From: terry@npd.Novell.COM (Terry Lambert)
Subject: Re: Sleep
Organization: Novell NPD -- Sandy, UT
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 01:20:14 GMT

In article <1992Jul24.224134.5324@newstand.syr.edu> mdkline@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Mark D. Kline) writes:
>In article <10970007@hplred.HP.COM> dsouza@hplred.HP.COM (Roy D'Souza) writes:
>>I am interested in reducing the hours that I sleep.
>>Recently I went from eight hours a night to seven.
>>I would like to go even lower. Much lower.
>>My question is: "how do I tell when I have gone below
>>the amount of sleep that my body really needs?"
>
>As soon as you detect a decrease in your ability to concentrate 
>or sustain your attention, your fine motor coordination, or your
>reaction time, you're getting less than your ideal amount.  
>Easily measurable cognitive decrements are detectable in sleep
>deprived people even before the subjective drowsiness, irritability,
>etc.    Although its certainly possible to accustom oneself to sleeping
>less, it is not clear that its possible to feel of function your best
>on less than something near your optimal number of hours of sleep per day.
>
>Normal sleep needs (in terms of total hours) vary enormously from 
>person to person.  Some famous people (Chou Enlai, Napolean) are
>said to have gotten along on less than four hours sleep per 24.
>
>William Dement - famous sleep research guy -- recently suggested that
>many people can improve their cognitive abilities and sense of well
>being by getting more than 8 hours per day, that is, that 8 hours per day
>may not be the average ideal amount.  
>
>Well, I guess we can always dream about having more hours in the day :)

	A research study reported about a year and a half ago suggested
that people perform better on less sleep, but that the arrangement of
the periods of sleep was critical.  The experiment was conducted as the
result of historical data indicating that Leonardo DaVinci observed a
sleep pattern of 15 minutes every four hours, for a total of one and a
half hours of sleep a day.

	Both myself and a friend tried this pattern, with mixed success
(the initial ramp up was too steep in my friends case, and could not be
sustained at 1.5 hours per day, although 30 minutes/per 4 hours seemed
to work out fine).  I personally was able to sustain 4 months on the 15m/4h
schedule with no apparent ill effects.  I finally went off of it due to
interference with my social life (zonk-out time was the middle of most
9:00 PM movies) and a new job at some distance from my home, which precluded 
sleeping either on the way to work or on the way back, which was needed
to fit the schedule.

	The theory put forth by the study was that the 8h/24h schedule
spent most of the sleep time in exhaustion recovery, wheras the 15m/4h
schedule spent very little time in exhaustion recovery, due to periods
between recovery episodes being shorter.

	The initial reference for this was an article in OMNI, but I was
able to find the original journal article from that before I tried it
out.


					Terry Lambert
					terry_lambert@gateway.novell.com
					terry@icarus.weber.edu
---
Disclaimer:  Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of
my present or previous employers.