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Are you getting enough sleep?

Fitness tips, Relaxation, Mind and Body
redsturgeon
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Are you getting enough sleep?

#83102

Postby redsturgeon » September 24th, 2017, 9:53 am

This article says most of us do not get enough sleep and it is shortening our lives!

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... y-we-sleep

A few snippets:
■ Two-thirds of adults in developed nations fail to obtain the nightly eight hours of sleep recommended by the World Health Organisation.

■ An adult sleeping only 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only to their early 60s without medical intervention.

■ A 2013 study reported that men who slept too little had a sperm count 29% lower than those who regularly get a full and restful night’s sleep.

■ If you drive a car when you have had less than five hours’ sleep, you are 4.3 times more likely to be involved in a crash. If you drive having had four hours, you are 11.5 times more likely to be involved in an accident.

■ A hot bath aids sleep not because it makes you warm, but because your dilated blood vessels radiate inner heat, and your core body temperature drops. To successfully initiate sleep, your core temperature needs to drop about 1C.

■ The time taken to reach physical exhaustion by athletes who obtain anything less than eight hours of sleep, and especially less than six hours, drops by 10-30%.


I certainly try to get my eight hours but often fail but Mrs RS routinely seems to manage on 6 or 7 hours. Her problem...which becomes mine is that she tend to wake in the morning at around 5.30 (which wakes me) she then cannot get back to sleep so gets up and goes to the gym, she then has an hour's exercise and starts work at 8am. This has now become a habit and unless she goes to bed and sleeps from 9.30 then she cannot get the recommended 8 hours.

I tend to go back to sleep for about two hours after Mrs RS leaves and therefore get my 8 hours but sometimes I can't and I can't help feeling a bit guilty that perhaps I am somehow being lazy and feckless, unlike my get up and go wife who is out exercising at dawn.

This issue is mentioned in the article, somehow these days, unless one is managing on 6 hours a night then one is seen to been lazy and unambitious and this is driving some behaviours that will have serious long term implications for health.

Do you manage your 8 hours?

John

Raptor
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Re: Are you getting enough sleep?

#83174

Postby Raptor » September 24th, 2017, 5:03 pm

Just checked my fitbit and on average get over hours a night per week. This was also brought up on BBC program the other night with Angela Ripon.

When I go to bed it is to sleep, no devices in room, though occasionslly daughter texts me at weird times and the walk to the loo to clear bladder, but fitbit takes them into account when showing sleep.

Raptor.

Btw this week will probably not get so much as in Nidri and will be out late as soon as I find a decent bar...

bungeejumper
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Re: Are you getting enough sleep?

#83352

Postby bungeejumper » September 25th, 2017, 2:03 pm

redsturgeon wrote:■ An adult sleeping only 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only to their early 60s without medical intervention.

Didn't seem to harm Margaret Thatcher, who famously made do with five hours a night and lasted quite a while. Even though her judgment became (ahem, arguably) impaired. :lol:

I've always been able to sleep, and it's been quite a blessing. I can still 'power nap' during the afternoon, given the chance. Just five minutes puts several hours' charge back into the batteries. Does that count?

And about 25 years ago, when I was working very intensively indeed, I found that I could sometimes relax just to the very edge of sleep and then snap back, and that even that would put an hour or two in the tank. Somebody once told me that Buddhist monks spend their lives trying to attain the art of doing exactly that!

Many of our antecedents would have thought it quite odd to sleep solidly for eight hours. Three or four hundred years ago, the expected norm was to have two sleeps of three or four hours each, with an interval in which you got up, had a sandwich and a drink and checked your Facebook account. Well, maybe not quite those things..... Then again, I imagine that there wasn't very much to do after dark, apart from boozing and procreating?

BJ

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Re: Are you getting enough sleep?

#83358

Postby Watis » September 25th, 2017, 2:24 pm

bungeejumper wrote:Many of our antecedents would have thought it quite odd to sleep solidly for eight hours. Three or four hundred years ago, the expected norm was to have two sleeps of three or four hours each, with an interval in which you got up, had a sandwich and a drink and checked your Facebook account. Well, maybe not quite those things..... Then again, I imagine that there wasn't very much to do after dark, apart from boozing and procreating?

BJ


I've read the unexpurgated version of Samuel Pepys diaries, covering the 1660s, and I don't recall him once mentioning this two stage sleep business that I keep hearing about. And he would have referred to it, because he included so much detail in his diaries.

Sam would have loved Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!

Watis

bungeejumper
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Re: Are you getting enough sleep?

#83365

Postby bungeejumper » September 25th, 2017, 2:50 pm

You're right about Pepys, I think. But he was a night owl at the best of times. :lol:

Some quite interesting stuff here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ht-anxiety

And here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

BJ

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Re: Are you getting enough sleep?

#92505

Postby bungeejumper » November 2nd, 2017, 8:31 am

And on Michael Mosley/Trust Me last night: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b ... th-special .
(Among other stuff, such as why you should turn off your TV an hour before you go to bed.)

Upon hearing of which, my eight year old granddaughter asked: "So grandpa, why doesn't the programme end till ten o'clock?" (Granddaughter goes to bed at eight.) Good question, young'un. Now get up that wooden hill while I try to think of a proper answer. :lol:

BJ

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Re: Are you getting enough sleep?

#93076

Postby UncleEbenezer » November 4th, 2017, 2:39 pm

I have all the bad habits. Not least, sleeping with the radio on, which is a long-learned defence against some of the more-disturbing external noises (albeit totally ineffective against some of the neighbours I've suffered).

As against that, I'm not afraid to indulge in the siesta from time to time. I have an idea that's actually supposed to be better than getting the eight hours all at once.

I think it's also well-documented that we naturally go through different sleep patterns at different stages of life, and that we vary individually.


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