My dad's one of those lucky guys who did 5 hours a night his entire career (probably going back to his Navy days at least). Now that he's retired, he's a bit more leisurely and sleeps until 6:30 or so (instead of 4:50!) but often I receive emails from him at 1 or 2am, and we'll easily stay up half the night chatting when I'm visiting. He's one of the healthiest 79 year olds you'll ever meet, and not due to a particularly great diet or exercise (though both are fine in his case; he's just not a health nut). The thing that always made me jealous about him is not so much his ability to thrive on less sleep than most of us, but his ability to wake up. One beep from a digital watch alarm and he's out of bed, feet on the floor. I can't wake up to save my life. But then again, I try to get as close to 8h a night as possible, particularly as I've focused more than ever on my health and fitness.

Waking to an alarm is a training thing. You have to make it policy that when the alarm goes off, you're up and out of bed within 10 seconds.

You'll never sleep through an alarm again. It's the snooze button that kills people.

Needing very few hours of sleep is extremely rare. Basically everyone who claims to get along with less than the usual 7-8h of sleep do worse in various cognitive performance tests and most likely will suffer in longer term as well. Matthew Walker writes about this in his excellent book Why we sleep.

Some people may have the ability to drop into deep states of sleep with unusual rapidity where they don't need the extra ramp up and ramp down hours that most of us need so they can make do with 5 hours with the same quality it takes most of us to reach with 8.

I am perfectly refreshed with 5 hours sleep for exactly that reason. I have narcolepsy. Basically I fall asleep immediately and hit REM sleep a minute or two later. That saves the 90 minutes it takes most people need to reach the REM stage. My normal sleeping pattern is in bed at 1am, up before 6am, at work by 7am.

How do you know you go into REM? Do you use any sleep tracking device? Could you please suggest here?

the flipside is you really get a lot of quality time in in your 20s 30s and 40s. Doesn't that count for something? If you sleep five instead of eight hours a night that's actually about two years of additional lifetime even if your lack of sleep kills you at 70 rather than 80, and I'd guess 10 years of life reduction is way too pessimistic of a guess, and it's the bad years at the end you're sacrificing anyway

I'm somewhat serious actually, I'm not convinced that sleeping your youth away is actually a good trade-off. Not to mention that sport, a healthy diet and checkups can probably mitigate the downsides to some degree.

> even if your lack of sleep kills you at 70 rather than 80

If only it were that simple.

There's lifespan, and there's quality of life. Diabetes attacks both.

So, not only will you likely die earlier, you're at far greater risk for developing a degenerative disease - possibly cognitive in nature. Or organ failure. Or amputation. Or blindness. Or all of the above.

And if you don't, you'll still spend your remaining days worrying about it.

Such a shame the subtitle of the article is all about quantity. Quality of life far outweighs quantity, but this subtitle probably serves better as clikckbait.

I'm with you on this. There was over a decade where I regularly stayed up for days on end hacking on projects and just generally studying and learning new things. It's never been a challenge for me to do. If there's something engaging which I'm immersed in, the days just tick by, no drugs/caffeine involved.

Had I not done those projects, I wouldn't be anywhere near as knowledgable as I am today. So far my health and fitness is great, and there doesn't seem to have been any lasting negative effects.

But I make a very conscious effort to avoid pulling all-nighters now which I still naturally will tend towards if immersed in something. Before age 30 though, depending on your physiology and general health/lifestyle, I'm of the opinion that all-nighters can easily be a win.

I think the biggest risk with establishing the productive all-nighter capability earlier in life is later in life when the consequences are more grave you'll still have that tendency. It reminds me of how body-builders or similarly oversized muscular folks often tend to become obese later in life when they can't sustain the physical activity of the past, but of course habitually/pleasurably persist the high intake of calories.

As someone who is getting 5 hours of sleep and travelling to work/working/travelling home every day at the moment (short staffed and busy period), I can guarantee that it is not qualify time. Even if I had a day off, doing anything meaningful with that time would be impossible.

Sleeping 5 hours a night for a few days is doable, but you're going to be a zombie while awake.

