[0172435968]

>I sleep 10 to 11h per night.

Yeah that's called over-sleeping sir. It may be indicative of a health issue you should get checked out. You might not want to be so quick to stake claim to autonomous functions. It's not like you're willing yourself to sleep longer; your body just isn't functioning normally.

[mindB]

You have evidence for that claim? No study I've seen seems to suggest there's any problem with sleeping more up to something like 12 hrs/night I think. National Sleep Foundation recommends 7-9 hours for adults, and I think I've seen studies suggesting that's on the low side. When you also account for natural variations within a population, a need for 10 hours of sleep doesn't seem ridiculous.

[evfanknitram]

You do not seem to be talking of the same thing. He wrote:

> It may be indicative of a health issue

Now you write:

> No study I've seen seems to suggest there's any problem with sleeping more up to something like 12 hrs/night I think

So he said it may be an indication of an issue, and you write that it may not be unhealthy to sleep a lot. Those are two different things.

As for your claim: A quick search returns many hits related to issues caused by sleeping more than ~9 hours. I have not reviewed them (I spent 1 minute on this) so can't say if the studies well performed. Example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19473367 "Prolonged sleep duration (night-time sleep and daytime napping) may be associated with an increased risk of dementia."

But saying that no study would even suggest there would be a problem seems strange considering I found a bunch of them in a minute. Maybe you have done a deeper review of the studies and concluded that they are invalid, or?

[totalrobe]

I think the key here is "associated". Sleep deprivation has also been associated to dementia.

[evfanknitram]

Yes, the link I gave pointed that out. I just questioned that he hadn't found a link since there are so many studies available. If there are associations between sleeping lock and many illnesses then of course sleeping long could be an indication of an issue.

[totony]

IIRC there are negative effects of oversleeping; some mininal health issues, but cognition is the same as a 8-9hour sleep

I read a few studies when i started bodybuilding and that seemed to be the consensus

Also undersleep affects cognition to a signifiant degree, iirc it was 40% diminution day one, 60% day 2 on memory tasks (and you have the same health issues as oversleep, perhaps to a higher degree)

[mindB]

I did a brief search because I was curious who was remembering correctly here. There have been several studies correlating "long" sleeping with mortality, but the study I found that attempted to control for confounding variables[1] seems to suggest that most of the differences in mortality in the populations studied can be explained by "depression and low socioeconomic status". It seems like a lot more study has been devoted to undersleeping than oversleeping, and I can't find anything convincing as far as maximum healthy sleep time and effects of over-sleeping. One study I still want to look at but haven't gotten around to yet is the stuff the NSF produced in 2015 when making its recommendations about sleep duration.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/29/7/881/2708387

[tryonqc]

It appears there is indeed a link between short/long sleep and mortality. As you said, the possible causes are usually not reviewed. This concerns me as I do sleep 9h+ on average. (But then again I do have an eye-illness that require a lot of concentration to overcome)

> Conclusion: Both short and long duration of sleep are significant predictors of death in prospective population studies. > (...) > Future studies should be designed to answer the question whether sleep duration is a cause or simply a marker of ill-health. https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/33/5/585/2454478?sear...

> Long sleep was significantly associated with mortality, incident diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, stroke, coronary heart disease, and obesity. https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1087-0792(17)3...

[1996]

I do not have sleep apnea. I am just lazy and like comfort and productivity. I don't see why I should change if I have no evidence it is harming me.

[0172435968]

You seem to have implied sleeping long offers productivity. Might it be the case others are equally productive at the recommended 8 hours? Might it be the case that you need two hours extra sleep per night to get where everyone else is cognitively with eight hours sleep? Because if that is the case then you are losing time, productive time, and may in fact be losing some of your life, depending on how one views it. You may be sleeping away 8.33% of your life needlessly. If that isn't worth it to you to save then happy dreaming to you.

[1996]

Fair enough (and I don't see why you got flagged, as you contribute to the discussion; I upvoted all your comments, I hope ot helps)

Others could be as productive as me in 8h or 6h or even less for all I know. I just have not met such people. Most people I know sleep little and are by my own standards not productive (I mean I would never hire them, sorry if it is rude)

Your other point also makes a lots of sense: I may be losing 2h per day due to sleep. OTOH, I generally wake up by 11am, am done with breakfast and shower by 1 or 2pm, and start working for real by 4pm, so I'm already wasting time by myself :-)

But in a few hours of highly productive work, I often achieve my goals. When I don't, I very quickly find another way to get the results, because IT NEEDS TO WORK NOW!

Lazyness, impatience and hubris are my best qualities!

[meowface]

I think the point the poster was making is that it's possible the issue is with the quality of your sleep. Someone getting a lower quality of sleep will need more hours of total sleep every day to be as well-rested as someone with a higher quality but fewer hours of sleep.

Of course, that's not necessarily the case. Everyone has a different genetic need for and predisposition to sleep.

[rhizome]

That's much different than your suggestion that there's a doctor-level health issue involved.

[0172435968]

I've made two suggestions then that are not contradictory.

[GenericsMotors]

Everyone's different. I'll wake up after 7 or 8 hours without an alarm if I haven't had any crunch time recently.

A colleage of mine seems to do fine with 5 hours sleep, and another needs 9-10 hours like GP.

[stefs]

"seems to do fine with 5 hours of sleep"

i'm always very skeptical about claims like that, for three reasons:

1. people who claim to work perfectly with less than 7 hours of sleep regularly are often used to it but actually slightly under-perform (in regards to their maximum efficiency) without noticing the difference.

2. there's a bit of societal pressure to sleep less; people sleeping 8-9 hours are sometimes seen as lazy. thus people sometimes falsely claim to sleep less than they actually do (or see pt. 1), which reinforces the original point.

3. a couple of very smart and/or successful people sleep very little at night because they're so productive and successful and sleep would take time away from this - what they forgot to mention are the frequent naps throughout the day.

you are right though that everyone's different. not only genetically - mental, physical and emotional exhaustion differ between jobs and hobbies. though i agree with some others here that sleeping much more than 10 hours regularly may be a sign of health problems or - nowadays more likely due to ubiquitous screens - poor sleep quality.

[GenericsMotors]

He definitely seems like the exception to the rule. Whereas if I've slept 5 hours I'll be ready to pack in at 4pm he's still fine.

And I'm pretty sure its not an act as he's older than me, consistently competent and I've known him like this for years,running the same schedule.

Probably just on one extreme of the bell curve.

[walljm]

sleep durations follow a normal distribution in the populace. 8hrs only happens to be the average, but certainly not true for every one.

sleep start times and sleep wake times also follow a normal distribution.

don't assume.

[0172435968]

Okay but this guy is saying that he purposely sleeps 11 hours a day so that he can be more creative and cognitively enhanced and I'm the one being questioned for sources lol.

[1996]

No, not more creative. In fact I stated the opposite and was hoping to find the reason why.

But cognitively enhanced and more productive, hell yeah. I know my track record. I have little doubt about that.

[rhacker]

I can't stand people that prescribe life changes to others. Too many people do this. I used to have a friend that was sooo prescriptive. Every god-damn minute of my life analyzed. What sucks more is that people like this get into every damn institution until we have laws banning behaviors. 1984