- Feb 14, 2004
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http://online.wsj.com/articles/sleep-experts-close-in-on-the-optimal-nights-sleep-1405984970
This is interesting. My sleep window is around 8:30pm. When I stick to going to bed early consistently, I tend to wake up around 3:30 to 3:45am naturally, which is earlier than my 4:00am wake-up alarm. That's just about 7 hours on the nose. But for me, that depends both on what time I go to sleep & what I eat. If I stay up late, eat late, or consume a lot of sugar the night before, I wake up groggy. If I manage what I eat & when I go to sleep, things line up & I wake up early and feel great.
However, I absolutely hate going to bed early and am terrible about disciplining myself to do it, so there's that :awe:
"The lowest mortality and morbidity is with seven hours," said Shawn Youngstedt, a professor in the College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University Phoenix. "Eight hours or more has consistently been shown to be hazardous," says Dr. Youngstedt, who researches the effects of oversleeping.
...
Daniel F. Kripke, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, tracked over a six-year period data on 1.1 million people who participated in a large cancer study. People who reported they slept 6.5 to 7.4 hours had a lower mortality rate than those with shorter or longer sleep. The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2002, controlled for 32 health factors, including medications.
...
A study in the current issue of Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine seemed to confirm that. Five healthy adults were placed in what the researchers called Stone Age-like conditions in Germany for more than two monthswithout electricity, clocks or running water. Participants fell asleep about two hours earlier and got on average 1.5 hours more sleep than was estimated in their normal lives, the study said.
Their average amount of sleep per night: 7.2 hours.
This is interesting. My sleep window is around 8:30pm. When I stick to going to bed early consistently, I tend to wake up around 3:30 to 3:45am naturally, which is earlier than my 4:00am wake-up alarm. That's just about 7 hours on the nose. But for me, that depends both on what time I go to sleep & what I eat. If I stay up late, eat late, or consume a lot of sugar the night before, I wake up groggy. If I manage what I eat & when I go to sleep, things line up & I wake up early and feel great.
However, I absolutely hate going to bed early and am terrible about disciplining myself to do it, so there's that :awe: