Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Michael Bateman's avatar

Disclaimer: I have not had time to read many of the linked papers and links yet. I have checked out "Beggars in Spain" from my local library and look forward to reading it.

I'm interested in this topic because I seem to require a lot of sleep. Without having read all, or even most, of the links, it seems like much of this content focuses on the *cognitive* impacts of sleep/not sleeping. My need seems to be more focused on athletic performance and my immune system.

I have a high training volume of running/skiing/climbing and notice that I perform at a much lower level when I don't sleep ~8 hours. The heart rate & sleep data I collect on myself seems to confirm this subjective feeling. I also tend to get sick quickly if I maintain my training volume with consistent low sleep over the period of a few days or a week. Friends that are professional runners or otherwise semi-professional athletes that I know seem to focus on sleep as a core part of their training.

I wonder if you might synthesize any of your readings that relate to this aspect of the topic?

Expand full comment
Sol Hando's avatar

Personally I feel that I require a lot of sleep, making it always super difficult to wake up in the morning, so this sort of research is very interesting to me.

I looked up Orexin supplements to see if this was something you could order on Amazon, and it seems like the only product advertising itself with "Orexin" is a placebo, considering it has "Neanderthal Extract" as one of the ingredients, which gave me a chuckle: https://ibspot.com/us/products/starmel-orexin-plus-150ml-for-anorexia?variant_id=1928146

No self-experimentation for me then. It would be really cool we could gain an extra hour or two in the day. Not that 100% of my hours are optimized already, but living in a world that's designed for 8 hours of sleep, when you could get by with 6 without negative side effects would be a major advantage.

Expand full comment
8 more comments...

No posts