Sleep, when and how much

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Pearl

Pearl

Finder of lost things AND The Boss
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Apr 19, 2021
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I've never required a lot of sleep. I'm an extremely light sleeper, and up many times at night. Also an early riser! Been like this my whole life. I have had people tell me it's not good and should try sleep aids. My sleep schedule works for me so that's not even a consideration. So I'm curious how much sleep others get? I'm also a 10min power napper!
 
I do well at 8 hrs. A little less, I can handle. Less than six hours and I'm a mess. No coffee for me after 4pm. I can't nap during the day, either. Sleep is super important to me. I take care of my husband and when he's not well, I'm up alot during the night.
I do so a number of seniors and unemployed that stay up all night and sleep all day. I never want to be one of those, so I really try to go to bed at a decent time. Husband likes to stay up late, so that's tricky. I feel like people are losing out on life when they're sleeping all day. My mom does that, has a bizarre sleep schedule.
 
My average is a hair over 6.25 hours. Last night wasn't typical, the show I was watching was a repeat and I fell asleep in the recliner, then got up and went to bed

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Amish Heart said:
I do well at 8 hrs. A little less, I can handle. Less than six hours and I'm a mess. No coffee for me after 4pm. I can't nap during the day, either. Sleep is super important to me. I take care of my husband and when he's not well, I'm up alot during the night.
I do so a number of seniors and unemployed that stay up all night and sleep all day. I never want to be one of those, so I really try to go to bed at a decent time. Husband likes to stay up late, so that's tricky. I feel like people are losing out on life when they're sleeping all day. My mom does that, has a bizarre sleep schedule.
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I know several seniors that 'sleep in' until noon or so, ok if it works for them.
 
10 hours of sleep for me sleeping like a log...until I started working a variable third shift. If I could get to sleep before the sun rose and before the wife started getting ready to go to work I could get in 6 or 8 hours. Then when the kids came along I'd be sleeping with one ear awake listening. Change of careers had me working 60 plus hours a week on call 24x7, half awake waiting for that call that seem to always come.

Kids are gone and self-reliant. I head for bed around 10 PM. If I'm asleep before the wife then her snoring doesn't usually wake me. Wife gets up at 5 AM to pee and drags all the bed covers off of me in the process. So I'm up to 7 hours of sleep at night and a 10 or 15 minute nap in the afternoon.

My record is 83 hours without sleep. Emergency at work and it was only another employee and I that knew how to resolve. I was told I was becoming a bit difficult to deal with towards the end.
 
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The amount of sleep needed is really personal. I do best with 8 hours. When I was teaching and working 12 to 15 hour days, by the time the weekends came, I would sleep 12 hours a night. Let's say I was exhausted.

In many ways I resemble my Grandma V. She was 5" 8" and very thin. I was 5'8" too (not sure now) and was very thin for a long time, but not as thin as I wish I was now. We wore the same size shoe. She slept 10 hours a day. She would go to bed around 10, wake up around 6 and go to daily mass. She would come home and if she didn't lay down to nap at some point during the day, she would fall asleep in a chair. I don't need 10 hours of sleep, but if I have a few rough and sleepless nights, I need to catch up.

When I was a child, I slept very soundly and did so into my adult life until I had a crisis in my life. There was a long period of time after that when I slept fitfully. Sleep has never been as good since then.

Like Amish, I have to be careful about caffeine intake, whether it be coffee, tea or chocolate. If I eat chocolate in the evening, I will not sleep so well.
 
I am usually up by 04:30 everyday, I consider 6AM to be sleeping in. That being said I try to go to bed by 9 but usually it is someplace between 10 and mid-night. So on average I get between 4 and 7 hours of sleep, with 6 being the average. By Sunday afternoon I am worn out and could use a nap, but other than that it works for me.

From time to time I am reduced to trying to get by on 3 hours sleep, if I have to do that for more than 2 days it is not a pretty picture. I become very grumpy....
 
I generally get between six and eight hours a night. It is a little easier working from home, and not having to commute. Caffeine does not bother me, and I can catnap as well. In fact I can sleep virtually anyplace at any time. Sometimes I think I can sleep standing up. I think I may have a recessive Dagwood Bumstead gene.
 
What I wouldn't give for 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep :(.
For decades I slept at least 8 hours a night and needed an alarm-clock to wake up.
Nowadays, it doesn't matter what time I go to bed, I won't get to sleep before midnight.
Melatonin is a joke (even multiple 10mg's).
Awake at 4am and it takes an hour to get back to sleep. 2 hours later I'm awake again and just lay there another 2 hours before giving up. Tired all day, but not sleepy.
It eventually takes a toll on your mental health.
And now, everybody knows why I ain't normal.;) 🤪
 
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My wake time is 6:45 to 7:45am. That is totally at the dog's discretion. So let's call it 7:15am on average. The number of hours I sleep is 7:15am minus whatever time I went to bed. Which is generally between 10:30pm and 12:30am with some oddball days being 2:00am (for reasons that I do not quite understand). So generally, it looks like I get about 8 hours of sleep a night.

