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comment by thenewgreen
thenewgreen  ·  4790 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Matthew Wolf-Meyer: On the evolution of sleep
The author makes mention that currently different cultures approach sleep differently. I don't doubt this but I wonder how large this variance is? Is it noticeably different from one society to the next? I've traveled a bit but I haven't noticed anything too substantial. Does anybody have instances where they've witnessed this?




mk  ·  4790 days ago  ·  link  ·  
When I was doing research in China, the lab would basically shut down for 2 hours every midday. People would eat for between 30 minutes to an hour, and then sleep the rest of the time.

I'm not very good at naps, so I'd get a lot of reading done.

I don't know if it's culture or nature, but I work best with one 7 hour sleep each cycle.

thenewgreen  ·  4789 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I'm the same way. 7-8 for me is ideal but for the last 19 months it's been more like 5-6 hours a night. I've adjusted though and I don't think my waking hours suffer much for the missing 1-2 hours. I wonder if we could be awake longer but we sleep out of desire more than necessity. We don't "need" 7 hours of sleep we just "want" it.
mk  ·  4789 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I feel like it slowly wears on you. I could probably go the rest of my life on 5-6 hours of sleep, but I wonder if my life would be shorter for it.

But, that's about what I am getting right now too.