When I sleep at least 10 hours I feel mentally sharp and clear than sleeping 5 hours or no sleep. 7-8 hours and I will be very good as well.

I encourage everyone to work a tough blue collar labor job at some point in their life, it pretty much forces you to be a man or quit after awhile.

Anyway, I went with about 4 hours of sleep three nights in a row and one week, and by the third day of work I literally thought I was going to pass out from exhaustion. Mind you I try to hit the gym 4 times a week too so that compounds it.

The next night I went to sleep at 7 just to recover and the difference was night and day. Also, even if you have no reason to wake up early you should go to sleep around 10 or 11 at the latest just to get into a good habit. Im looking at you college students.

Sleep you stupid fools.

I have sucked at sleeping my whole life, opting to stay up and do...nothing particularly notable, looking back. Since coming here and realizing for the first time my real imperatives for lifting, and fully committing myself to the iron, I have realized that I need sleep. Lots of it. If I screw up even one day, I pay for it in a much bigger way than I used to. Being sleep deprived when I was drinking too much and not really moving my body really didn't feel like anything. I was already used to feeling like dog shit, so I barely noticed.

But with consistently, religiously lifting 5 days a week, the rest I get isn't just needed, it's downright pleasurable. Even my rest days are being used more effectively because I am truly relaxed, not exhausted or tired. I pay attention to my rest periods with the same mindfulness that I put into my workouts and diet, and it is paying off big time in my mood and general mental health.

Fuck hacking sleep. Just sleep like a farmer would and be done with it.

I couldn't agree more. I feel tremendous different between sleeping 7 hours and 9 hours. For me 9 hours of sleep is best option. If i sleep 6-7 hours, in the morning i will feel like shit. After good 9 hours sleep I'm happy and ready to do something.

That is main different between me and guys in my college. I sleep well and I've got shitload of energy in the morning to talk and learn.

The main word you ALL need to learn more about is CORTISOL.

Improper sleep really fucks with it, and as a result your body fat, fatigue levels, sex drive, and a host of other bodily functions will be fucked up as a result.

You forgot to add in rem cycles, an entire cycle is 90 minutes, it's better to aim for 7.5 or 9 than 8.

And please don't listen to the dumbasses that will inevitiblely comment on this post about polyphasic sleep cycles and famous people who didn't sleep much. Shit is retarded.

Get enough sleep and you will feel happier and more content simple as that, you can't hack sleep it just doesn't work. You're day should be tiring enough that when it's 11pm or whatever time, you are ready to pass the fuck out. If you're not then lift harder bitch!

In your body is the lymphatic system--where your immune system cleans up. Funny thing about that, it exists everywhere in your body except... the brain.

Of course we're only recently (last decade) figuring this out: the entire brain is a kind of "lymph node" but guess what... only while you're sleeping. When you're alseep, the "glymphatic" system (the glia cells between the neurons) is clearing out the amyloid-β and other waste as long as there is enough water. Guess what happens if you have too much amyloid-β? That's right, you have Alzheimers---chronically avoiding quality sleep messes with your mind. What they have found is:

Aβ and other toxic molecules associated with neurodegenerative disease flow out of the brain more quickly when the mouse is asleep (left) than when it is awake (right).

[ref] http://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/apoe-zzzs-does-sleep-quality-affect-dementia-risk

Lift. Hydrate. Sleep. Repeat.

And perhaps use melatonin to hack your sleep:

The 2005 meta-analysis Brzezinski et al concluded that, over all (mostly healthy) adult participants, melatonin improved on placebo to the extent that it

[statistically-]significantly reduced sleep onset latency by 4.0 min (95% CI 2.5-5.4) [The normal limits for latency to sleep are considered to be 15-20 min.]; increased sleep efficiency by 2.2% (95% CI 0.2-4.2) [The normal sleep efficiency is about 90-95%.], and increased total sleep duration by 12.8 min (95% CI 2.9-22.8). Since 15 of the 17 studies enrolled healthy subjects or people with no relevant medical condition other than insomnia, the analysis was also done including only these 15 studies. The sleep onset results were changed to 3.9 min (95% CI 2.5-5.4); sleep efficiency increased to 3.1% (95% CI 0.7-5.5); sleep duration increased to 13.7 min (95% CI 3.1-24.3).

