Sleeping patterns
 

Topic has probably been done already but might as well make a fresh one.

Thought I would ask how people sleep. Do you think you get enough hours? Is it that deep REM sleep or is it pretty superficial? How do you feel when you wake up?

I tend to get between 8-12 hours, but I've gotten more sometimes. I chronically oversleep and it's usually during the day. The time in the morning in which I fall asleep varies [usually between 5 and 10AM].

I usually sleep just fine. I wake up instantly. I don't "need time to wake up" hardly ever and I've actually never understood people that do. It feels weird to me. When I open my eyes, I'm awake, nothing can stop that.

I also tend to have vivid dreams, usually able to remember them when I wake up and many of them are lucid. I've experienced reoccuring dreams, sleep paralysis, sleep talking, and usually once per sleep cycle I enter that weird "I'm asleep but I'm still conscious of what's going on around me" state.

I cannot sleep without a constant source of sound [TV, movie on repeat, music, etc]. Loud sounds don't often wake me up, and when they do, I can usually get right back to sleep.

I usually get around 7 hours of sleep, sometimes less because some nights I just don't fall asleep until about 1-2 hours after resting in my bed.

Does that "count" as sleep by the way? You can be laying in your bed for 1 hour, you know you're still awake, but your eyes are shut and you're resting. And you daydream, etc. think about whatever. Is that a stage of sleep even if you "know" you're still awake?

I'm similar to that in some ways. While I don't dream often, I DO tend to remember the ones I have. I've also had sleep paralysis, and I'm almost ALWAYS in that "I'm asleep but still conscious of what going on" state when I sleep. I'm also a notorious night owl. (Take a look at the time of this posting, and you'll see what I mean, LOL!)

However, I can't sleep if there's noise or if I go to sleep and the light conditions change drastically, like if it's pitch dark and my hubby turns on the light in the bathroom, because it shines through the door cracks, and wakes me up. If it's daylight when I fall asleep (I sometimes nap in the middle of the day or wake up really late on my days off) I will wake up if it gets dark.

My "weirdest" sleep habit is two-fold. Chronic insomnia (I sleep very little, usually about four hours tops of actual sleep once I'm in bed) and noise/movement. ANY disturbance will wake me up unless I'm so exhausted that my body simply goes into a mini-coma to recharge. Otherwise, anything from the aforementioned hubby going to the bathroom, to a passing car outside the apartment, to the cat getting on the bed can wake me from my usual light sleep. This is why I rarely dream, since REM requires a deeper kind of sleep than I usually get.

I went to bed at 4PM yesterday & woke up at 12:40 AM. I'm f*cked. Sleep schedules are a foreign concept to me.
I'm a disturbed person. Need between 9-13 hours to not wanna leap off a bridge. :tlol:

I'm pretty sure I've hacked sleep. I work about 60 hours a week and I'm in a Masters program so unless I stay up forever, I get no time for fun stuff.

Like, its 4am now, for me, and I have to be up at 6:30am for work. As long as I have a Monster in my system, I'll be totally fine until 6pm, where I will then take a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. I do this during the week and then I crash for half a day on the weekends.

I usually get about 3-5 hours of sleep a day during the week and I can run pretty well. And I usually hit the gym after work. Some weeks I only get 2-3 hours of sleep a day and I'm still ok.

I usually try to get at least 6-7 hours sleep, and I try to keep a morning routine by waking up 8 in the morning, it used to be 7, but I like to sleep.

If it's during the night, I sleep about 7 hours. During the day, I sleep more, sometimes 12-15 hours for some reason. I've been sleeping during the day since August, and I don't seem to have the bad effects like there is in other people.

I sleep deeper during the day and tend to wake up less, whereas at night I'm almost always waking up about 1-2 times.

I also tend to lose weight easier when I'm sleeping during the day, while sleeping at night often tends to make me gain it.

I'm less stressed, since I don't have to contend with the sensory issues of eyes being sensitive to light.

Nightlife is nice :)

It's funny you've made this thread, because I'm currently trying to pull an allnighter. Woke up at 5pm yesterday and been up for about 16 hours now. Even if I manage to stay awake until, let's say, 10pm, it's likely that I'll wake up every 2 hours throughout the night and not be able to sleep past 5am.

Despite fixing and messing my sleep pattern fairly often, I always get a lot of sleep, 8-9 hours most of the time. Hell, if I wobble on the bed after waking up, I'll fall asleep again and only wake up in early-mid afternoon. Not uncommon for me to do that on weekends, thus ending up sleeping about 12 hours. It's very helpful especially after a Friday night where you went out to drink. Good luck getting rid of a hangover by sleeping a few hours only.

