What has helped you sleep less?

[jbischke]

I know there's a lot of buzz these days about polyphasic sleep and while I'm not really into that I am interested in things I can do to sleep less and still have the same energy, etc. I definitely know there are things that I can do to require me to sleep more (e.g., eats lots of junk food). Consequently it seems logical that there are things that I can do that will help me sleep less and still function at peak levels. Here are a few things that I think might help:

1. Eat a diet of clean, mostly raw food and either make smoothies or chew food really well - It seems like digestion takes so much energy so if you wolf down a lot of crappy food your body will require more sleep in order to digest all this food.

2. Mediate - An uncluttered mind would result in less stress and probably less need for sleep. On one of Wayne Dyer's programs he talks about one hour of meditation being equal to two hours of sleep (or something like that). Not sure it's that extreme but wouldn't be surprised if advanced meditators need less sleep than most people.

3. Be very passionate about how you spend your days - Throughout my life I find that I sleep less when I'm really excited about what I'm going to be doing the following day. Likewise when I'm feeling stressed about the next day's events or not excited then I tend to stay in bed longer.

I remember hearing on one of Tony Robbins' courses how he sleeps 4-5 hours a night and has boundless energy. Given his diet/fitness/etc. regimen I'm not surprised.

Would love to hear your thoughts...what has helped you to sleep less?

[John Wesley]

Coffee. Though it makes you sleep less in a bad way.

[dor]

get rid of caffine and alcohol - both interrupt normal sleep and the 'deep' rem sleep.
sleep soundly - make sure your sleep space is comfortable - a good matress - or whatever you feel comfortable on can make a differance.

I find that I sleep a lot less in the summer when the weather's nice - could be light/seasonal or just the joy of nice weather.

[Alex]

What you just said about drinking smoothies is genius. I wonder what would happen if we blended all our food, all the time. I'm going to do some research on this and do a one week experiment on myself.

[escapee]

Calories restriction and sugarless / less fruits should help based on my personal experimentation with Dr Bass insight

FRUIT - FRIEND OR FOE - Dr. Stanley Bass: My experiences with fruit

FRUIT AND SLEEP
At one time, in studying the harmful effect of excess carbohydrates and its connection to almost all diseases, even though I had previously considered fresh fruit as a natural and healthy food, I experimented with eliminating it totally from my diet for several weeks. I wanted to find out if the sugar in fruit could be harmful, even though fruit was rich in nutrients, calories, minerals, etc. and highly recommended by most nutritionists and doctors.

At that time I found that I felt alright if I could get at least 8 hours sleep, but then, I felt better with 9 hours, and even better with 10 hours sleep, which I attributed to my advancing age. I received a call from a herbalist who was interested in old rare Natural Hygiene books and all books on health. He visited me and we spent almost 8 hours each day for about 5 days, wherein he chose books and we negotiated prices on each. He purchased half of my library, spending thousands of dollars on these books. Having very little time left to eat, I decided to omit all fruit from my diet and live only on salads, proteins and some fat in one moderate meal. The next day he came early when I had only slept 3 hours.

Usually, if I slept less than 5 hours any night, the next day I would feel fatigued after a few hours. When driving I would get sleepy occasionally and had to be careful to not doze off and when difficult to keep awake, I would put the car to a side and rest my eyes and try to doze for even a few minutes.
I was very surprised to find that I was not tired at all, but full of energy as though I had 9 or 10 hours sleep. This continued for 5 days of book sales, even though many hours were spent daily on boring negotiations on many single books.
I stayed on this diet of no fruit at all for about 3 weeks, finding that I felt good as long as I would get at least 5 hours sleep a night on the average.

[Volunteer]

add to the list of already mentions: sunshine and exercise. obviously there is a fine line with exercise since too much will cause you to require more repairative sleep

[madgeylou]

why is there such an emphasis on wanting to sleep less?

productivity is great but so are dreams!!

[Erki]

Stress is a pretty efficient way of cutting sleep time down...

[Keith]

Originally Posted by escapee

Calories restriction and sugarless / less fruits should help based on my personal experimentation with Dr Bass insight

FRUIT - FRIEND OR FOE - Dr. Stanley Bass: My experiences with fruit

Fruit is full of important vitamins and minerals and it is full of sugar (albeit a generally low-GI one). So it should be eaten - but in moderation.

The recommendation here in Australia is 2 serves of fruit, and 5 serves of veg. per day.

[Nala]

You should sleep as much as your body needs ... no more, no less.

O.K., that's obviously the ideal. But I will say that one of my best doctors once told me that the more you sleep, the more fatigued you will be. The less you sleep, the more energy you will have. I am no doctor and this is obviously not medical advice, but my doc's advice seems to come with the obvious caveat: don't sleep so little that you are sleep deprived. Sleep just enough ... and you should have more than enough energy for the day.

The thing to remember is that this amount varies from person to person. For me, the right amount is probably about 7-7.5 hours. For my S.O., probably 5.5-6.5 hours.

But we (me and my S.O.) tend to sleep the same amount b/c we go to bed at the same time. So he gets too much sleep and doesn't feel as energetic.

Listen to your own body, regardless of when the dogs, children, or your S.O. get up (to the extent that you can, of course).

[Iamsuperman]

Eliminating dairy, i naturally get up 30 minutes before my alarm goes off

[jbischke]

Originally Posted by Nala

You should sleep as much as your body needs ... no more, no less.

I agree with this but also think that the things we do and think during our waking hours greatly affects the amount of sleep we need. There probably are some genetic factors involved here but I'd say that someone who eats really well (lots of raw foods, veggies, etc.), doesn't have much stress and does moderate exercise will almost always need to sleep less than someone who eats poorly (especially a lot of food), is under a lot of stress and doesn't exercise.

I also think one big factor is probably our mindset towards the amount of sleep we need. We've been so conditioned by society to think we need 8 hours or 7 or whatever to be at our best. What if the true number is actually 5 or 3 or 11? The only reason I mention this is that I recall reading a story where people were in an enviroment where they didn't have any sense of time (no daylight cues, no clocks) and they actually ended up sleeping a lot less than normal.

It's an interesting thing to study because if we could figure out a way to be as functional, energetic, healthy by sleeping 6 hours instead of 8 that's over 700 hours of waking time we'd get every year.

And I realize that's kind of the point of polyphasic sleep...

[owls8521]

I think taking digestive enzymes would limit the amount of energy needed to digest food so you'd probably sleep less. I started taking them about a week ago and I just feel better in general.

[jbischke]

Originally Posted by owls8521

I think taking digestive enzymes would limit the amount of energy needed to digest food so you'd probably sleep less. I started taking them about a week ago and I just feel better in general.

Any particular recommendations here?

If one were eating a diet that was 70-80% raw would one still need to take these?

[sgregory]

Anybody else have any ideas? Very interested in this topic right now. How about herbs or supplements that might help? Any other lifestyle changes that might help?

[Adrian]

For me, it's keeping fat intake at about 20% per day (trying not to go over, at all costs) and daily exercise. I tend to skip out on all junk food; the fat I do eat tends to be from things like peanut butter ("good fat" is how you'd put it, I guess!)

Currently I'm battling a cold-sickness of some sort, so... I'm on a fairly random sleeping cycle while my body heals itself.