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Hacker News Hacker NewsSleep deprivation is one concern, but there’s a more subtle impact on cognitive functions (working memory, creativity, deep focus), overall health (particularly the endocrine and immune systems), and long-term health outcomes (such as an increased risk of dementia).
When I was younger, I was fascinated by various optimized sleep schedules. However, I noticed a stark contrast: many of my math friends consistently slept 9–10 hours a day. They needed that—not just to function in daily life but to achieve the deep focus required for their work. Living on less sleep might not affect immediate action (and in some cases, it might even seem to enhance focus on doing), but it can impair deeper, more complex thinking.
Some suggest that one of sleep's key roles is to help the brain regenerate. Chronic sleep deprivation, in turn, is linked to a higher risk of dementia. For anecdotal evidence: Churchill and Thatcher, known for boasting about sleeping only 4–5 hours a night, experienced significant cognitive decline later in life.
This stuff? Orexin receptor antagonists? They work. Holy crap, do they ever work. Sleep quality better than the Z-drugs, great tolerability, no massive disruption going off them... when these things go off-patent they're going to be massive. Sleep quality was not perfect (maybe 80% of "normal"? I don't know) but that is absolutely minor compared to the alternative.
(And for the record, I'm off them now due to other stuff clearing up such that I don't need this level of sleep assistance anymore. Not because I can't afford them.)
I guess that's a long-winded way to say that if you're going to do questionably-advised sleep biohacking, orexin receptors are probably the place to start.
If you sleep 30% of the time, that's 30% of the time you aren't eating, mating, etc. Also, during sleep you are more vulnerable to predators. One would expect evolution to get rid of sleep in creatures who don't rely on sunlight cycles.
So, there must be some really good evolutionary reason for sleep.
Only focusing on the amount of time asleep is a significantly limited viewpoint, but I believe this will change in the coming years as we gather more knowledge of sleep and access to EEG data about our brain activity during sleep increases.
Only measuring sleep time is like measuring the health of a persons diet is by measuring how much time they spent eating, but of course, looking at macronutrients, calories, is the right way of doing it.
I'll be writing more about this in the coming months, but my current thinking is that the concept of "can we sleep less" isn't the correct approach, and can be dangerous. At AffectableSleep.com - we increase the efficiency of deep sleep, and much of the research (https://affectablesleep.com/research) focuses on enhancing deep sleep in sleep deprived individuals (I'll post more research soon). This doesn't mean we should be sleeping less. A lack of quality sleep is already an epidemic in society, and massively underreported because the focus of the sleep industry has been the amount of time asleep, not the restorative functions of sleep.
Our goal isn't to help you sleep less, and we will need to be very clear in our marketing, but rather to ensure the sleep you get is as restorative as possible.
Of course, like any technology, some people will use it for negative purposes, which I believe would be to just "get by" on less sleep, rather than optimize your health through better sleep.
You can find out more at https://affectablesleep.com
In narcolepsy type 1 (NT1), patients have severely diminished orexin levels. This appears to cause them to inappropriately enter REM sleep.
OP notes that the mutation lowering the sleep requirement causes an increase in orexin. I wonder whether the increased orexin could be inhibiting REM and perhaps facilitating a more restful architecture of sleep. Alternatively, perhaps elevated orexin levels during the day cause wakefulness such that you just don't need as much sleep, regardless of how efficient the sleep is.
It would be interesting to compare sleep tracking data of people with and without this mutation to see if there are significant differences in time spent in different sleep stages.
"The company ( FitBiomics ) has already commercialized two products. Their flagship offering, V•Nella, helps metabolize lactic acid and reduce fatigue, while Nella targets sleep health - a crucial market considering that 100 million Americans suffer from insomnia. "Within 10 to 14 days of daily consumption, consumers feel the difference," Scheiman notes. "They have less daily fatigue interfering with their daily life, more energy, and some people are tracking cardiovascular benefits on their wearables. We hear really cool anecdotal feedback like, 'Hey, I no longer have to take a nap in the middle of the day, or I no longer need coffee in the middle of the day.'"