I need a lot of sleep, especially when my depression acts up - currently I'm getting at least ten hours on a weeknight and I will fit in naps over the weekend as well where I can.

Like Net, I always sleep with the tv on; I don't usually leave the sound running but I find it harder to doze off in a totally silent, totally black room where nothing's happening.

As far as how deeply I go under, it takes a bit to wake me but I do toss and turn a lot, have night sweats etc... so most of the time I'll actually sleep on top of the blankets and my partner will sleep under them. I have an extra spare blanket that I'll pull over myself and that way I can toss and turn and not worry about taking his share and making him freeze. I am something of the Genghis Kahn of blanket theft.

Never had sleep paralysis; dreams are a mixed bag - sometimes I remember them, sometimes I don't, sometimes they're vivid, more often they're not - I'll usually only remember them if they're really crappy, really erotic or a really good power dream. I do have some particular recurring dreams.

Ah, yes, another note is that ever since I was little, I've found it hard [not impossible] to sleep in total darkness. It always felt unsettling to me. I usually just keep my desktop monitor on.

I get at least ten hours of sleep every night and if I nap during the day, I usually limit it to one hour. I do find that when I nap a lot, I tend to lose sleep at night, which is why I try very hard not to do so, but it's hard when you have a bad sinus headache and just want to lie down and sleep because it makes you tired. I do remember my dreams if I have any. I also tend to toss and turn and not sleep on one particular side.

I don't think I've slept more than 4 hours a night for years. As I'm basically a full-time carer when I'm not at work I tend to permanently be "on call", so I'll sleep light, and end up having to get up 4-5 times a night.

I'm so used to it now that if I do sleep more than I'm used to, I feel like crap the next day. I can cope with not having enough sleep, but too much? Just makes me feel hungover.

I used to be a late nighter, but these days I tend to go to bed anytime between 10:30 to midnight, though for some reason I always wake up at precisely 9:00 in the morning, even though my alarm clock is set to go off at 7:00

Thanks for all of your contributions, I have enjoyed reading them.

Discogod - amazing that you can get by on four hours of sleep. Plus to be a carer as well - lots of respect.

Prowler - I know how you feel, I've been awake for about 40 hours now. I almost nodded off about an hour ago but strangely I am wide awake again. I find when your eyes momentarily shut (as Cubed refers to above, that sort drifting in and out of sleep state) it can actually refresh you.

What are people views on scientists possibly curing sleep in future? 'Cure' is possibly the wrong term, since the necessity to sleep is not a disease, but it would be very nice if we didn't ever tire. We waste at least a third of our lives sleeping and it seems so unproductive. I know people will say "but beds are comfortable and sleeping feels so good" but the point is that if sleep was cured and we didn't tire we wouldn't really desire rest anyway.

Just wondered what people thought.

Definitely - if I didn't need to sleep, I'd have so much time for other (more fulfilling) things. I hate that so much of my weekends are wasted on sleep.

Yes, many people say life is too short as it is, so to spend 1/3 of it sleeping - minimum - seems like a major waste, really.

On the weekends I oversleep, I seriously don't wake up till 12:30pm....and I always get bitter because I wasted my whole morning sleeping. Yet I can never push myself out of bed when I don't have to go anywhere in the morning. :lol:

It is kinda sad that we waste a large chunk of our lives sleeping. Even if you're not going anywhere outdoors, you can still use that time to catch up on TV and movies, videogames, reading, or whatever else you do in your free time.

Erratic, to say the least. I'm much more a night person and get much more done at night, I feel much more creative, motivated, and energetic when everyone is asleep and nobody's in my way. I generally get between 4 and 6 "solid" hours and catch catnaps through the day when I can. Due to my work schedule not being a standard 9 to 5, every day is different. Some days, like tonight/tomorrow for example, I'll probably crash around 4 or 5am, wake up around 9:30am for work, be done with my morning appointments and home for lunch by about 1 or 2pm depending if I work out, then catch a nap at some point, head to the other gym for a couple hours of appointments and be done around 9 or 10. Then I gotta cook dinner and take care of other stuff around the house, and make time to play video games and just jerk around. Sometimes I get a Yoga jones around 2am and do that for a half hour, helps me unwind before bed.

It changes day by day, though, I've never had a "set" sleeping schedule. I shoot for a total of 6 to 8 "good" hours per day but they're rarely all at once. Sometimes on a day off I'll overdo it and get about ten hours straight if I have absolutely nothing to do. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes just worn out.

Depends on the shift I'm on. 8am-4pm I go to bed around 11 up at 6. 4pm-12am well I go to bed around 1-2am up at 7am. 12am-8am I go to sleep best I can about 6:30pm get up at 10:30 pm and depending on what I'm doing at work I can sleep for either 6 hours or 2.