The Myth of the eight hour sleep

I almost always have difficulty getting to sleep for my first sleep in the autumn, spring and winter, mainly because my brain is humming from work, but I only occasionally have difficulty getting to sleep for my second, third or fourth sleeps.

 

I can never just lie in bed and fall asleep. It doesn't happen for me, the only time it does if I was extremely exhausted from more than 2 days of no sleep or something. I never got how people just lie down and fall asleep just doesn't happen for me. Sometimes I feel extremely tired and think ok this is it I'm going to enjoy sleep tonight. Then I find I'm just lying in bed, thinking or trying to sleep, I end up giving up after 1-2 hours. Others I think ok this will be a good sleep! Then I wake up thinking that must have been a long one? Only to find it was 2-3 hours etc.

 

I must add, I nap quite a bit, for example at work it isn't unknown for me to go into the meeting room at lunch time for a 20-40 min nap. Even though I'm not fully asleep and aware of everything going on around me, I wake up feeling extremely refreshed.

Edit: One more thing, when I'm not driving or taking the train from work, I sometimes choose to take the bus which takes 50 mins to an hour 15 depending on traffic, I choose to do this on days where I wish to nap. It is also where I get a lot of reading done!

 

It's mainly because I'm usually working right up until I go to bed. Generally speaking if I'm working to a continuously updated jobs list I sleep better as my brain isn't wondering if I've forgotten something. These days I'll read something non work related on paper to switch out of work mode.

 

ok, i am massively bored and my pc is having massive RAM issues, so i'm going to go sleep now (having been awake about 22 hours, i think? too sleepy to do math. woke up 4:30 am, going to bed just before 11 pm). will report on waking time, physical state and energy levels sometime after waking.

 

In some historical finds, it is said many great people slept less.

What really boogles me is when people think they are getting more or less sleep at the change of "Daylight Savings Time"

 

Indeed.

 

*yaaaaaawn*

*wakes up*

got a bit over 8 hours of sleep, in 2 blocks because i woke up at night to attend to nature's call (didn't check the exact time, though), and taking a fair bit of time to wake up, finally getting off the bed at around 8 am. so yeah, bathroom break aside, count me as an 8+ hour sleeper.

 

for me, 8 hours is key. makes me so much more productive in general and allows me to train, work, deal with my family, etc.

 

Personally, I don't sleep at all well. I've been prescribed zopiclone from time to time, which would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that the bloody stuff is addictive. I'm now off it and sleeping reasonably well- I sort of fade in and out of consciousness the whole night, but manage to get in 6 hours of sleep, I would estimate. We'll see how the 20 rep squats affect things

 

i sleep little, i work nights and do like a good night out.

i wouldnt say i wasnt putting 100% into my training, i was up at 530 this morn squatting and sprinting, and probably wont get to bed till one or two. i'd love to be able to sleep more but thats just the way life is, i still get in 7-10 sessions a week and make progress.

its next on my list of issues to address, i suffer night terrors and other stuff too, ZMA worked wonders but now triggers sleep paralysis so i'm back to square one.


arnold used to be out on the hoy most nights with columbo upto their legendary antics and womanising, food for thought.

 

I think it's bizarre when people say they wake in the night (like jwt).
For me...I go to sleep... 7-8 hours later I wake up with no memory of what happened in between. Have done for as long as I can remember.
Of course becoming a parent has knocked that on the head and I really feel it when my sleep is disturbed.

Ideally I think I'd have 8 hours of sleep at night and then another 1-2 in the afternoon.

From what I see of tribal societies they tend to sleep when they can. If nothing's happening they have a little nap. They get up in the night to tend fires etc.

 

yep when I was younger (in my mid late twenties) I worked on an ambulance crew and the hours were all night shifts for the most part. So your sleep was never what it was supposed to be. I've seen screw a lot of guys up over the long run. Though there are people that do seem to function well with those type of rhythms.

I'm guessing you are not thirty yet. I could be wrong... but when I was younger I could go all night and then get my head down for an hour or two and go right back to it. But not anymore lol.... if I get my head down it don't want to get back up.

eh? What is sleep paralysis? It's directly attributable to the ZMA? I've not heard of it before. Interesting.

I don't think I'd ever look at him as any type of role model for anything.

 

I don’t know how to multi quote but:

Yeah my age is clearly a big thing, I in no way plan on living like this as I get older.

Sleep paralysis is when you wake through the night but you can’t move at all, pretty freaky loll, apparently it something to do with the serotonin not displacing in time or something similar. It is terrifying the first few times, now I have my own ways of dealing with it and pulling myself out of it. Hallucinations and the like aren’t uncommon as your mind struggles to understand why an earth your body can move

I don’t know if its directly attributed with ZMA, but the product I’ve always used recently added copper which seems to be the ingredient that aggravates things as I it didn’t happen with the old product (infact it reduced the occurrence of the paralysis)

My brother shares many of my sleep issues, I recently gave him a handful of the caps and he experienced the same symptoms, not exactly a clinical trial but it was enough for me to decide to stop using the product.

Funnily enough I played around last night and took 1/3 of the dose and didn’t experience full paralysis but could feel myself falling in (hard to explain to people who don’t experience it, you sometimes slowly drop in, you can feel a rushing in your head and stuff) and then it was a tough effort to move, like my limbs where in treacle.

Tempted to look for a product without copper have a small experiment, although I doubt I’ll have my brother as a willing participant ever again!!

Awww common now, arny is a cool guy! Some of the storys from him and columbos nights out are hilarious I think!

 

i'm with you pa. the kids knock me out. they're both down by 8. i'm down by 10 usually and am completely out until 5:30-6. i can't imagine not being able to get at least 7 1/2 hours a night with kids. and ideally, would love to take another nap in the afternoon. work gets in the way though. on the weekends i'm tempted to also take a nap when the kids are napping, but just too much to do so it's rare.

when i look at the sleep habits of really successful people i know personally, they're pretty much sleep nazis and make sure to get at least 8 hours per night. some of them actually do cat nap in the afternoon to freshen up for the rest of the day.

 

I find naps to be dangerous. If you keep them to a strict 1 hour or around an hour and 15 min. then when you wake up your refreshed and really switched on... but any longer than that and I always wake up super groggy and feeling like I should have just stayed asleep. Usually if my nap runs over.. it's a sure sign of not enough sleep.

As well - as much as most of my life I was a night owl... I'm actually far more productive when up just before dawn. This time of year that means about 5am. Psychologically it makes a HUGE difference in my day. Ironically for years and years that was the time I was going to sleep. But once I started training hard - especially the anaerobic stuff... I had to get my head down early and up early. Anaerobic and late nights just don't mix.

 

I bet if I was able to nap more (and regularly) I'd end up sleeping about 5-6 hours between 1-7 am and then another 1.5 hours at around 4pm.
Split the day into two productive periods rather than one.

 

Yeah that split schedule isn't far off what people in many latin American countries do with a siesta. It's not a half bad way to live. It's also something of a thing in Thailand given the heat at around noon time.

 

greece is the same way.