[ref] http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin

having trouble with the idea of 'sleeping'? heres some easy fucking tips.

• turn off background light sources 90 mins before sleep time - you can keep a small primary source on, like tv or phone, but background needs to be black

• stop THINKING - dont engage your brain with conscious thought tasks an hour before 'bedtime'. trying to solve puzzles and processing information is antithesis to sleep wave patterns. save it for tomorrow. If you dont know what this means, you might greatly benefit from practicing meditation. States of mind without productive thought are important. so stop thinking about tomorrow's problems tonight.

• electrolyte balance / vitamin supps - make sure you are intaking plenty of daily magnesium in particular. make sure you arent deficient on essential vitamins on a daily basis. Melatonin can help regulate sleep, but make sure you arent taking more than 1.5 mg or so for this purpose.

If you are relaxed and still not sleeping under these conditions, i cant help you, but this should help most people, with an emphasis on points 1 and 2.

This post is fantastic. I have sleep issues and I recognise this like I wrote it.

Well, scientifically we're not supposed to sleep once a day anyway, so I guess everyone is doing it wrong.

Confession bear: I believe most of my failures in life are due to lack of sleep. And by failures I mean my entire adult life, including those emotional beta collapses in relationships, academic fuck-ups/hopelessness, missed job opportunities, shitty/impulsive choices, and so on. I have been on zombie mode living a half-life since about my junior year of high school, and I am over 30 now; it is really depressing if I think about it too much.

Lack of sleep, insomnia, or other such sleep problems are all things no one takes pity on you for or much want to help you with, including many (most?) medical professionals (here's a pill, take it before bed). You were obviously fucking around, you don't push yourself hard enough, other people don't need as much sleep as you and you're a bitch, or you simply have no discipline and can't rationalize that if you just tried for a week, you could probably fix this problem (temporarily, at least!).

I think all of those examples are true for anyone at one time or another, especially the lack of discipline part, but they are an occurrence rather than a commonality, and there is no no-sleepaholics anonymous. Speaking in a purely physical sense, I am quite disciplined: I can lift heavy, run forever, and eat clean all the time, but what I really need is someone to shake the shit out of me and scream in both ears, 'SLEEP!'

I know the benefits, and you would think they would be enough. Everyone who is like me knows what I mean, I practically dwell on the benefits and can perfectly rationalize why going to bed at 9 and waking up at 5 will give me the most productive hours in the day, but it is like drugs or something, I am getting enough dopamine and apathy to make it through the day, but it is always MANANA MANANA. Reaching my dreams is like walking through jello, because manana never happens.

How do I stop this vicious cycle? Can someone call me everyday at 8 pm and tell me to get ready for bed like a big boy?

I just graduated with a business degree (and the 4 pre-medicine science classes) cum laude after going to school full time and working ~30 hours a week while raising two teenagers. I've averaged 5-6 hours of sleep a night for the last decade+ I can function on 3 hours if I have to, but it's rough, anything more than 6 (due to things like illness or an all-nighter or two for a project) and I'm sore and miserable the whole day. It's 3AM right now-I'm going to bed soon and I'll be up, without an alarm, somewhere right around 9AM.

Some people really do just need less sleep.

Downvote for pure bullshit on your part.

Which means it will make it more viable to sleep in certain periods, which also coincidentally happen to be hours where there is no sun. At night. Nocturnalism is bullshit.

I am this nocturnal and not bullshit.

Sunlight MAKES me sleepy. The night makes me more alert than 10 coffees by PURE virtue of being dark. I have been this way for 20 years and with each passing year my need for the night is stronger.

Even last night I tried to sleep at 7:30pm and I simply woke up again at 1am. I didn't get sleepy again until 10am. Night is the right time for me to sleep.

