TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Political Discussion / Debate
-- Do You Think Sleep is Waste of Time? Here's Good News For You!
Do You Think Sleep is Waste of Time? Here's Good News For You!
http://www.economist.com/intelligen...tory_id=6909483
| quote: |
| From A to Zzzzz Ben McLannahan From Intelligent Life, Summer 2006 New pills are reinvigorating an old debate—how much sleep do we really need? BACK in the 1960s, the contraceptive pill unshackled sex from human nature. Could a new class of tablets be about to do the same for sleep? Introducing CX717, a drug being developed by Cortex Pharmaceuticals of Irvine, California. It’s the first of what promises to be many aimed at detaching people from the daily routine of eight hours each for work, rest and play. Tests conducted on rhesus monkeys last year suggest that CX717 can wire users to remain awake for 36 hours without the jitters, euphoria and eventual crash that come after mega-doses of caffeine or amphetamines. Further down the line are even more radical compounds—stimulants that can wipe out sleep for several days at a stretch, and pills that deliver a whole night’s shut-eye in two hours. Prompted by some energetic marketing on the part of drugmakers, scientific journals are already ablaze with excited talk of “conquering sleep”, asking whether humans will become the first species to dominate both daytime and night-time. The commotion, however, raises the more pertinent question: how much sleep do we actually need? Lux eterna Before the advent of the electric lightbulb, it wasn’t much of an issue—people hit the hay after a couple of hours by candlelight, and stirred at daybreak. But the invention of artificial lighting, and the subsequent introduction of shift working, has progressively “detached us from the 24-hour cycle of light and dark,” says Russell Foster, professor of molecular neuroscience at Imperial College, London. Today, our culture of long hours at work and the 24-hour availability of almost everything from convenience stores to television and e-mail have demoted sleep in our priorities. To manage fatigue, says Dr Foster, “we’ve fallen into a stimulant-sedation loop, where stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine are used for wakefulness during the day and sedatives such as hypnotics and alcohol are used at night to induce sleep.” That has compressed the sleep cycle. A report published last year, entitled “Insomniac Britain”, by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy found that adults in the United Kingdom sleep an average of six hours 53 minutes each night. Is that enough? Not according to the ancient formula of eight hours of rest, eight hours of work and eight hours of play, which many physicians and therapists still swear by. And it’s not enough for the survey respondents, many of whom considered themselves “sleep-deprived”. But a new, contrarian school of thought is emerging. The eight-hours mantra has no more scientific basis than the tooth fairy, says Neil Stanley, head of sleep research at the Human Psychopharmacology Research Unit at the University of Surrey in Britain. He believes that everyone has their own individual “sleep need” which can be anywhere between three and 11 hours. “If you’re a three-hour-a-night person, you need three; if you're 11, you need 11.” To find out, he says, simply sleep until you wake naturally, without the aid of an alarm clock. Feel rested? That’s your sleep need. Core sleep beats deep sleep The global get-to-sleep industry—pills, lotions, “no-turn” mattresses, foam “memory” pillows and the like—has conditioned us to think we’re not getting enough, adds Jim Horne, director of the sleep research centre at Loughborough University in Britain and author of the new book, “Sleep Faring: A Journey through the Science of Sleep”. What really matters, he says, is the “core” sleep, the first few hours that nourish the higher sections of the brain. Anything beyond that—including deep REM (rapid eye movement) sleep—is “non-essential” and taken for pure pleasure. Consider the domestic cat: feed it well, and it sleeps a lot; withdraw the food, and it’s out hunting. As long as you’re not a zombie the next day, you’re probably sleeping enough, says Dr Stanley. He appeals to the concept of “non-restorative sleep” recently put about by the German Society of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine. In Germany, there has been a shift in emphasis: traditionally, treatment focused on reducing sleep “latency”—the interval between settling in for the night and the onset of sleep—and thus prolonging total sleep time. Now, the focus is on restoring the recuperative value of sleep and ensuring daytime functioning on a social, psychological and professional level. In truth, however, no one really knows whether ten hours a night is any better than five. The science of sleep has not advanced an awful lot since 1834, when the first book in the English language on the subject—“The Philosophy of Sleep” by a Glaswegian physician called Robert MacNish—was published. Of course, we can now plot brainwaves, track hormones and add new taxonomies to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (89, at the last count). We can link sleep problems to driving and industrial accidents; to a higher rate of divorce; to increased risks of heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, colo-rectal cancer and obesity. We’re also confident of the role of sleep in reinforcing memory, learning and cognitive performance. But the real fundamentals—such as why we sleep, and why some people can function on less than others—elude us. Used infrequently, drugs such as CX717 might be a handy standby for the odd occasion when—for whatever reason—you absolutely, positively, have to stay awake. But talk of banishing sleep for ever is “spectacularly naive,” says Dr Foster. “We don’t understand the physiology of sleep, but we seem happy to regard it as something to ‘cure’ and then throw away.” |
pretty interesting, and me working the 3rd shift and all, very interesting,,,
Bring it on. I'm up for an attempt at my 66 hour straight personal best.