Night shifts that anyone can do are still needed if you need tribal watchers, and normal 8hr sleeping people can wake upnand fight when needed.
In terms of the gene, I am suprised how rare it is (90 families?) given I have met someone who needs only 4hr sleep.
Another point is less sleep doesn't mean you can do 2 more hours work a day. That is another vector: how much work per day (physical, mental) can be done.
[0] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-preventi...
Is it entirely possible that yes you can get 2 hours less sleep, but you're at higher risk of developing dementia, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, etc.? I don't see anything discussing long term effects of less sleep in comparison in TFA.
"preemptive administration of low-dose aspirin during sleep restriction reduced pro-inflammatory responses. Specifically, aspirin reduced interleukin-6 expression and COX-1/COX-2 double positive cells in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated monocytes, as well as C-reactive protein serum levels."
"aspirin-induced reduction of inflammatory pathway activity in sleep-restricted participants was paralleled by decreased wake after sleep onset and increased sleep efficiency during recovery sleep"
But, bleeding and strokes :(
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06-dose-aspirin-inflamma...
I think most people aren't trying to squeeze the maximum amount of time efficiency from their day. They don't like sleep because they need it, they like sleep because its synonymous to relaxing. So less sleep means less relaxing.
It seems to improve over time, and I don't have any trouble napping during the day. However, my main issue is fragmented sleep: I wake up a few times at night but can fall back asleep easily. I used to sleep continuously, so I’m curious about what part of the brain this could be affecting and how can this be changed. I tried melatonin [1] in different dosages, from extra low to relatively high.
I’m fairly certain COVID was the cause since the symptoms coincided with the infection. Of course, statistically speaking, it could be a coincidence involving other factors, but I’m not planning to dive into a PhD analysis of it, yet!
Speak for yourself. I love sleep and wish I could sleep more. Sometimes I think the only purpose of being awake is to get food and shelter for more sleep.
So, one possible line of investigation would be a table of mammals, their sleep cycles, their orexin levels, and the numbers of copies of orexin and it's regulators in their genomes. For example: compared to humans, elephants have a lower cancer risk. Turns out they have significantly more copies of p53, a tumor supressor gene (1).
Perhaps a similar, somewhat parallel construct exists: elephants sleep 3-4 hours a night. Maybe they have more orexin? Maybe they have different copy numbers or mutations of the relevant genes in the pathway?
Both my parents go to bed around 1am and wake up at 7am, and so did all of my grandparents. My kids on weekends go to bed around 1-2am as well but do sleep in, and my average is about 4-5 hours a night…
As for me, I’ve had sleep issues all my life and found the only way to fall asleep within 20 minutes is to stay up until exhaustion. But lately I’ve been gaining back my time and pushing even further - once every one or two weeks I’ll skip a night of sleeping, staying up around 36 hours straight. I’ve been doing this for a few months now and have zero side effects so far. In fact I end up sleeping over 10 hours the next day without waking up in the middle (which /never/ happens otherwise).
If we were able to be awake 20 hours a day we may still be miserable because of factors like the sun being down for ane even longer time while we’re awake.
I feel like this is one of those inane pursuits for productivity where that doesn’t fit at all, at least not for the thinking jobs. Maybe in a dystopia big companies like amazon would use inventions like this to be able to let their employees work 20 hour work days or something.
Of course this shouldn’t discredit the linked article of being interesting or anything, just sharing my thoughts on the endless pursuit of productivity.
Now that I'm working a job where I do overnight deployments, often work 12-14 hours days, and have a couple of kids who don't sleep well, I hate my past self for not sleeping while he could. You never know when circumstances will drive you into unplanned sleep deprivation. Doing it to yourself for low-to-mid-level time gains isn't worth it.
I did try polyphasic sleep when I was younger but it didn't work out. Having my sleeping patterns so far off the standard made me really unhappy.
but also let's go, if a giraffe can sleep 2 hours so can I
In the words of John Lennon, let it be.
Sleep when you're tired, work and play when you're not. The constrination and worrying about it, how much time you have for what, etc. is the single biggest driver for the stress and loss of sleep. Let go of that, let if flow, it will.
