Providing an India Centric view:
Hard work is almost irrationally idolized here. True Anecdote - I wanted to check out a Car on a Tuesday afternoon, the first thing the Car salesman asked me are you on a holiday today from Work? (it was inconceivable for him that I could take off at 3.30). I was at a talk by a very senior Computer Professional and heard the following boast - "no one in my company puts in less than 10 hours a day". The company he speaks about has 20,000 employees in one location alone. After the talk a ton of people congratulated him for inspiring them to drive their employees to work harder.
The stupidity in those comments just boggles the mind.
My own conclusion: exercise and diet are overrated, I'll still do sleep experiments because I don't want to spend 1/3 of my life unconscious in bed. Things like uberman, everyman, siestas, melatonin supplements, and modifinil are all intriguing.<p>The writing of this entry bugs me. Generalizing from sample size of 1, "confidential sources" (he won't even link to papers apparently already published, all years ago!), and the sentence "For lack of space, I cannot explain here the ideal sleep architecture."<p>Taking the last stat to be true (Sleeping for <=5 hours per night leads to 39% increase in heart disease.) that's still only a change from something like 0.6% to 0.8%. (Initial percent from memory, so it may be off.)
The article does not address the correlation between the amount of stress people endure and the amount of sleep they take.<p>People who pour their lives into work generally tend to have less sleep and be more stressed. So, is it the sleep, the stress, or both that kill people?
Do people who deprive themselves of sleep truly maximize their potential?<p>I, for one, can feel a huge difference in my ability to focus on cognitive challenges when I'm well-rested and I've engineered my environment in such a way that eliminates distraction. Doing truly challenging work well requires peak mental performance. It's hard to see how it's possible to do that if one is actively sabotaging his or her physical and mental machineries.
<i>If you are not getting enough sleep (7 hours)</i><p>Why 7 hours? We're being preached the importance of REM sleep, and yet half the REM sleep of the night typically comes between the 7th and 8th hour.<p>Does anyone know how this reasoning applies to people taking multiple short naps? I had a friend who did this for a semester. What about hyposomniacs? Are they more efficient or is something missing? I have a friend who naturally cannot sleep more than 5 hours a night - he wakes up naturally after 5.<p><i>edit: I wrote apples instead of applies...</i>
Wasn't there some poor kid who passed away of heart failure somewhere in Asia from gaming 24-7, and they blamed it on lack of sleep?<p>I was under the impression that the lethality of sleep deprivation was not something that was widely questioned..<p>On a related note, BBC Horizon has an interesting documentary on sleep and your body clock called The Secret Life Of Your Body Clock.
I don't believe running marathons is considered healthy. Actually any kind of intensive (I don't know the English term for it) sports would be considered not good for longevity most research says. I've seen (semi) prof runners, rowers and a badminton player in my own circles die of heart attacks and cancer (long) before their time, while people who never did much of anything sporty (and smoke + drink) are currently over 90 (yes, I personally know <i>far</i> more sport/health people dying before 60, and 50, than I know people who live unhealthy; no-one unhealthy died before 80, while in the 'healthy' category, I've had a lot of deaths). This all doesn't prove anything, neither does this article, but the lack of sleep would've been more interesting if the guy would be 'normal', aka, not running marathons, but play the weekly rounds of squash and golf.
This does not surprise me, nor does "lack of x will kill you" and the same goes for "too much of x will harm you". Just do things in moderation, or do what you feel you need. Our bodies seem to be pretty smart and often work themselves out - so just listen to it. If you feel tired, go to sleep. If you're hungry, then eat.<p>For biologists and doctors, it might be fun/interesting to study but for the rest of us I think we should just use common sense and listen to our bodies. I personally abhor these "fads".
This reminds me of one of my favourites:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Terrors_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Terrors_(Star_Trek:_The_N...</a>
(spoiler there)<p>But seriously, TNG writers managed to capture so many important ideas in sf-fashioned stories... Nice hack.
No sources cited; also, the facts the author claims the sources provided (chronic sleep deprivation <5 hours/night increases heart disease risk by 39%) are very far from justifying the conclusion he came to (that Ranjan Das's fatal heart attack was almost certainly due to his chronic sleep deprivation <5 hours/night). Justifying that conclusion would require that the relative risk be something like 10:1, not 1.39:1.<p>In short, while a lack of sleep can kill you, this article is superstitious nonsense that insults the intelligence of its readers.
Sort of related: has there been any evidence as to why sleep deprivation kills you? A friend and I were hypothesizing about it once, although neither of us are particularly knowledgeable about biology so it was a bunch of probably wild guesses.
The weird thing is that in our understanding of business culture, it is widely accepted if not applauded to be putting in crazy hours and telling of heroic acts of not-sleeping-enough to work and stay fit. At the same time, drinking at work or showing up drunk to work is definitely frowned upon and is reason enough to get fired.<p>Now here is the thing: studies have shown that sleeping less than 5 hours WILL have negative effects on your body and mind and on your ability to do any job... and frequently or constantly sleeping less than 5 hours even more so, it can even cause hallucinations. And severe lack of sleep can be directly compared to the negative effects of alcohol on your ability to do any work.<p>But we are applauding the one and frowning upon the other...?<p>How ridiculous is that, really? Someone with as many responsibilities as a CEO for SAP India openly admitting to only sleeping 4 or 5 hours daily should be treated like someone who just openly confessed downing a glass of vodka for breakfast and lunch each day. And I strongly doubt his "ability" to pull that off... I would imagine someone so competitive and successful and career-focused with that little sleep would not refrain from relying on a little chemical "help". And even if he was still productive enough, just imagine how much better he could have performed if he actually got 6 to 9 hours each night?<p>This is really nothing but grossly negligent IMHO.
"Sleeping well helps keep you alive longer. Among humans, death from all causes is lowest among adults who get seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, and significantly higher among those who sleep less than seven or more than nine hours."<p><a href="http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/07/deep-into-sleep.html" rel="nofollow">http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/07/deep-into-sleep.html</a><p>Sleep itself probably doesn't make us live longer, but it could be a good measure of how we are living our lives - amount of stress, anxiety, etc.
The problem for me, as someone who working on a side project, while also holding a full-time job is that I get so sleepy and tired while I'm at work, and when I return back home I get so energized and don't feel like sleeping. It's like even if I sleep 5 hours that previous night, I just stop being tired when I get home to work on my own stuff