Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist
Great article. Sleep is important. I liked that the article went out of its way to dispel several of the "but four hours is fine" myths. Two of my favorites:<p>>some people are short sleepers: You can do a test to find out if you have genetic makeup that makes you a short sleeper. That’s rare, though, so by and large, people are not getting enough sleep.<p>Blunt and effective. The outliers who really do fine with just a few hours are just that: outliers. Congratulations if you're one of them, but your genetic gift doesn't make the need for sleep any less real for the rest of us, and talk about these outliers is mostly a distraction.<p>>I normally get around six to seven hours of sleep a night and feel fine. But is that just because how I feel has become my normal operating mode, and I could really be functioning at a higher level?<p>>Right. That’s like the fish and the fish bowl phenomenon: The fish doesn’t know that he’s in the fishbowl, nonetheless that he’s in water. Also, when you’re sleep deprived, research has shown that you’re really bad at being able to tell that you’re sleep deprived.<p>To me that's a great analogy. Most people can grasp the concept of having a problem and dealing/coping/adapting so long that they don't realize they have the problem. It makes sense that this phenomenon can apply to sleep as well.<p>Intellectually, I know I need to consistently sleep longer. If only knowing that and then acting on it were an easier gap to bridge (as I write this just past midnight...).