Once I lay down, I am dead asleep within 5 minutes. I am retired, so there is no pressing need to go to bed or wake up at any particular time. Or even know what day it is.
 
Haertig said:
. So generally, it looks like I get about 8 hours of sleep a night.

Once I lay down, I am dead asleep within 5 minutes. I am retired, so there is no pressing need to go to bed or wake up at any particular time. Or even know what day it is.
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Well, except Sunday.
No matter how many times you check the box, the mail ain't ever there on Sunday.
I figured that out all by myself in a year. :thumbs:
I need a CPAP machine; but I heard they are addictive
Thinking.gif
.
 
My pet peeve is when the neighbor's are out in the middle of the night (01:00-02:30), I am a relatively light sleeper and if I hear something outside I have to get up and investigate. The other thing I hate is when I wake up at 03:00 and then stare at the clock knowing that the alarm will go off in an hour or less, I just can't go back to sleep after that.
 
Haertig said:
My wake time is 6:45 to 7:45am. That is totally at the dog's discretion. So let's call it 7:15am on average. The number of hours I sleep is 7:15am minus whatever time I went to bed. Which is generally between 10:30pm and 12:30am with some oddball days being 2:00am (for reasons that I do not quite understand). So generally, it looks like I get about 8 hours of sleep a night.

Once I lay down, I am dead asleep within 5 minutes. I am retired, so there is no pressing need to go to bed or wake up at any particular time. Or even know what day it is.
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When I was working i got 8 hours of sleep and hated the alarm clock. Less than 8 hours and I was not sharp.

Now that I am retired i go to sleep when I am tired and wake when I feel like getting up. 11-12 hrs average and I love it.

Ben
 
My alarm used to go off at 5am and I don't miss it. I do have to set it for 630 am Mon through Friday because the twins leave for the bus at 7am, and I leave at 740 am to bring little granddaughter to school. I need coffee time and time to get dressed. I love Friday nights knowing I can sleep in till 7ish. So nice.
 
When I was a working stiff, I would typically get up at 4 AM and hit the bed at 10 PM. The 6 hours was typically just enough. I have always had high stress and high demand occupations so some nights weren't always as restful as I would like, or sometimes you simply had to work through the night to hit your deadlines.

Now that I am semi-retired and devoting most of my hours resurrecting this old homestead, I am hitting the bed about 9 PM and still getting up at 4 AM. The 7 hours appear to be perfect, and I rarely ever wake up in the middle of the night like I used to. Been doing this for about 18 plus months and it really has improved the quality of life.
 
My sleep is all screwy. 10 years of 2nd and 3rd shift will do that to you. Plus I have always been a late night/late morning kind of guy. My natural sleep pattern is to fall asleep between midnight and 1am, and wake between nine and ten. That pattern doesn't lend itself well to being a productive citizen. It worked ok when I was on a 3-11 shift. Now I typically have to wake around 0445 for 8 work days straight, but I sleep til around 0715 on my days off. That working wake up time varies from 0245 to 0545 though, depending on the project schedule. And on weekend days off I revert to that 1am- 10 am schedule.

I usually sleep 6 1/2 to 7 hours on work days, and 8 to 10 hours on my days off. Being a type 1 diabetic will screw with sleep patterns too. High or low blood glucose will cause me to sleep even deeper than normal, or wake easier than normal. My normal sleep depth is somewhere between "dead to the world" and "Dad, why didn't you wake up! A tornado just knocked the house down around us and the gas lines are broken and half the block just exploded and you slept through it!"
 
backlash said:
When I retired I tossed my alarm clock in the closet.
I never really needed an alarm. I just always woke up when I needed to. I guess that's part of hating to be late for anything.
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I always hated to be late too. That's why I used to set two alarms. Looks like we were at opposite ends of the spectrum with out solutions - I never trusted myself to automatically wake up when I needed to.
 
Haertig said:
I always hated to be late too. That's why I used to set two alarms. Looks like we were at opposite ends of the spectrum with out solutions - I never trusted myself to automatically wake up when I needed to.
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I'm like this too. I can sleep through an alarm, no problem. I always set at least two on my phone, with different sounds. That usually does the trick.

