Poll How much time do you need to sleep ?

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Difficult to say, but 5-6 hours can sometimes be doable for me, and 7 is generally right down the middle of the road. I used to be able to sleep in, but after I started working, I usually wake up with a start if I sleep in past 9-10 AM.

Actually to get even more detailed, Being back in school, I programmed a quick 'n dirty program to act as an alarm clock. The user types in a time in seconds, punches enter, then the program counts down to 0. At 0 it plays a sound, specifically a painfully awful sound that I synthesized in Audacity. (I think its 3000 hz sawtooth, & something lower added with it. In any case, the sound has an awful metallic sensation to it & could probably raise the dead)

I currently sleep 26 kiloseconds per night.

 

[romanasul]

I usually get 9-11 hours during my heavy training routine (bodybuilding). It's pretty difficult at times because I also have to study for engineering subjects which take a lot of time. But when I don't work out I noticed that 7-8 hours is usually sufficient.

 

[statisticsnerd]

8 hours.

How much time do I actually sleep? Generally 7 hours during the work week and 8-9 hours on the weekends.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

May well you ask. Because of a very unusual work timetable, what I need, when, where, and how much I get are all different stories.

First, I work 6 out of every 7 days. Work shifts can be up to 12 hours long (under certain conditions, every once in a while, 14 hours), though average is 10 hours, and never less than 8 hours. A "day off" is not necessarily a day, so to speak, but 24 hours counted from my last "sign off", and I have on occasions had no real full day off for a three week long stretch.

Then there are the times themselves; sometimes I have to get up at 2 AM, and only a couple of days later I may have to be up until well past 2 AM, so there is no way of establishing a regular sleep pattern, or even a way of devising a "creeping" circadian sleep pattern that fits requirements.

Then there is me with my hobbies (C coding, guitar, drawing and 3D computer art, reading and, at present, working on a homebuilt amplifier and doing some much needed maintenance on my car). And, of course, there is the continuous study of a stack of manuals that, on top of each other, are as tall as I am.

The consequence, I am a raving insomniac, and it is a serious problem. I get about 3 hours real sleep any time I can in a 24 hour period. I wake up with starts, fumbling for the clock to see what time it is, then cannot get back to sleep. I live on Monster and Red Bull mixed with Gatorade, on ice, alternated with black coffee. I often do not sleep in my own bed, but a hotel somewhere. Between all of this, my digestive system is done for, too, as there is also no way to establish a regular eating pattern, and I have dreadful IBS. I am aware, also, that I am not the only one experiencing these problems in the company.

That said, what recharges me the most is a good hour of tranquility, head phones on with some cool music at medium volume, in alpha wave sleep, a weird pre-sleep state like a hypnotic trance in which every note sounds so bizzare; watery, and profound, apparently full of hidden meanings.

For the final word, I will borrow some lyrics from a recently rediscovered song;

"I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years..."

I am at least glad that some people are getting what they need, rest-wise....:lol:

 

[garyw]

And the BBC have an article on sleep today, they seem fascinated about it recently!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24444634

 

[MattBaker]

I always try to get 9 hours if I'm on a regular schedule.
On the other hand when I'm not working and don't have any social matters, so only free time, I'm shifting towards 20-13 or something thereabout.
Sometimes I also just stay away for something like 30 hours or even more, just because I'm not really tired (If you keep constant brain activity that works for me), which is followed by really long periods of sleep. When I still lived at home I can remember to have slept 32 hours.

 

[Proximus]

I seem to be in the same boat as Gary.
8 to 9 hours is all good but if I sleep for 10 or 12 I get a fuzzy headache :facepalm:

 

[goaowonk]

5 h for me, I fall asleep as soon as I'm on the bed, and in weekends it's icreased to ~8 h, but if I wake up later I'll be in a terrible mood.

My let's go to the bed hours are ~0130-0200, with several and usual extensions.

 

[Shifty]

I do best with 7, though can easily get away with long stretches of 5-6. When I was in the Navy, I got less than 4 on average, with rotating shifts, for months at a time. But, after a few months I started to be dull (no creativity, no curiosity; my wife noticed the difference) and paranoid. (I had my one and only panic attack.)

Interesting note: I wake up at 5am on the dot every day. My internal clock is accurate and reliable enough that I stopped using an alarm clock a couple years ago. Haven't been late once.

 

[Izack]

Interesting note: I wake up at 5am on the dot every day. My internal clock is accurate and reliable enough that I stopped using an alarm clock a couple years ago. Haven't been late once.

Heh, same here. Mine can even be reset or switched off for certain days on the evening beforehand. Currently getting up without fail at 7:27, just before my roommate's alarm.

 

[Eccentrus]

7-9 hours does it for me, can barely function with 5 or fewer, with 2 you'll find a train wreck of a person trying to squeeze out every free minute to sleep.