You are no doctor. You're an idiot. Actual real doctors have measured that some circadian rhythms are in tune with the night instead of the day.

Sleep is Not a Whole Body State

I know you think this is helpful, but you can't treat something with the human body as black/white or good/bad. You can say all the things you want to about the benefits of sleep, but do you know what exactly is happening when you sleep? With sleep, all physiological parameters, e.g. body temperature, hormonal levels, respiration rate, urinary output, brain metabolism etc. change with sleep. As a consequence, it is not possible to know, for example, if change in expression of a particular molecule that correlates with sleep or sleep loss, does so in fact as a direct consequence of sleep or of some other variable. Our understanding of "what sleeps" has changed gigantically even in the last few years, and the view has shifted from the "whole organism" sleeping to neural networks (such as cortical columns or neuronal assemblies) oscillating between two states. In all the benefits you gave, you have to recognize the process of what's going on, and sleep isn't going to be a cure all for these issues (indeed, might make things worse for some cycles). Each cycle has different timings from days (e.g. body temperature, sleep loss, immune response to triggers like some cytokines, Adenosine, or glucocorticoids) to happening in microseconds (e.g. afferent input or excitatory stimuli and things like GABA or Noradrenaline), and has different hormonal or humoral substances involved. Sleep is not an absolute, we are a gigantic series of processes that have been named "human", and there are lots of processes that can occur during sleep but that doesn't mean they're limited to it.

Now, into the fun experimentation part. I started keeping track of diet, supplements, sleep amount, and energy levels for just over a decade now (and in the last 6 have even gone so far as positive outlook, how many orgasms, sweating intensity, workouts and conditioning). Here is what I've found helped me the most so far, and I can reliably sleep 4.5 hours per night. It is possible to cue up which processes you want your body to go through. Again though, it's not "This is good and that's bad" kind of stuff, it's knowing what things put the body into which states, and knowing what your body needs depending on the situation (knowing your body's responses and controlling inputs enough to know what set something 'off').

If you keep your diet alkalized, avoid any stimulants (because you're going for the long haul, not a sprint), and generally avoid gluten, corn, sugar, dairy or soy, sticking pretty much to clean protein some and veggies and intake tons of water (and I've found with lots of lemons which stimulate the Krebs cycle and probably kick off tons of ATP), I've made it to 64 hours (and generally was perfectly fine at hour 38). I would lay with my feet up at times to give my lower body a rest, but generally I was able to work steadily, taking a walking and stretching break every so often. Running would reinstate my energy. You absolutely cannot have sex or masturbate, can't have spicy food either. Fishes, salads and veggies were the key, as well as a few vitamins and nootropics.

Generally this advice can work if you need to get by without a lot of sleep too. I can be at full energy with 4.5 hours of sleep and make it through a normal day (which for me is about 20-22 hours) and sustain it until I break any of those rules, workout, have sex, have too much stimuli without meditating, or funny enough - flying. No joke, flying set my insulin off like I had gorged on a ton of sugar and did some crazy things to my body that shouldn't have happened, making me think jet-lag might actually be an immuno-response by the body.

I could go on and on. There is just way too much that depends on other things in their process. When you say "sleep" you're referring to a lot of processes that don't all have to happen at once.

I did 6h sleep for a few weeks - cognition was going down and musclemass was slinking. The hard thing was that i actually didnt know that was happening. In other words: made me retarded and skinny

Agreed, definitely. I meant to qrite write a post about this, but here is a short comment now.

I thought that I can sleep less then six hours per night if I indulge enough vitamins and keep my t levels high. My body needs less sleep then..right?

Last 2.5 years I spent sleeping less then six hours per night. Plus overtime working, training hard, and having hard weekends.. means party. In the meantime, I was reading and indulging in lot of books, lot of information.

So, after two point half years, I should be ripped, smart..and all that. Hell no.

