Is it actually possible to train my body to need less sleep

Factual Questions
1

…or am I stuck needing 8.5 hours every night or risk feeling like a zombie in the mornings. I would like to get down to about 6 hours, if I can do that without damaging myself.

The reason I ask is, I need to start exercising. I have been gaining weight like crazy since I graduated from college, and the only difference in my lifestyle has been I no longer get ANY exercise. I work 8 hours a day on a computer for my day job. And I am currently stage managing a play, and directing another at night, so Monday through Friday from about 9:45 in the morning (when I leave for the day) till about 1:00 am when I get back home I am either sitting in my car, or sitting at work.

I can’t do it anymore, I need to exercise and it HAS to be in the mornings. But I haven’t been able to get myself out of bed before 9:00, and honestly I am having a good day if I can get up that early.

I can’t actually do less, but I am contemplating sleeping less. If I could get myself up at 7:00 am I would have 6 hours of sleep (usually) and still have time to jog for a half an hour at the park down the street, come home shower and change for work, eat breakfast and get to work on time. Hell, there is a lot I could do with my day if I could get by with only 6 hours of sleep.

The thing is, is this actually a possible or healthy thing to do? I am not really sure where to look for this kind of info.

Thanks…or am I stuck needing 8.5 hours every night or risk feeling like a zombie in the mornings.

The reason I ask is, I need to start exercising. I have been gaining weight like crazy since I graduated from college, and the only difference in my lifestyle has been I no longer get ANY exercise. I work 8 hours a day on a computer for my day job. And I am currently stage managing a play, and directing another at night, so Monday through Friday from about 9:45 in the morning (when I leave for the day) till about 1:00 am when I get back home I am either sitting in my car, or sitting at work.

I can’t do it anymore, I need to exercise and it HAS to be in the mornings. But I haven’t been able to get myself out of bed before 9:00, and honestly I am having a good day if I can get up that early.

I can’t actually do less, but I am contemplating sleeping less. If I could get myself up at 7:00 am I would have 6 hours of sleep (usually) and still have time to jog for a half an hour at the park down the street, come home shower and change for work, eat breakfast and get to work on time. Hell, there is a lot I could do with my day if I could get by with only 6 hours of sleep.

The thing is, is this actually a possible or healthy thing to do? I am not really sure where to look for this kind of info.

Thanks

2

IANAD, but the only thing you’ll get if you cut back on your sleep is a big sleep debt, leading to less quality in all of the many things you do. You will make more mistakes and take longer to do things right.

3

I have tried to do it before when I had too much to do and it didn’t work worth a damn. I can get less sleep during the week but I have to make it up almost 1:1 on the weekend. Like you, I have always needed an above average amount of sleep.

4

It seems for me, the better shape I am in, the less sleep I actually need from day to day, or night to night in this case.

5

From all I’ve heard and read I would agree that cutting sleep is a bad idea. You might get away w/ a half hour to, maybe, an hour less. Do it in half hour increment w/ a week or two inbetween and see what happens. If you find yourself getting drowsy during the day, you’ll have your answer.
You could also learn to do isometric exercises at your desk. A combination of the two might be your solution.

6

This is true for me as well. I also went from needing 8 hours a day to being quite rested in 6.5 or so over the past five years. I don’t know if this is just a natural change, or if it’s related to the necessity of sleep deprivation during college.

7

You may try looking at the quality of your sleep, perhaps video tape your night, then play it back in fast forward, note how ressless it is and work on improving that.

8

I used to be a notorious over-sleeper. I slept through numerous college classes, and made my parents’ lives very hard in the mornings when I lived at home and went to high school.

I’m still a very heavy sleeper. I’ve slept through a hotel fire alarm, and I’ll get up, walk across the room, turn off my alarm and go back to bed without realizing it.

I heard something online, tried it, and it works very well for me. Maybe it’ll work for you.

Set your alarm clock that lets you sleep for an amount of time that fits in 1.5-hour increments.

That’s it. I normally sleep 6 hours per night, and feel fine. Sometimes I sleep 7.5, and feel fine as well (not noticeably better). On rare occasions, I will sleep 4.5 or 9 hours and feel ok, but I stick to the middling lengths.

I find that if I set my alarm to let me get up after these amounts of sleep, I wake up easily, aware, and less tired. If I set it to get me up after an odd amount of time (e.g. 8 hours), I’m tired, I turn off the alarm and go back to sleep, etc.

As I said, seems to work for me, maybe it could for you.

9

Here is Cecil’s take on this question.

10

There was a study mentioned in a psychobiology course I took in my college days in which, over the course of a year, the test subjects were gradually reduced to two hours of sleep a night. In the follow up (three years later, IIRC) none of the test subjects slept more than six hours a night and I believe one only reverted back to three hours a night. Alas, my book from that course is in storage, so you’ll have to hope that my memory isn’t too bad.

So that shows that it’s at least possible. Whether or not it’s healthy is a different matter entirely.