Some combination of the title and the submission domain triggered my tick even more than usual around the use of “AI”.
It’s extremely unlikely that I’ll regard any artifact as artificially intelligent if the broader context fails a pretty low bar for intelligence of any kind.
If I sleep eight hours, I feel groggy, jet-lagged, and generally have a day where I’m slogging through molasses to get from one task to the next.
My wife has raised concerns about my sleep pattern, so I started using sleep-tracking tools like Fitbit and, more recently, an Apple Watch. She tracks her sleep too, and the big difference we’ve noticed is that I fall asleep within about two minutes, and my “sleep efficiency” using these tools is 98%. If I’m traveling and feel a bit jet-lagged, I can take a 20-minute nap (often without an alarm) and wake up feeling refreshed. She also seems to wake up a lot, most nights I "sleep like a log" and I only wakeup in the morning.
My mother has the same pattern but stays up later and sleeps about six hours into the morning. I used to do this too, but around age 23, I switched to an earlier bedtime and a consistent daily routine. When I became a “morning person,” I found I could code like crazy in the morning before “starting” my day, and this rewarding experience reinforced the habit.
I’ve tested this pattern in many ways, including not using an alarm (I still wake up around the same time for weeks at a time) and using a “light clock” I built with a Raspberry Pi to slowly brighten the room. Again, I wake up after roughly 6 hours and 20 minutes. Now, I use my Apple Watch to vibrate as a gentle reminder to start the day. On weekends, I keep the same schedule and use the extra time to read or hack away at side projects, often coding until the late afternoon when my wife protests enough that I need to stop and hang out or do my honey-do's.
About 10 years ago, during my annual checkup, my wife asked my doctor about this sleep pattern. The doctor asked me several questions, seemingly looking for signs of sleep deficit or dysfunction. In the end, he said I could do a sleep study but concluded, “If it works, don’t break it.”
As for productivity, I’ve found I can code effectively from 4:30 am to 8:30 am, then shower and work from 9 am to 6 pm without much trouble. I also practice intermittent fasting, typically eating only at 6 pm, with a protein shake around noon. This habit happened by accident—I realized breakfast slowed me down, and eating lots of carbs impaired my cognitive function and ability to code or handle complex tasks in the morning.
Before you ask, I generally don’t use caffeine or other stimulants. Occasionally, I’ll have one cup of coffee around 9 am as a social habit, but I recently stopped that again and actually feel better. I’ll most likely drop it again for a while until it sneaks back in again.
This is a super interesting question!
I think one ironic possibility is that people would still sleep deprive themselves, but with even fewer hours of sleep.
Maybe it's similar to the idea that we can just eradicate mosquitos with no negative effects. Is that really true?
Are there any good sci fi stories or novels on reducing or eliminating sleep through better chemistry?
Given the impetus of the article is we're all chronically sleep deprived, I wonder what kind of (Swiftian?) political solution there might be to collectively improving sleep health.
Certainly the current commercial solution is drugs and lots of them.
Things like apnea and even a bad pillow/mattress combination can make someone's sleeping hours pretty miserable, and that's much easier to control and spread awareness than promoting gene therapy
Wonder if we could engineer multiple sleep intervals through out the single day (e.g. power napping, siesta's). There is plenty of dead time for me during the day that could be swapped out for sleep.. the question is at what cost to the body & mind?
Just a thought.
The average day for me has huge differences in terms of my productivity at any given moment. I need downtime anyway, if I didn't sleep I believe that I'd end up vegging out in some way because I'm not doing 24 hours of flashcards.
The discussions on here also always seem to centre around a very stereotypical "I am a vat for my brain" way of thinking. Realistically whilst sleeping other things are going on, muscles are recovering, digestive processes are going on, other forms of growing, etc, it's not just the brain.
There are also things like circadian rhythm, sunshine, etc. I woke up early today and had a few hours of darkness, I can feel my mood and brainpower improving as the sun rises.
We are not bots, this stuff is analogue.
After all, we live in the age of abundance.
(Though I admit I might not be the best person to ask for this as I am on the lower end of how much sleep I need)
Next solve going to the toilet and we're all set.