Doing this permanetly? No idea how ops father did it, but I imagine I'll have a serious health problem before the weeks out at this rate (only half joking here, actually a little concerned).

>Doing this permanently? No idea how ops father did it, but I imagine I'll have a serious health problem before the weeks out at this rate (only half joking here, actually a little concerned).

I get about 5 to 6 hours per night as well on average and I'm feeling fine. I workout regularly and don't smoke and rarely drink, physically fine as well and don't feel tired.

Your mileage may vary obviously but I think a lot of association of health risk with reduced sleep is probably attributable to unhealthy lifestyles overall (interestingly enough there's also higher associated mortality with excess sleeping)

> I think a lot of association of health risk with reduced sleep is probably attributable to unhealthy lifestyles overall

Even the experts don't really know why, so you're just guessing, and taking a huge risk.

However, the evidence seems to be pointing to physiological damage directly caused by the lack of sleep, and that 7-8 hours is ideal for nearly everyone.

Again, ymmv and my account is anecdotal, but my father was (and is, aside from the diabetes) an extremely healthy person, both in habit and on paper (cholesterol numbers, etc.) That's why his diabetes was such a mystery.

It doesn't seem like you can out-health a lack of sleep any more than you can out-health radiation exposure. And like radiation, the effects may be cumulative.

Interesting.

Howany hours are you working per day? I'm doing 12+ so that's probably adding to the exhaustion factor a lot.

Might be interesting to try this without working insane hours haha.

I sleep terrible during the work week but get good rest on the weekends. Usually only 4-5 hours during the week and work ~10 hours / day. I don't usually feel like a Zombie.

Weekends I get anywhere from 8 to 12+ hours of sleep.

Yes, definitely less than 12 on average. Probably eight or nine. I think that'd burn me out as well.

I understand the sentiment, however I think you’re vastly underestimating the impact it will have on your life.

Diabetes gets joked about a lot - only those that have it understand how utterly shit it is. I assure you the trade off isn’t worth it.

Yep, I was diagnosed with Type 1 in my early 30s. Only good thing about it is that it’ll probably kill me sooner rather than later so I don’t have to live with it as long.

Without being presumptuous, do you know about Sugar Surfing?

Learning this management technique has made a massive difference in the cognitive load of the disease. The toil is still there, but the burden is reduced.

To be honest, I never liked my life in the first place. This has just kind of been the icing on the cake (no pun intended).

Goal is to outlive my cat (he wouldn’t understand if I was gone) and then just see what happens. Figure I can make it 5 more years or so.

Yeah it’s tough!

Meditation is a great tool to help deal with the sense that life is meaningless. Good luck - I hope you find your way :)

Yeah thanks. If I meditate enough maybe my pancreas will work, I won’t be worthless, and there’ll be a reason to get up in the morning.

Sometimes there’s no answer and nothing that will help make things better. I can accept that. Seems to be other people who can’t.

For what it's worth, most of the advice I've heard about diet with regards to typeI diabetes is garbage (the typeII advice was always better). It took more than a year for an engineering friend of mine who specializes in signal processing to convince his girlfriend to ignore her doctor's dieting advice, and her blood sugar, and health in general, improved greatly as a result.

Basically his take on it is that typeI diabetics target the wrong thing. They're told to eat a high carb diet and estimate the amount of insulin they need to modulate their blood sugar. His take was that you should take a consistent amount of insulin more regularly, while eating a fattier more protein heavy diet, occassionally using fast carbs to bring up low blood sugar. The fat and protein will tend to lower the glycemic index of food, so you'll get less spikes, and more importantly less ringing of your blood sugar, which can lead to taking too much insulin (ringing is a signal processing term which describes the phenomenon of what tends to happen when you slam a signal high or low, where the signal will oscillate around an upper or lower value until the signal settles on the new value). Basically the goal is to have a more stable, and more predictable blood sugar level throughout the day. Also, when taking blood sugar measurements, taking multiple measurements minutes apart will tell you whether you're on the rising side or the falling side of a peak, and can give you a better idea as to whether more insulin is needed, or if it'll make you crash since you're already coming down.