 

[statickid]

ooo wow! look at that sweet text book bell curve!! congratulations ladies and gentlemen, we are apparently quite "normal" :yes: :thumbup:

 

[N_Molson]

ooo wow! look at that sweet text book bell curve!! congratulations ladies and gentlemen, we are apparently quite "normal"

Yes. And the fact I asked to select the upper choice for non-exact values explains, IMHO, that it is a bit crushed downwards. If you move each line 1 line upwards, it is almost perfectly gaussian.

 

[Scav]

This curve reminds me of graphing functions in algebra.

8-9 hours for me, give or take. Anything less than that, I turn into Godzilla. Only with less drool.

And I'm normal? Aww nuts . . .

 

[Capt_hensley]

8+ hours. I'm on Ambien 12.5 CR. I have short term memory commitment issues, Sleep Apnea, High BP, overweight, and a bad back.

I frequently get only about 6 hours (except weekends)

Retirement is just around the corner.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Yes. And the fact I asked to select the upper choice for non-exact values explains, IMHO, that it is a bit crushed downwards. If you move each line 1 line upwards, it is almost perfectly gaussian.

Well, I am glad you mention that. Under those conditions you could push my vote up to 4 hours, by round up, but not including my "psychedelic siestas". It really would be scraping the barrel to include them, even though I consider them very important. The funny thing is, if I only get two days running in which the programming is of about the same duration and similar start time, I begin to recover some sleep. Example the last two days; night before last three and a quarter hours. Last night, four hours ten minutes, and I feel as fresh as a daisy as a result! Unfortunately, tomorrow is back to square one, with a program that does not even overlap the times of the last two at any point.

Historically, I have never been much of a sleeper, however. 5 - 6 hours was always more than enough, even in "normal" times.

 

[PennyBlack]

I get between 6 to 7 hours on average. Sometimes I do my best hobby work and get the most from gameplay at night. She's asleep, so I get no distractions and make sure I'm in bed before dawn, that's usually the time when she is easily disturbed. I brought thicker curtains for our bedroom when we moved into our flat, so she wouldn't have a clue as to the time I turned in during the summer. :thumbup:
On nights like those I have a mere 2 to 3 hours before she wakes me. I do that a couple of times a week if I can without any negative effects on my daytime performance or mood.
But I also get so involved in my hobby/gameplay, I forget the time and she finds me sitting here when she climbs out of her coffin and goes ballistic at me. Many times she has pulled the plug on me and it feels like she's just disconnected my life support.

I love my PC. How the hell did I ever manage before it's invention.? What did I do.?
I can't remember anymore.

 

[cljohnston]

I'd read in a book on screenwriters that they like to get up at 3 a.m. to do their writing, because "the rest of the world is asleep", so I decided to see if it works the same for reading (since I'm not one of those who likes to read themselves to sleep at night).
Happy to say that it does — I read more novels in that first year than in the previous ten!
I soon got into a 6-hour sleep cycle (haven't needed an alarm clock in 15 years!) that ran 9 p.m. — 3 a.m., but somehow that migrated back to 6 p.m. — Midnight.
I do take naps, though.

 

[garyw]

I came across this article today all about our need for REM sleep and the lack of rem sleep being a major factor in what killed Michael Jackson. Some parts of the article are quite interesting -> http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/21/showbiz/jackson-death-trial/

Jackson may be the only human ever to go two months without REM -- rapid eye movement -- sleep, which is vital to keep the brain and body alive. The 60 nights of propofol infusions Dr. Conrad Murray said he gave Jackson to treat his insomnia is something a sleep expert says no one had ever undergone.

"The symptoms that Mr. Jackson was exhibiting were consistent with what someone might expect to see of someone suffering from total sleep deprivation over a chronic period," Dr. Charles Czeisler, a Harvard Medical School sleep expert, testified Friday at the wrongful-death trial of concert promoter AEG LIve.

The symptoms documented by e-mails among show producers and testimony from his chef, hairstylist and choreographers included his inability to do standard dances or remember words to songs he sang for decades, paranoia, talking to himself and hearing voices, and severe weight loss, Czeisler said.

"I believe that that constellation of symptoms was more probably than not induced by total sleep deprivation over a chronic period," he testified.

Propofol disrupts the normal sleep cycle and offers no REM sleep, yet it leaves a patient feeling refreshed as if they had experienced genuine sleep, according to Czeisler.

If the singer had not died on June 25, 2009, of an overdose of the surgical anesthetic, the lack of REM sleep may have taken his life within days anyway, according Czeisler's testimony Friday.

Lab rats die after five weeks of getting no REM sleep, he said. It was never tried on a human until Murray gave Jackson nightly propofol infusions for two months.

Translating that to a human, Czeisler estimated, Jackson would have died before his 80th day of propofol infusions. Murray told police he had given it to him for 60 nights before trying to wean him off it on June 22, 2009 -- three days before his death.

I also liked the next quote

Czeisler -- who serves as a sleep consultant to NASA, the CIA and the Rolling Stones -- testified Thursday that the "drug-induced coma" induced by propofol leaves a patient with the same refreshed feeling of a good sleep but without the benefits that genuine sleep delivers in repairing brain cells and the body.

Quite a list of clients!