyle but I am happy and healthy so that's good enough for me.

Same man, and I don't think anyone should be labeled lazy if they hit the gym at least 5 days a week.

I sleep between 6 - 7 hours, with a 10 to 20 minutes power nap mid day, and I function just fine. I believe what you eat, also plays a huge factor on the matter of how many hours you need in order to re-energize myself. (Of course that's my opinion) But I did notice significant changes when I tried vegetarian meals for just few weeks, I slept less, and felt more energized. But that's a topic for another thread.

I have been reading up about this recently and was just gonna make a topic. Many people do not need 7-8 hours, that's a fact. Elon Musk sleeps 4 hours a day, Buckminster Fuller just had four 30 minute naps every day. But it might come down to genes. I see a lot of people trying it, but not many succeeding, or maybe they just give up on their blogs.

I'm trying polyphasic sleep atm, first day. 4.5-5 hours core sleep, 1.5 hour nap. I wake up naturally at 4.5-5 hours so I feel alright right now.
Just concerned about how easily I'll be able to nap.

^^ Good point. Over the last 25 years, I would say my average night's sleep amounted to about 5 hours... and I'm still alive, reasonably healthy, and have lots of LD's. A good night's sleep, I think, is very much a relative term.