To sum up, the slower the carbs you eat, the better, also fat and protein slow down carbs as well. Also, eating carbs to bring up blood sugar is superior to taking (more) insulin to bring down blood sugar.

Anyways, good luck to you. I'm sorry life is sucking for you right now (and historically).

Meditating won’t make your pancreas work. I’m not suggesting that. What it will give you is a reason to get up in the morning and it will boost you self worth.

I wish I could transfer experience, but I can’t, so all I can say is try it for 6 weeks and prove me wrong.

I knew multiple people who attempted sort of this and they tended to be more irritable and sort-of-dumber while trying this.

I recall reading that if you sleep less then six hours per night for more then two weeks straight, then the impact on your reflexes, attentiveness and performance is as if you would be permanently under alcohol influence. You may feel good, but impact is measurable.

“Quality” is subjective

I don't doubt that it is, but if we would ask a hundred people if they would want to spend time in their 20s, 30s or 40s again I think we would both agree that the answer would be pretty clear, not to mention that most professional activity, such as entrepreneurship, scientific or career advancement occurs in that period of life.

> most professional activity, such as entrepreneurship, scientific or career advancement occurs in that period of life

entrepreneurship and scientific advancement? Meh. Lots of evidence there are sweet spots for that well into your 50s and beyond.

Would you rather work an extra decade but live healthily into your 80s or 90s - or try to cram it all in so you can retire unhealthy and miserable in your 50s with your life cut short and dying before you reach 70?

I know that's not always the exact trade-off, but I'd rather get my full eight in every night and work productively into my 60s as a healthy person.

The idea that work and relaxation are two extreme, distinct periods of life makes sense for a coal miner, but most of us here, fortunately, as "knowledge workers," have the luxury to weave the two together until we get dementia.

He wasn't overweight, or living on pizza, candy and soda? I ask because people with that sort of attitude, in my experience, tend to take shortcuts on diet as well.

He was a health nut before it was popular.

Lifted weights, ran nearly every day, ate a Mediterranean diet, low body fat, trim waist, healthy body weight, and a decent amount of muscle. He also did not eat much during the workday, so was effectively unintentionally doing intermittent fasting as well.

Ironically, one of his reasons for sleeping less was to have time to fit exercise into his hectic schedule.

His diabetes manifested as unexplained weight loss and muscle wasting.

So, no, he was not your "typical" diabetes patient.

Staying in low fat percentage range for long time can f up your hormonal and other systems. Not saying its the case here but something to take in considerations for those staying lean naturally

Yeah, if you're a bodybuilder or marathon runner carrying a single digit body fat percentage - which is not something the average person is going to "accidentally" do.

Everyone else is probably safe trying to get as lean as possible so long as they're not malnourished.

10-15% and you have somewhat defined sixpack. Lower range of that continuously naturally and you might have yourself a problem. You only have to be somewhat enthusiastic about fitness and watch what you eat to get there. Not that uncommon these days

Citation for 10% being dangerously low?

15% is pretty damn flabby though. Unless you have a very unique body composition and putting your fat into say your legs and butt (like women typically do) youll def have a soft doughnut around your waistline and no way you have six pack abs. Its more in the below 10% bf when you actually can start to dream about the 6pack if you actually have the muscle.

You've seen some misrepresented data. You commonly see fit people saying they have 6 or 8% fat % when they are closer to +12%. Most methods to determinate fat percentage are hilariously inaccurate. Look it up.

15% and you see hints of sixpack (clear outline) for most people who train.

I'm have Type 1 Diabetes (the autoimmune kind) and when I don't sleep or exercise properly, my blood sugar is at least 2X harder to manage. Its far more unpredictable and inconsistent.

In a weird way, its nice to have my body make these failures blatantly evident, rather than just hiding it behind a working pancreas and then dropping dead at random 15 years earlier than I should.

Diabetes is known as a/the major driver of heart disease

“Those identified with cardiovascular disease, not identified with diabetes, are simply undiagnosed."

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52faa95ee4b0b0a74811f...

> Don't screw around. Get your sleep.