My head was a damn mess. I was reactive, ungrounded, held no frame at all, complete fuck up. All this knowledge was just adding up to this mess. I noticed how I can't concetrate well anymore. When I noticed that I'm talking to myself and that I'm having ticks, it was clear that I need to change things.

I started to sleep seven per night, and meditate twice a day. Now everything is more than fine. But last two point half years I wasn't myself. Just you almost never notice it..it's like boiling a frog in the water. She's fine all the time until she's dead.

Don't mess with sleep, if you do and you think you're good, you are decepting yourself. Sleep deprivation is real.

When it comes to lifting, I have to disagree. I was mentally fucked up but I was strong and ripped during my stupid sleep less period.

I was too young, inexperienced in life. Things can't go overnight. Job, education, health, lifting, any change, takes time and patience. Your t maybe says I want things and I want them now, but suppress it - things take time and shortcuts are like a boomerang.

I fucking wish I could sleep for 8 hours

Takes me hours to fall asleep and I always wake up about 6 hours later, tired and unsatisfied

i have a posture problem, anterior pelvic tilt which im working to fix by mostly doing pilates. Anyway this problem apperently leads to some pressure in my blatter which in turn makes me wake up at night between 1 to 3 times to go take a piss.

I sleep about 9 hours or 8, but was wondering if this problem i have effects the benefits i get from a good night of sleep.

Blackout curtains increased my quality in my sleep. I suggest investing in some to block out ALL light

Example: Imagine a crowded business building in NYC. Now imagine janitors with their cleaning wagons and water buckets attempting to mop the floors, clean the bathrooms, and take out the trash while customers and employees are using the facility. In addition, imagine electricians and construction workers conducting maintenance. This is very inefficient. It's best to wait until after hours when the building is inactive.

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Your body places itself in a low energy state by 'shutting' down the conscious, closing the eyelids to prevent visual stimuli(data) from being transmitted to the brain, and recruiting resources from conscious activities during the day to cleanse and repair. This is essentially specialization of labor.

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Your cells produce waste products that clog neural pathways while functioning throughout the day, this is why you're mentally sluggish if you stay up for too long or don't get enough sleep. Sleep is the way your body cleanses these waste products (toxins), takes the nutrients from the food you digested to create and repair the cells in the body, and conserves energy. You microscopically tear muscle in the gym, provide building blocks with your meals, then fill in the tears with the building blocks you fed yourself while sleeping. Muscle is built during sleep.

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"To lift like a beast, you must sleep like a baby"

Sleeping is the key to learning and remembering, as well as improving your body after working out.

Sleep is how your body takes in and order the information that you've learned during the day. Think of it as cleaning your room and putting everything in labeled boxes. It puts everything in the same place so that you can easily find it when you need it.

i wish i could get that much sleep but i dont know where you get the time. between school and a job combined with lifting i get up at 445 in the morning and get to sleep at about 2230. i take a nap in between my placement and work but im not sure how you can get more sleep

All good advice. Any advice on how to sleep?

I have a problem sleeping. I work nights and sleep in the day. That means if someone knocks on the front door and get the dogs riled up then I have to wake up. I have to turn off my phone. If I forget then I will surely get calls.

But beyond that I wonder if I'm just plain doing it wrong. I often sleep on my side or stomach. If I sleep on my back my snoring can actually wake me up!

Anyway, are there any tips that I am missing.

Also, I was prescribed Wellbutrin a couple months ago and that has really messed things up. If I wake up at any time during the day then I'm up for the rest of the day. One time I left my phone on and got a call an hour after I fell asleep. I sat there for 3 hours and couldn't go back to sleep. I got up and went to the gym and ran a couple miles. I tried to go back asleep 5 hours later (at 6pm) and didn't fall asleep until 8pm. I had to get up at 10pm to go to work. So that was 3 hours of sleep. Yesterday I actually managed to get about 7 and a half.

I've blacked out the windows, locked my alpha bitch in the room with me (so she doesn't bark at everyone) and if it's hot enough I run the AC in my room to drown out any noises of the city.

Any other suggestions? Seriously, I would love to sleep 8 hours every day. Tell me how.

