Hacker News Reader

Comment by joering2 | Hacker News Reader

It always amazes me to read articles like this. How come I don't need more than 3 hours of sleep a day and its been like that for over 15 years now?

I sleep "late hours". I go sleep around 8am and wake up around noon. I don't eat breakfast just coffee. I work most of the day on different projects, eat quite large dinner at 8pm, then every day go for 45 min to the gym, around 10pm and then 20 min walk. After that its about midnight and I start working. I don't get tired until 5am but then 2 glasses of water "wake me up". By 8am I'm in bed truly tired.

I been running this schedule for 15 years now, no symptoms of nothing. I don't smoke and don't drink btw. I barely watch TV (never found anything interesting; I take breaks on my PC watching some travel-related documentaries)

Edit: perhaps once a month I feel truly tired and usually on the weekend, I tend to sleep about 8-10 hours. But that doesn't happen often.

View on HN

I remember my friend mentioned to me she might have a mutation in the DEC2 gene (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884988/) because she usually goes to bed around 2 am and wakes up at 6-7 am, and has been doing it throughout her life. And she says she's fine and like you doesn't feel tired if she only gets 4-5 hours of sleep.

Interestingly, if she gets the standard number of hours of rest (say, 7-8), she gets really groggy and it totally disrupts her ability to function throughout the day!

Interesting, same here. IF I put whole 7 hours (I cannot 8), I feel tired all day long.

Back when I was trying to make the uberman (and eventually the everyman) sleep schedules work for me, I ran across a person like you, it made me incredibly jealous. He seemed to think it was that his brain only went into REM mode for some reason. As the other comment mentioned maybe it's just a simple gene mutation, if so perhaps CRISPR can replicate the effect... Lots of stuff if you google "Short sleepers".

I hope you use this incredible advantage to do something especially unique for society.

It sounds kind of like an evolutionary advantage. Sleep is probably for multiple uses, but I think most could all be handled in other fashions.

The exception is conservation of energy. Yet, that is no longer relevant in the upper part of society.

Wow that sounds amazing. Did you see anyone (like a doctor or a researcher) and ask for an explanation of how you can do this?

No I didn't ask the doctor. Go thru regular checkup once a month and nothing came up so I don't bother.

As far as I remember it wasn't always like that. Eventually at some point around my 20s I start working more and more hours and never got "break". Eventually I think my body got used to _knowing_ how many hours per night it can expect and adjusted. That or perhaps a heart attack is coming any day now at 35 (knock on the wood)

I sure hope that you stay at the best of your health. I am very curious about your capability because I always told myself that sleep is very important to my performance, concentration and overall well being. How do the people in your life (e.g. friend, family) generally react when they find out that you sleep so little?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com