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Comment by gregf | Hacker News Reader

I'm screwed then. Due to a mental issue and my sleep paralysis I'm lucky if I sleep 3-4 hours a night as much as I would like to sleep more.

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Worrying about sleeping enough is certainly more detrimental to one’s health and well-being than getting too little sleep.

That little sleep has way more possible dire consequences that just dementia. There's literature all over the place about it, I don't even know where to start. How old are you? I don't know anyone that can live with getting that little sleep unless they are also on amphetamines.

Turning 40 in August. I haven't slept this badly all my life. It's got worse over the years. Specially the last 5 or so. I'm bipolar II, I take my meds as I'm supposed to, but I still seem to frequently cycle with manic episodes that keep me up working on projects all hours of the night. I then refuse to sleep all day, so I'll go to bed at say 3-4am and get up by 9am. Nights I can go to bed, I suffer from horrible sleep paralysis and that will have me waking me up throughout the night. Some of it is pretty disturbing, at least to me. So I end up giving after it happening several times in a night and just not sleeping any longer.

Sleep issues run in the family though. My father is a logger and I have never seen him sleep longer than 5-6 hours my entire life.

*EDIT* not abusing Amphetamine's BTW. Sorry forgot to even talk about that. Just lots of mania I would guess. Like right now, I have been kinda down and depressed all afternoon. It's now 6pm where I'm at, and I just had a switch go off, and now I'm full of energy and will probably end up coding till I drop. I'm my own worst enemy, I know.

I'm really sorry you have to live with that. Yeah few people understand how a manic episode works, that can definitely be masked as being a functional person but you are still harming yourself. Maybe it's time to change your medication? The brain changes as you age, maybe you can have a better quality of life if you try new stuff.

In the process of changing my meds again. Sadly they never last longer than 6 months to maybe a year. It's a frustrating process honestly. So, I tend to lie as to how well I'm doing just due to the fact I don't want to take a dive into a deep depression for months while they work out the kinks again. I guess the mania is better than the depression, even though I know it's unhealthy. Well they both are so, not sure what I can do till the science improves.

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