Nice info there. Anyone here go to sleep not only when or if they are truly tired, but because they're bored and/or need to make sure they can sleep enough to perform well the next day?
i sleep an average of 6-7 hours 6 days a week and 9-11 hours once a week , even with no routine such as school or work to wake up to, that's just the amount of sleep my body wants and gets, and even when i go on a clubbing/sex binge (and when i do those, trust me - 36 hours is nothing) my sleeping patterns stay the same for the most part.
i do not consume caffeine btw, and alcohol does not function on me as a sedative.
as you can see, this pill offers nothing new to me, but let me know once a pill is developed that negates the necessity of sleep.
i love naps.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Psy-T i sleep an average of 6-7 hours 6 days a week and 9-11 hours once a week , even with no routine such as school or work to wake up to, that's just the amount of sleep my body wants and gets, and even when i go on a clubbing/sex binge (and when i do those, trust me - 36 hours is nothing) my sleeping patterns stay the same for the most part. i do not consume caffeine btw, and alcohol does not function on me as a sedative. as you can see, this pill offers nothing new to me, but let me know once a pill is developed that negates the necessity of sleep. |
Re: Do You Think Sleep is Waste of Time? Here\'s Good News For You!
| quote: |
| Originally posted by St_Andrew I would love one of those pills, since I hate sleeping, but also hate being sleepy |
Re: Re: Do You Think Sleep is Waste of Time? Here\'s Good News For You!
| quote: |
| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN wtf!? who doesnt like sleeping?? |
modafinil is your friend
all the positive effects of amphetamines, without the sick side effects.
in the future, say 10-20 years, i foresee a large portion of the working population staying up for 2-3 days at a time.
seriously, we don't need sleep. the longest i've stayed up has been 176 hours... hehe.
very interesting.
these pills will make the pharmaceutical companies billions, but that doesn't mean they'll legalise amphetamines because they can't make money on that
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Q5echo i love naps. |
Re: Re: Do You Think Sleep is Waste of Time? Here\'s Good News For You!
| quote: |
| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN wtf!? who doesnt like sleeping?? |
Re: Re: Re: Do You Think Sleep is Waste of Time? Here\'s Good News For You!
| quote: |
| Originally posted by St_Andrew Well yes, but it is only the effects of sleeping you want right (ie it's awesome to get to bed when you are really really tired)? But if you didn't get tired there is no need to sleep either, is it? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by DJ Shibby modafinil is your friend all the positive effects of amphetamines, without the sick side effects. in the future, say 10-20 years, i foresee a large portion of the working population staying up for 2-3 days at a time. seriously, we don't need sleep. the longest i've stayed up has been 176 hours... hehe. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by NeoPhono I've been taking provigil for the last several months. Working night shift, going to school full time, and racing my bike leaves little time for sleep. I'd say my results have been mixed. I do tend to "crash" every once in a while. |
(I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to medicine btw, so please correct me).
| quote: |
| Originally posted by shaolin_Z That doesn't sound like it's very good for your health, and, aren't you a doctor? (I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to medicine btw, so please correct me). |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Psy-T i do not consume caffeine btw, and alcohol does not function on me as a sedative. |
Oh man...if only I could get rid of sleep...
I enjoy dreaming too much... I would never take such a pill.
Here's a question I like to think about:
If we measured our lives, instead of in years, but rather in waking-hours, would you like to have all of them compressed into one long 40-50 year continuous period of wakefulness, at the end of which you drop dead, or split it up as we have it now?
If you spread your waking-hours-lifetime over as many years as possible, you get to see more of the future; on the other hand, if you can stay up 24 hours a day for your (shortened) life, you could get so much more done relative to everyone else... finish college in a couple years while keeping a job, etc.
You know, I've tried polyphasic sleeping, where you try to limit yourself to 2 hours of sleep a day by taking a 20-minute nap every 4 hours, but it's really hard. B-2 pilots do it on really long missions, as do some round-the-world sailors who need to be awake for long stretches of time with only minimal time set aside for sleep, but it's pretty impractical for someone who's still in school...
| quote: |
| Originally posted by MehGoat Here's a question I like to think about : If we measured our lives, instead of in years, but rather in waking-hours, would you like to have all of them compressed into one long 40-50 year continuous period of wakefulness, at the end of which you drop dead, or split it up as we have it now? If you spread your waking-hours-lifetime over as many years as possible, you get to see more of the future; on the other hand, if you can stay up 24 hours a day for your (shortened) life, you could get so much more done relative to everyone else... finish college in a couple years while keeping a job, etc. You know, I've tried polyphasic sleeping, where you try to limit yourself to 2 hours of sleep a day by taking a 20-minute nap every 4 hours, but it's really hard. B-2 pilots do it on really long missions, as do some round-the-world sailors who need to be awake for long stretches of time with only minimal time set aside for sleep, but it's pretty impractical for someone who's still in school... |
Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.