Sleeping Patterns

We've all been told that the 'natural' or 'healthy' sleeping schedule is 7-8 hours of sleep every night (at least for 17year olds like myself; probably less for adults). I've done some research on the matter and for the most parts the science of the brain, the body or why we sleep is rather hazy. There are many theories as to why we sleep but I think the most prominent two reasons are recuperation of the body and thought processing.

I was wondering, is it possible for your body to learn how to carry out this process of restoration more efficiently or quickly if you reduced your number of hours slept each night from let's say 7-8hours to perhaps 3-4hours? Otherwise, we are spending 8 / 24 hours of our lives (~33%+) everyday doing something comparable to a dead person. Sure, one might say that lucid dreaming is a solution to this problem if you think about it, even the longest of lucid dreams do not normally go on for longer than 10-20minutes and not many people have multiple lucids every night.

So, to sum up my question: is it a good idea to sleep 3-4hours (or maybe less) a night?

Having tried sleeping 3/4 hours in a row for a couple of days, I don't know how feasible the idea is but I know I'm tired at any point of time and dead tired way before my sleeping time. Maybe sleep is not important to you, but going without sleep for a day or two will show how hazardous it is to stay awake all the time. You'll be collapsing everywhere.

I don't think sleeping is a waste of time, oversleeping is. Sleeping is a good way for my consciousness to rest, considering that it has been working very hard in the day by overthinking everything. And I think we rest better with our eyes closed than with our eyes opened. Our eyes need to rest too.

And I think I probably need about 9 hours of sleep everyday. I need more as I grow older because of my bad sleeping pattern, making me tired at all the wrong times.

Why would you think sleeping is a waste of time? It's not like I'm doing anything meaningful when I'm awake.

My uncle is a doctor and long ago we were having a good conversation about Sleeping and REM Periods...

He told me about one research that showed that the REM Period is when our brain is converting our Short Memory (Things that happened in last hours, in the last day) to Definite Memory (Things that happened last week, last month or even 10 years ago).

They took 2 groups of people, the first one were sleeping and living their lives normaly, the 2nd group were being awake everytime they went into a REM period...
After 2 weeks, the 2nd groupd had almost no memory about the things that happened some days or weeks before.

Remember, the biggest part of your REM Periods are concentrated in the last time of sleep (after 4,5 hours usually).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Carrot

Why would you think sleeping is a waste of time? It's not like I'm doing anything meaningful when I'm awake.

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I just think doing anything is more meaningful than lying still like a dead person (but that's just me). So the body actually requires such a long period of time to carry out the rejuvenation process?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ThePieMan

I just think doing anything is more meaningful than lying still like a dead person (but that's just me). So the body actually requires such a long period of time to carry out the rejuvenation process?

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I honestly think my unconscious is working like mad every night because I get a ton of dreams, but it's another story whether do I recall them when I wake up, depending on how preoccupied my conscious is with waking life. So I wouldn't consider that I'm just lying like a dead person when I'm asleep.

You could try a polyphasic sleep schedule, though it would take time to adjust and you need to be strict with your naps. However, you can get by on just over 2 hours of sleep if you do it really strictly. I don't know if this is good for long term health though.

During your naps, because you're going straight to REM, I guess you could use them to WILD each time. Once you've mastered it, you're pretty much guaranteed at least one lucid per day since you have multiple attempts.

^Hey, you're back :) Welcome back!!!

Yes, I have read about polyphasic sleeping before but I also hate napping. I basically hate 1 lucid everyday so I'm pretty content with that; I just don't want to have to sleep so long everyday.