Years ago I had a clock radio. I started sleeping through the radio going off. Sometimes I would hear several songs in my dreams before I would wake up. Hard to believe I could sleep through Van Halen or Led Zeppelin playing at full volume...🙄
 
There was a time when I was working 2 full time jobs 5 days a week, first one was 6 till 3:30, the second one was from 4 till midnight, I lived about 30 miles from town so it made for some long days. I finally just hooked up the stereo to a timer set to go off at 4:30, 4 speakers in the room, cranked that puppy up with different tapes for variety usually Aerosmith, AC/DC, or something soft like that... never slept through it.

When I was little (7,8 & 9) I would spend the summers with my Grandpa, he was a tractor foreman at a large farm in Southern CA, I was able to ride with him as he made his rounds. Typical day was eat breakfast with Grandma, go to the company Ice House to fill our jugs and meet with the tractor drivers, then go to the fields (that was all before sun up). It was great, got to service tractors, grease, change oil, and fuel them, deliver seed, and just make the rounds from field to field. Irrigation days were interesting and long for Grandpa. Some times we would have to layout wind-rows, which was fun. We even got to burn off a couple of fields, which would make people go nuts, today. But I would bet we were getting up everyday by 04:00, one year they gave me a wind-up alarm clock and I took it home at the end of the summer.... It disappeared within a week of me getting home... to this day I have no idea where it went..... :)

When I was 10, I started working with my dad, work days were clock-in on site at 06:00, clock out at 18:00, so I guess I have always gotten up early.
 
New research out this week in science news (though it's not the first by any means) says that 7-8 hours of sleep is associated with the lowest rate of dementia. That is an association and does not prove cause. But still. The book, "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker was fascinating and tells about all the brain stuff that goes on in various stages and duration of sleep. Keeps us sane and functioning as social animals. Lack of sleep makes us unable to tell (from others' face expressions) who is friend or foe--a major necessity in social animals.
 
I need a solid 8 hours. Any time after 8pm is fair game and am usually up by 4ish. The alarm is set for 4:45 just in case, and there are times when it goes off. I was a rock sleeper prior to having children - in HS I had an old alarm that sounded like a freight train. I would set it in a canning pot to make it louder so I would hear it. There were still times my mom or dad would have to come in and wake me because it woke them up at the other end of the house. Once my kids were born, they could sigh and I would hear it.
There have been studies about artificial light and in its absence, it is/was common for humans to have 2 sleeps so awake for an hour or so in the middle of the night. This is proving true for both Hubby and me as we use less and less artificial light. @Supervisor42 might try to limit screens for a certain period of time prior to "bedtime." Screens stimulate certain parts of your brain.
Also, I usually like winter (standard) time, but this year didn't sleep well most of those months. Since DST, have slept much better. I don't do changing of my routine very well.
 
LadyLocust said:
I need a solid 8 hours. Any time after 8pm is fair game and am usually up by 4ish. The alarm is set for 4:45 just in case, and there are times when it goes off. I was a rock sleeper prior to having children - in HS I had an old alarm that sounded like a freight train. I would set it in a canning pot to make it louder so I would hear it. There were still times my mom or dad would have to come in and wake me because it woke them up at the other end of the house. Once my kids were born, they could sigh and I would hear it.
There have been studies about artificial light and in its absence, it is/was common for humans to have 2 sleeps so awake for an hour or so in the middle of the night. This is proving true for both Hubby and me as we use less and less artificial light. @Supervisor42 might try to limit screens for a certain period of time prior to "bedtime." Screens stimulate certain parts of your brain.
Also, I usually like winter (standard) time, but this year didn't sleep well most of those months. Since DST, have slept much better. I don't do changing of my routine very well.
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I have to have some light at night, but very light sleeper. I worry if I feel like I'll actually sleep, been like that since a child. The sleep I get is good sleep, just have to be aware and hear what is happening. Works great for me! Long for the long summers of daylight, and hot weather!
 
I don't like any light when I sleep. We bought those adjustable beds, it's a king, but basically two beds put together. My side is not plugged in, because I sleep flat. Husband has to sleep elevated. But it also has a light that goes on and shines the floor if you step out of bed, drop a blanket, or anything that hits the motion sensor. That drove me nuts, I drop blankets all the time, so my side is not plugged in.
 
Amish Heart said:
I don't like any light when I sleep. We bought those adjustable beds, it's a king, but basically two beds put together. My side is not plugged in, because I sleep flat. Husband has to sleep elevated. But it also has a light that goes on and shines the floor if you step out of bed, drop a blanket, or anything that hits the motion sensor. That drove me nuts, I drop blankets all the time, so my side is not plugged in.
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I don't like light either: black out curtains, no digital alarm clock etc. When we first moved into this place, there was something that kept bugging me, figured out it is a little light in the fire alarm that flashes every so often. Now I know what it is, but it still gets my attention at times.
 
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