Not always an option. My body wants to sleep during the day and be awake during the night. My boss does not agree with this schedule so I have to show up at the office when it's still light out. The end result is that I get maybe 5-6 hours of sleep a night. I don't see a way around this as I unfortunately need to have a job to survive.

I'm sorry you're being downvoted, but this is the case for the vast majority of people. There are probably a variety of interventions you can try: therapy, meditative practice, adjustments to diet and exercise habits, and dietary supplements.

Even if those things worked, it's still not my natural day/night rhythm so I'm not sure if that would actually benefit me (has this ever been researched?).

Interesting. I had a pre-diabetes marker read high on an annual blood test a few years ago. It has not reappeared since. I wonder if I just hadn’t slept much the week beforehand.

A1C is a two- to three-month average, so poor sleep over the past quarter of a year could affect it, afaik.

That was the one, and come to think of it we still had a baby that wasn’t sleeping too regularly right around that time.

Sleeping medication isn't always the right solution for people with inconsistent sleep schedules. Antihistamines which are not particularly addictive(compared to most drugs) and used for sleep activate the h1 receptor which promotes weight gain and diabetes.

Antihistamines are generally H1 antagonists, not agonists. They block the action of the histamine receptor(s); they don't activate them. They tend to stimulate appetite as a side-effect. "Prescription H1 antihistamine use did not significantly increase the OR for elevated glucose, insulin, or lipid levels." [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3221329/#R6

No offense to your father, but where would anyone get the idea that this is a good thing to do?

Well, we now know a lot more about the health effects of lack of sleep than we did in like, the 1970s, which is when he started. And, I imagine if you're otherwise very healthy and "acclimate" to the short sleep schedule, you don't really notice the signals that you're running on a deficit.

I think people also thought that there were wider ranges of acceptable sleep, depending on the person, and it's turning out that's not true.

All of this "no, really, literally everyone needs eight hours of sleep every single night of their life no exceptions or it will actually kill you dead" has only come to light in the past two decades.

Going by the comments here, a lot of people think this way.

Yeah, hopefully people will take this as a wake-up call and start sleeping properly. Being obsessive about your health probably won't do much good, but I think you could ask any aging multimillionaire about whether it's worth more to take reasonable care of yourself or to work a little bit harder. Unless you are on the steets, money just isn't worth that much compared to good health. And you don't really need to kill yourself to make it to an UMC income in most circumstances if your IQ is around the hackernews average (my opinion)

Lots of people feel like if you could pul off 4 hrs sleep a night you should. Donald Trump has been touting his ability to do it for decades.

He’s a specimen of good mental and physical health too!

He's not bad for 71. If he read more and did more than just watch cable news, he'd be pretty sharp imo. My point was it was/is a holy grail of sorts. Not many could 'pull it off,' but if you manage to...

Not bad? He is obese and incoherent.

His reported go-to order from McDonalds (and he loves to eat fast food) is "two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fishes, and a large chocolate shake." Do you want to go ahead and calculate the calories on that meal or shall I?

Even if he were in good health, it would be in spite of his lifestyle, not because of it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-mcdonalds-order-review...

Kind of worthless to point out unless he's doing this on a regular basis. That slideshow certainly doesn't mention it.

I absolutely binge at McDonalds too, and more impressively than Trump, but I go a handful of times per year. That's the whole treat.

You couldn't use my receipt to pinpoint my physical health.

Because you think he would eat a healthy meal otherwise and only has that kind of junk from McDonalds?

> “on Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and Diet Coke.”

> Trump was also apparently demanding of the in-flight snack selection. The plane was regularly stocked with “Vienna Fingers, potato chips, pretzels, and many packages of Oreos because Trump, a renowned germaphobe, would not eat from a previously opened package,” the Post reports.

https://www.eater.com/2017/12/4/16733356/trump-fast-food-die...

I'm sure he's such a healthy eater even though people who have worked for him say otherwise, that and the fact that he is obese.

http://kwotable.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_6083-1280...

How can you offer an opinion to the contrary when you don't take 5 seconds to google "fast food" and "trump".

He even forced the US taxpayer to pay for golf cart rentals because he refuses to walk between holes. That's about the lowest-impact type of exercise you could get.