Can you function with only a few hours sleep a night?

[monkey jesus]

About 6 hours of unbroken sleep is my minimum.

When my kid was a baby he was awake every couple of hours for feeds/changes etc, this went on for the best part of 3 years. I could get a total of 10 or so hours a night but I was constantly knackered because I wasn't getting one good long period of rest.

Totally worth it, he's a fucking boss.

Before kids I found that cutting back on caffeine really helped, especially not taking any after about 2pm.

Also I find it really hard to sleep directly after gaming, I need a good 30 mins watching TV or reading to cool down.

 

[Ninonybox_v1legacy]

yeah, I have that ability.

 

[Batfred]

I live on about 4-5 hours a day for a fortnight or so and then I will get home one day and sleep for 13 hours sraight till I need to go to work the next day. The cycle then starts again.

It's not good, and being half asian it gives me huge dark rings under my eyes that really show. 24 hours just aren't enough in a day!

 

[babinro]

In high school and university I lived off of 6 hours sleep at the most. I simply had more energy those days and work/school demanded more time out of me in order to be successful.

These days I simply can't function properly under 6 hours sleep. I'll very consistently wake up within 7.5 and 8 hours regardless of how early I fall asleep in the day.

 

[Squeaky]

I normally get 5 hours but iam sleeping in as iv got the a few days of work

 

[OldRat]

Sorry if someone already said this, but the Cracked article the OP's talking about is actually about the Uberman schedule, which is a bit different. Basically, you sleep in short sequences around the day. Half an hour every three hours IIRC. Or possibly five, I forget. The way it works is that you condition your brain to enter REM sleep, the actual sleep you need, immidiately, whereas ordinarily you sleep in different phases and enter REM only a few hours in. Which is why ordinary naps don't really restore you to full functionality. You only get two hours or so of REM sleep every night, the rest is other types of sleep. But with the Uberman schedule, every one of those half-hour spells is full REM. So with the Uberman schedule, you actually get more REM sleep per day, and still have to sleep less.
It apparently works really well, but it's hell getting there (requiring total sleep deprivation for days and all that stuff), and you really do need to sleep every few hours. So it's not exactly for everyone. But I hear that your body starts to follow the rhytm incredibly punctually quite quickly.

But more on topic, yes. I can function only with few (3 to 4) hours of sleep, provided I'm not going to be doing loads of physical excercise or anything too complicated. I do prefer six to eight, which has always been enough (and should be enough for anyone, really, if studies are to be believed).
On a sidenote, sometimes it's easier just not to sleep. If I'd only get an hour or so, I just won't do it. Better to keep some power on instead of trying to recharge for way too short a time. It feels hideously bad trying to wake up from that.

 

[badpun]

I can function on a few hours sleep but i always hate myself for it, prefer to get a good 8-10 hours that usually make wake up fairly well and fuction pretty well during the day

 

[Scarim Coral]

Well last night I had only about 5 or 6 hours sleep were I normally have at least over 7 (the average amount of sleep). I have no idea why it happen to me last night and yet right now I feel perfectly fine.

 

[Kouryuu]

Hmm makes for an interesting read, but this article suggests uncertainty about causal relationships here. (is sleeping too much causing health issues? Or does having health problems cause you to sleep more? - Considering the processes generally attributed to sleep, the latter seems somewhat more likely. But that's difficult to work out empirically.)

yeah, the research is superficial, but even if I wanted, I would not be able to sleep 14 h a day on a daily basis, for me it is not possible, not the sleeping is the killer, but the indicator that shows that you are at risk. The main point is, if for you 8 h sleep is not enough on a daily basis, you should be careful, and watch out for other symptoms, if you catch the "bug" that is responsible early on you will have a bigger chance to live a full and healthy life, here its like taking the body temperature, as a indicator of flu.

 

[Legion]

Yes for several reasons.

The first is that I used to be almost an insomniac, I'd lie in bed for hours each night and struggle to sleep, and as such I didn't get much each night.

The second is that my job requires me to get up at 3:30am and so I get very little sleep each night now due to my "lifestyle". The problem I have the most is if I can't get to sleep for whatever reason (usually noisy people in the house) then I sometimes get as little as 2-3 hours sleep and don't sleep again until the next evening.

 

[Doctor What]

Absolutely not.

I am yawning and drifting off by nine-ish, and I need to be in bed by ten, or I just can't do anything the next day.

 

[Tallim]

I can, and do, function fine on a couple of hours sleep every few days. Not that I like to do that but outside circumstances usually prevent me from sleeping. Single parent with a nasty pain disorder.

 

[Kouryuu]

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the problem is that Rem is not concentrated in a bulk, its split up in many pieces like the picture shows.

The 15 min out of 4h
And 30 min out of 6h
is basicly cheating us out of REM sleep, we are not sleepy but we HAVE NOT HAD the necessary dose of SLEEP. We just used the sleeping pattern to cheat our body to belive we do not need to sleep for some few hours. its done while waking up in the DEEP-sleep

for more info google Sleep Cycles

At first you'll feel terrible and tired all the time. After about two weeks doing that though you'll enter REM immediately once you go to sleep.

http://www.cracked.com/article/127_5-ways-to-hack-your-brain-into-awesomeness/

as I said before, it is possible, but unhealthy.
A normal human who sleeps 8 h a day has a sleep pattern where the sleep splits in 20% REM 30% Deep sleep and 50% in-between phases + smaller yet unclassified sleep stages.
You should Understand that the body need both stages, REM and Deep sleep. the math does not ad up. even if you could increase the efectivnes of sleeping by 50%, you would still miss the smaller stages.

For full understanding read those two articles by Doctor Piotr A. Wozniak, who is researching this theme more then most.

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm#The%20Uberman%27s%20Sleep%20Schedule
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic2010.htm

There is no Healthy way to sleep less then 6 h a day.

 

[binvjoh]

I like to think that I do, which is an important illusion since I usually don't get more than 3-4 hours.

If I do get a good nights sleep I feel amazing though.

 

[CactiComplex]

With the lifestyle I'm leading just now I can get by fine with just three hours of sleep, though whenever I haul my lazy self out of that cycle and start exercising properly and going out that's bumped up to five hours minimum. Six or seven would be ideal, and I only ever manage eight when I'm ill.

 

[spookydom]

I like to think that I do, which is an important illusion since I usually don't get more than 3-4 hours.

If I do get a good nights sleep I feel amazing though.

This is me also. ^

I have had bad insomnia since I was very little. Generaly only sleep 3-4 hours a night now that I am older and don't have a problem with it. Once in a while I sleep for twelve hours straight and wake up feeling like I have super powers.

 

[Mr Pantomime]

I get 8-9 right now, but im starting a new job today, , so I have to be up in 5 1/2 hours. Im actually kinda happy about it. I get sick of sleeping so much.

M/p

 

[fooddood3]

Hi there,
that depends on the application of sleeping style,
you could get through the day(24h) with about 90 Min of sleep, Power sleeping,
15 Min every 4 h, but it is bad for your health(not really good in longer-term)
normal you should get between 4-8 h of sleep a day preferably 6h but not more then 10, because its proven that the longer you sleep, the faster you die.
speaking as a Biologist
Kouryuu

Kinda off-topic, but since you are a biologist, can you tell me what the fuck a platypus is?

 

[Perfice]

as I said before, it is possible, but unhealthy.
A normal human who sleeps 8 h a day has a sleep pattern where the sleep splits in 20% REM 30% Deep sleep and 50% in-between phases + smaller yet unclassified sleep stages.
You should Understand that the body need both stages, REM and Deep sleep. the math does not ad up. even if you could increase the efectivnes of sleeping by 50%, you would still miss the smaller stages.

For full understanding read those two articles by Doctor Piotr A. Wozniak, who is researching this theme more then most.

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm#The%20Uberman%27s%20Sleep%20Schedule
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic2010.htm

There is no Healthy way to sleep less then 6 h a day.

Ah, well I didn't say it'd be healthy. Just like the 'hallucination' thing they had listed on there. Seems understandable, but any hallucination effect always sounds like a bad idea.