This was originally posted on The Wired blog, written by Daniel Dumas You may more sleep than you think.
Research by Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders Center found that people who slept eight hours and then claimed they were "well rested" actually performed better and were more alert if they slept another two hours.
That figures. Until the invention of the light bulb (damn you, Edison!), the average person slumbered
10 hours a night.
Night owls are more creative.
Artists, writers, and coders typically fire on all cylinders by crashing near dawn and awakening at the crack of noon.
In one study, "evening people"
almost universally slam-dunked a standardized creativity test. Their early-bird brethren struggled for passing scores.
Rising early is stressful.
The stress hormone
cortisol peaks in your blood around 7 am. So if you get up then, you may experience tension. Grab some extra Zs! You'll wake up feeling less like Bert, more like Ernie.
Do you agree with any of these assessments? How many hours of sleep do you get? If your get more than eight hours, are you refreshed or sluggish?
Comments (66)
if i slept for 8 hrs, my body felt tired.
now i am accustomed to having 6 hours sleep only. i'll wake up automatically.
my sleep hours right now jumbled very frequently. working in night shift, one would sleep in the day, somehow or rather, i may be awake for 24 hours without sleep and yet perform my shift.
I only get 5 to 6 hours sleep max. The last time I remember a long sleeping habit was 9 years ago. Does that also count as sleeping disorder I'm so used to 5/6 its seems normal.
I can't say much about the last two points...
But for the first one, I can say that when I can consistently get around eight hours of sleep, I do feel more sluggish if I get more sleep.
However, if I've been sleep-deprived for a while, like during most of the school year, a 10-12 hour splurge is really helpful.
During school, I get maybe 4-5 per night.
Now that I'm on break I won't go to sleep until 6ish, but I'll sleep until 2 or 3. It's nice
OH, wow. I agree. I knew I worked this way, but I didn't know it was scientifically studied in lots of people! I'm a serious night owl and seriously creative in multiple areas. Hooray for sleep!
Unfortunately I usually get only 7-8 hours. Any less and I start to fall asleep at inconvienient times. If I get more and I do much, much better, but usually when I get 9 or 10 hours I'm just trying to "catch up" for missed sleep. And I also usually have trouble falling and staying asleep if I get 10 hours more than two nights in a row.
@Kiralalanceti@xanga - "i always thought it was the sleep deprivation pushing one's mind to an almost hallucinatory point, to be honest."
I thought so too. It seems natural... I thought maybe it was my fried brain trying to get me to accomplish some dreamlike processes in waking time or something.
I usually go to bed between 4 and 6 am. I get well over 12 hours. But, that could just be because of depression. So, I guess what I'm trying to say I'd rather get up early than have nothing to wake up for. Than sleep my life away.
I usually sleep between 8-10 hours. I don't feel a difference either way. I don't like sleeping past 9 though, if I sleep any later than that I feel like I've wasted my morning.
normally i need to get 6 hours in to be functional
doc says get at least 8
so i try to get 7....right in the middle
Damn, I need 10-12 hours a sleep a day! I am not a morning person; never will be and never want to be. If I can be asleep forever, I would. I love it that much. Apparently, it's good for your heart if you have heart problems.
Thank you. I did that RealAge.com quiz, and they gave me a higher age because it said I sleep too much. I think that's bull. Because I look 10 years younger than I am, so why's that? Huh? Huh? Huh?
If I am not working a night shift I get about 6-8 hours. I still have to take a nap around 10am until 1pm. It's hard not to nap.
I've always been a night owl and do well on 10 hours of sleep. However, those two things are not usually compatible with a regular full-time job. When I was working, I couldn't fall asleep in time to get enough sleep to work well (or get there on time!). It was miserable. "Monster" drinks and caffeine pills were all that kept me awake some days. Now I'm looking for a part-time job and hopefully I can find one either in the afternoon or evening! The one good thing about being unemployed is that I get plenty of sleep!
I found that in my last year of college not having an alarm clock to wake up to was really nice. refreshing I'm not forcing myself awake. sleep at 2am, wake up by 9am. that was all the sleep I needed and I could do naps in the afternoon, if needed. thank you 11am classes
I feel like the more I sleep the more sluggish I am when I wake up. The less sleep the better, somewhere inbetween 7 and 8 hours of sleep.