Can a person live with 4 hours of sleep at most every day?

Can a person live with 4 hours of sleep at most every day?

Is it possible to sleep for 4 hours?

Many people would like to shorten their sleep in order to work longer or have more personal time. This phenomenon is not at all an attribute of modernity - at all times there have been characters who belittle the significance of sleep

What is overslept is lived through,” a  proverb tells us with regret, condemning laziness. And here is a quote from Napoleon: “A man should sleep 4 hours, women 5 hours, and only lazy and fools sleep more.” Some successful contemporaries are also quick to comment on sleep and productivity.

Who can sleep in 4 hours

A small "theoretical part". Different people have different needs for sleep. For most it is 7-8 hours, but not for everyone. The need for sleep can vary from 4 to 12 hours!

People who need 4-6 hours of sleep are called short sleepers. Statistics vary, but it is believed that there are no more than 2% of such people in our society.

Those who need 9-12 hours to rest are long-sleepers. There are also few such people - 3-5% of the population.

The rest are people with an average need for sleep. This is most of us.

What a person's need for sleep will be is determined by genetics. Long before the birth of a person, it is already predetermined for him how much he will sleep. Thus, for someone, 4 hours of sleep per night is a natural norm. They don't have to do anything to shorten the length of their stay in bed: and it does so, with ease.

Paradoxically, these people often turn to somnologists complaining that they allegedly have insomnia. After all, they try to sleep for 8 hours, “like all normal people,” but it turns out much less. In fact, this is their healthy feature. Perhaps there are some among the readers too?

If you too feel like you're getting too little sleep, ask yourself two questions:

For most of your life, have you slept as little as you do now?

Are you getting enough sleep in the few hours you sleep?

If the answer to both questions is yes, then you can be congratulated - you are a short-sleeping person who won the genetic lottery. Sleep little and be calm - nothing bad will happen to your health.

What happens if the average person starts sleeping for 4 hours

In people with an average and especially high need for sleep, the situation is different. Take an ordinary person who gets at least 7 hours of sleep. However, he wants to sleep for 4 hours. It turns out that he should reduce the duration of his sleep by almost half! Alas, attempts to do this will not bring results. A person will simply experience signs of lack of sleep:

Poor health throughout the day;

Headache;

Decreased memory, attention;

Decreased performance;

Drowsiness;

Deterioration of physical condition;

Increased appetite.

How to make sleep more efficient and learn to get enough sleep in less time?

Thus, 4 hours of sleep per night is still not enough for most people. However, almost anyone can reduce their sleep duration by 10-20% without harm to their health and performance. This is achieved in the following way.

Start sleeping on a strict schedule. Both weekdays and weekends, go to bed and get up at the same time. Continue doing this for 1-2 weeks so that the body gets used to the constant routine. Once the habit is formed, take 15 minutes off your sleep. Live like this for 3-4 days. If you still feel good and stay alert until the evening, take another 15 minutes and watch yourself for another 3-4 days. And so on.

Sooner or later, you will come to a point where you begin to feel a slight lack of sleep. Upon reaching this point, regain the last 15 minutes taken away. Take this mode as permanent. This is your safe minimum sleep.

Traditionally, it is believed that an adult needs 8 hours of sleep per day. This is both true and not quite true at the same time.

According to research, in order to function normally, a person must sleep for at least eight hours, but, of course, everything is individual - there are people who need only three to four hours of sleep, and there are those for whom even eight hours is not enough,” says neurologist Natalia Gurariy. - It depends on individual characteristics: on the degree of employment, on the presence of physical activity. If a person sleeps four to five hours, while he is mentally stable, alert, he is not bothered by a headache, he works normally, he has a good concentration of attention and memory, he feels great during the day, there is no reason for concern.

Everyone has their own range of sleep duration. There are people who have very productive sleep cycles and their nervous system takes much less time to recover. Such a person sleeps less than the norm, but, as they say, like the dead. (True, some of these “heroes of a short sleep” do not even notice how they get the necessary norm when they take a nap during the day.) And the other can spin all night - even ten hours will not be enough for him, he will get up broken, as if he had not slept at all. But, as a rule, for the average person you need to sleep at least 7 - 9 hours a day.

Lack of sleep or sustained insomnia can be very difficult to solve by natural means. For this reason, medication is often required to chemically regulate sleep cycles again. Once our brain has learned to sleep again, the best strategy is to try to gradually reduce the dose of medication. Sleeping well is essential for our health.

Sleeping a few hours also affects the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with memory and learning . This is because brain neurotransmitters are replenished during sleep, which is why insomnia causes a loss of connectivity between the neurons present in this area of ​​the brain.

Insomnia also causes lack of concentration . Many of the mistakes we make on a day-to-day basis, such as at work or driving, can be justified by a lack of night rest.

Insomnia causes the brain to unlearn what the normal structure of sleep is. Thus, an irregular sleep or a few hours can cause fatigue, headache, headaches, etc.