Two words for ya. Sleep mask

I started wearing a sleep mask two years ago when I was unable to control my eye enough to close it. I fully recovered in three months but I still wear my mask nightly.

Need a quick nap before night shift/watching the live WWE show? The sleep mask helps me.

Want to sleep for 8 hours in the summer, when the sun will wake you up at 4am? Sleep mask

Can't sleep because you're drunk? Sleep mask

Seriously guys, it might be the best £1.99 I ever spent.

Circadian Rhythm is the real thing.

I'm forcing myself to go to sleep no so long after when the sun is down and to wake up when he's up.

I've started taking a magnesium supplement over the past 2 weeks, to aid sleep. That and forcing myself to get to bed earlier, has seen me getting a better quality of sleep and feeling fully refreshed.

Meletonin is also good but can't buy it over the counter in the UK

I didn't realize there were Kramer level retards trying to remove sleep from their lives.

I mean, sure, I wish I could use 8 more hours in the day, but I cannot. That's just reality. I also wish I didn't have to shit, but I didn't stop eating to try to make it happen.

internal

I dont think this means what you think it means. Used confusingly

Thank you for this post as I also do share this concern as a student. When I get asked what my secret is as to being a "very fast" learner, I simply tell them to get a good nights sleep and to give yourself mid-day naps. It's funny to me how people react when I tell them this as it goes against the whole notion that they were brought up with in high school with 5 ap classes and football practice the same day.

[The more you sleep, the more Testosterone your body produces.] (http://anabolicmen.com/sleep-testosterone/) Enough said.

This as all true. I have an awful sleep schedule, and fucked my circadian rhythm up over the last 15 years.

You'll start to notice weird things happen to your body that seem completely unrelated.

For instance, I've recently only been getting 3-4 hours during the weekdays and started to get the very oily skin. It's so bad now that I bring facial cleansers to work to wipe myself down midday.

Anybody who's got the option, heed /u/TheHaskman 's warning.

So funny that you posted about this. I am a fanatic about good sleep. I'm in law school right now and I might be one of the few students who understand that you do better in school when you get a full 8 hours of quality sleep. You need your brain to shut down and compress all you learned for better recall later on. If you don't it will be harder to remember those endless amounts of rules.

My only problem right now is I am struggling with snoring. I can feel my throat is super dry from mouth breathing all night long and just generally groggy in the mornings. If anyone has any suggestions love to hear them. Thinking about starting with the cheapest and most available solution those Breath Right nasal strips.

Sleep is one of the pillars of health. If you could buy bottled sleep, it would be the best supplement/medicine.

Thanks for the reminder. Night.

Man, I wish I could get more sleep... 5-6 hours a night is a godsend. I lift moderate weight and do cardio (yeah, I know that TRP views that as shit, but I train for cycling and biathlon). Diet could be improved, but I'm still eating healthier than 80% of the population. Just a really active brain, can't shut it off.

I've started taking a magnesium supplement over the past 2 weeks, to aid sleep. That and forcing myself to get to bed earlier, has seen me getting a better quality of sleep and feeling fully refreshed.

Meletonin is also good but can't buy it over the counter in the UK

I have a friend who sleeps 3.5 - 4 hours a night. Doesn't need to get up early for anything, he just naturally only needs that much sleep. Imagine that.. having an additional 4 hours a day to do whatever you want.

Cannot confirm it for good but I heard that sleep also helps in facial symmetry overtime and makes you more attractive.

I remember back to boot camp, where I went two months of getting a maximum of 6 hours a night, and frequently much less. I spent nearly the entire time fighting off sickness. My athletic performance went way down, my head felt fuzzy at all times, I literally fell asleep on the march more than once.

Since getting out and being able to go to bed at the same time every night, I can't begin to convey how much happier and healthier I am.

i feel bad for you guys circlejerking about sleeping 38% of the day. and how you got sick when you slept only 6 hours some time

keep daydreaming that people who sleep less than 9 hours are just watching netflix... that will get you far