11

I find that daily aerobic exercise, specifically running, helps with this. On weeks when I don’t run, I need about 9.5 hours of sleep. On weeks when I do run, I only need about 7.5 hours of sleep. If I run a race then that puts me at 6 hours for a few nights, I guess the adrenaline jacks me up so I can’t sleep. I’m not even a very hardcore runner, I run a 10K in about 50 minutes.

12

NAF1138, you’re probably not going to be able to cut your sleep back much, if at all, without screwing yourself up. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t exercise. Even a few hours a week can make a big difference. You’ve got weekends free, so if you get in a couple of hours each day, plus maybe squeezing in a short 30 minute aerobic-only workout a day or two during the week, you can probably improve your fitness quite a bit.

I lost over 25 pounds, with an average of only 1.5 to 2 hours three days a week, doing weight training and light aerobics. I got a lot more muscular too, so the amount of fat I lost was almost certainly more than 25 pounds. Meeting my new goals requires a lot more time now, but it doesn’t take much to start getting in better shape, you just have to actually do it and keep it up.

13

Also watching what you eat will be a good way to keep the weight off. When you change to a desk environment you need to scale back the calories.

14

I seem to remember a thread on these boards about a technique of sleeping that meant you only two hours of sleep per day. I have tried to find it with no luck but the basic idea behind the method was to sleep for 15 minutes every four hours. Apparently it is quite difficult to get your body into the rhythm of sleeping like this but once the pattern has been established it works very well, with some people saying they felt more awake using this method than they did with 8 hours sleep every night. The idea being that once your body gets used to the idea that you only sleep for 15 minutes at a time it falls into a deep slumber as soon as you lay down, rather than it taking some hours for deep sleep to occur.

I wouldn’t recomment it as a solution as I seem to remember that if you ever missed one of your 15 minute naps you became very tired very quickly.

15

One of the things I noticed when I started to exercise and lose weight in the last 1.5 years was that I needed less sleep (my snore reportedly got much less which might have something to do with it). The time I exercise nowadays (5 hr per week) I more than make up by needing less sleep.

So it might be a chicken-and-egg problem for you - you might need to make the time for exercise for a few months until your body’s increased efficiency pays you back in saved time.

16

You may want to consult a doctor to eliminate the possibility of something serious, such as sleep apnœa. One of the symptoms of sleep apnœa is feeling tired during the day; if left untreated it can result in death. You should also consider whether you are taking any medications which are causing daytime somnolence, such as SSRI anti-depressants or antihistamines. In that case, you may want to discuss substituting another drug.

One thing that helps some people in certain circumstances is Modafinil, a non-amphetamine stimulant whose only effect is to promote wakefulness. (Most people who take the drug don’t experience any of the jitteriness caused by caffeine, nor the euphoria and excessive energy caused by speed.) Modafinil is usually used to treat narcolepsy, but some doctors will consider prescribing it off-label for other purposes. There have been some research studies that have shown it is useful in treating drowsiness caused by SSRI anti-depressants.

17

I get by with ~5 hours many nights. Like last night, I was up until after 2 and up before 7. This is a 30-something slender male. Don’t excercise although I stay fairly busy.

I’m a night person, it’s quiet at night, kids go to sleep, phone stops ringing, life is better. I really don’t find I’m any more rested when I sleep 10 hours than 5 or 6.

18

Uberman’s Sleep Schedule. Note that, as you mentioned, any oversleeping or missing a nap is going to interrupt the schedule. It’s also not the sort of schedule that promotes harmonious social relationships.

I sleep about 4-6 hours a night (mostly due to insomnia); I seem to function okay, but on the rare occasions I actually get 7 or 8 hours of sleep I can really tell a difference in attentiveness and mental agility. I’d recommend cutting out one of your social activities, or wedging in some kind of exercise into the middle of your day rather than giving up sleep, although I’ve always found exercising right after waking is the best time of the day to do so.

Stranger

19

You can do a fair amount of ‘exercising’ (increasing your calory expenditure) by making slight changes in your daily routine.

  • try to park your car as far as possible from the door, at the far end of the lot, and walk to the building.
  • avoid elevators, use the stairs when you’re only going a couple of floors up or down.
  • I worked with one person who mounted his computer chest-high and worked standing up. This was done due to back problems, but he ended up also losing a bit of weight by doing this. I know another person who has her computer mounted onto/in front of a stationary bicycle. She sits at home and surfs the internet, while cycling up a storm (and losing weight). Don’t know if that would be possible at work, but you might consider it.
  • are you stage managing while sitting down? If so, maybe standing, pacing around a bit, etc. might get you a bit more exercise, without taking up additional time.

For a lot of people, the trick to exercise & maintainable weight loss is to make minor changes in their daily routine that involve spending more calories, but are minor enough to be incorporated without upset in your daily routine.

20

IIRC, it’s not your body that requires sleep but it’s your brain that requires sleep.