Wow, who would have thought that being too busy to sleep would have been a good thing.
Awesome. I literally sleep only 5 hours most nights. With sleeping “late” being 7 at most. Good to know I’m not depriving myself of years of life. Because I actually feared I might be.
[quote]honest_lifter wrote:
Wow, who would have thought that being too busy to sleep would have been a good thing.
My problem is epidemiological studies is that they always leave me asking “why?”. I’m all for correlation but where’s the causation?
Also, can anybody offer any advice as to how you manage to sleep fewer hours? I have trouble getting out of bed with 8 hours of sleep. Can’t imagine 5!
I tend to feel just about as tired either way, and after an hour feel pretty much the same degree of alertness, which is how I will end up feeling for the rest of the day until 2 or 3am when I finally force myself to go to bed.
Hell, it’s after 2 right now again. I need to go to bed…Or do I?
The study did nothing to show that being healthier in the first place might enable less sleep and less sleep often goes along with that state, rather than that less sleep causes better health.
Statistical correlation (tending to go together) doesn’t show causation.
For example, a study could find that essentially no one that is training hard in the gym has a severe case of stomach virus, and very few that are severely ill from this are training hard in the gym. But this would not show that training hard has anything to do with not getting a stomach virus!
It seems to make sense that sleeping “too much” (whatever that may be) could have bad causative effects for the physical condition, but the study does nothing to show any causative effect for the time frames they talk about, such as “more than 5 hours.”
The news report itself is better written than the blog entry. The blog entry claims “And if you slept 6.5 hours, you lowered your risk the most.” No, there’s no evidence that you lowered your risk at all by this action, versus the possibility that your risk was lower in the first place.
The news report itself doesn’t claim causative effect. And they do acknowledge this:
[quote]Although the data indicated the highest mortality rates with long-duration sleep, the study could not explain the causes or reasons for this association.
First author Daniel F. Kripke, M.D., a UCSD professor of psychiatry who specializes in sleep research, said ?we don?t know if long sleep periods lead to death. Additional studies are needed to determine if setting your alarm clock earlier will actually improve your health.?[/quote]
However, they then miss it a little:
But, he added “individuals who now average 6.5 hours of sleep a night, can be reassured that this is a safe amount of sleep. From a health standpoint, there is no reason to sleep longer.”
No, the study did nothing to show that for any given individual, let’s say one that did sleep only 6.5 hours but chronically felt somewhat drained and fatigued and was doing this only out of practical necessity, there might not for them be health reason to sleep more than 6.5 hours. Nada. Absolutely all that was shown was statistical correlation, not actual lack of health reason according to individual case.
Interesting find! While not showing causation, it does support that for those who naturally sleep less, such as Cortes, that this is likely to be a good thing rather than something to have concern over. But it would be problematic, I think, if misinterpreted to suggested that if the person experiences feeling and performing best with say 8 hours, that they’d improve their life expectancy by reducing to say the 6.5 hour figure given in the study.
Good to see you posting, Bill! I was just talking about you, to you know who.
Thank you Cortes!
Uh, who is that? (She is used to me being a little slow on the uptake!)
Oh okay, got it figured out now! 
How exactly were these ‘hazard ratios’ determined? A 12% greater likely hood of death when comparing 7 to 8 hours sleep might be completely negligible when we are talking a minute scale in the first place.
5 to 6 hours a night is standard for me during the working week and I’m pretty damn tired come Friday. lol
Anyhow, good to see there is some data out there to show lack of sleep seemingly doesn’t have an adverse effect on health.
[quote]Teledin wrote:
How exactly were these ‘hazard ratios’ determined? [/quote]
IIRC from my epidemiology class (though it was a while ago…)
You get a bunch of data then control for various factors in various combinations. From there, the isolated control can be seen to influence a particular outcome and to what degree.
[quote]Teledin wrote:
How exactly were these ‘hazard ratios’ determined? A 12% greater likely hood of death when comparing 7 to 8 hours sleep might be completely negligible when we are talking a minute scale in the first place.[/quote]
Were the “hazard ratios” affected by college students sleeping 8+ hours a day and getting drunk every evening I wonder? Or the business man in a safe neighborhood who leads a risk averse lifestyle, works too much, and only sleeps 5 or so hours? Who knows 
I think quality of sleep has much to do with it. I notice I can get by with less sleep when I wear earplugs (I must sleep deeper). On nights I get up to pee 3+ times, I generally need 8 or more hours to feel alert the next day.
just another fucked up study that will be reversed in 5 years…then reversed again…
Don’t sleep more than 7 hours?
I’m fucked…I’ve slept literally thousands of hours by now…hell, I’m pretty sure I passed 7 hours on the day I was born.
[quote]Nards wrote:
Don’t sleep more than 7 hours?
I’m fucked…I’ve slept literally thousands of hours by now…hell, I’m pretty sure I passed 7 hours on the day I was born.
[/quote]
LMFAO!
CLASSIC NARDS!
Welcome back, mate!
The big elephant in the room for that study is depression. I would assume people who are depressed would tend to die younger, and they also tend to sleep more.
Yeah all these correlation studies… screw that. The only way to know how many hours of sleep works for you personally is to go to bed at a reasonable time every night of the week, and get up without an alarm clock. Of course this doesn’t work in the real world but I’m pretty sure your body will figure it out.
It also depends on how much sex you’re having. If you’re having sex like me nearly every night you eventually get a little bit tired and sleep more than you probably need to. Sometimes when you’re sleeping with strangers you want to wake up early and before them in case bitches be trying to rob you.
[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
It also depends on how much sex you’re having. If you’re having sex like me nearly every night you eventually get a little bit tired and sleep more than you probably need to. Sometimes when you’re sleeping with strangers you want to wake up early and before them in case bitches be trying to rob you.[/quote]
Ha ha! I dont know why I’m laughing so hard at this.