Quote:
Originally Posted by nickynoodles  Hi Lena,
I posted something like this before to people doing 'up at 5' 30 day trials...
The fact is, humans need about 7 hours sleep a night to remain healthy. If you don't get this, you build up a 'sleep debt' which carries over from day to day. You end up feeling more and more tired. There is plenty of research on sleep to back those two statements up.
If you want to get up a 5am, you need to be asleep at about 10. Which, for me, is way too early. So the compromise I came to was to sleep for 7 hours. I set an alarm 7 hours later than I go to bed (unless I *have* to be up for something). This usually means I'm up at 6:15, and I never have to nap.
I realised that just because Steve goes to bed early and gets up at 5, doesn't mean it a good fit for everyone. If you're needing naps, your body is desperately trying to make up its ~7 hours. So my advice is to find a 7 hour 'time slot' that's right for you, and you can be satisfied that you're not 'wasting' any time over-sleeping. |
Thanks for your suggestion, Nickynoodles. There have also been a lot of studies done on the benefits of naps. Furthermore, I believe that it was quite natural for our human ancestors to sleep short periods of time. Mothers needed to take care of their children in the middle of the night, and hunters needed to watch out for predators. I've never seen any studies, concluding that a block of 7 hours is better than 5 or 6 hours with a nap. It might be conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom is often simply a habit on mass scale. There have been a lot of geniuses and successful individuals, who required a lot less than 6 hours of sleep.
Also, by your logic, I would be feeling more and more tired with each day of my trial, and I found it to be quite the opposite; I feel more and more energetic.