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What Hacker News says
- Studies have shown you need at least 8 hours of continuous sleep if you are on a traditional monophasic sleep schedule. Anything less and you start to accumulate "sleep debt" and performance decreases, among other things.
If you are very very serious about reducing total sleep time, you can attempt polyphasic sleep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
I recommend trying to find Why We Nap by Dr. Stampi. Its the only detailed research on the subject. Basically, dont trust much of the info about polyphasic sleep around the net as much of it is false.
- So, talking about this and reading what links I could find from your originally linked article, as well as reading up on Claudio Stampi leaves me no more illuminated. Stampi's book Why We Nap is out of print, my library does not have a copy, and I can't find any other references to actual studies that prove the arguments against polyphasic sleep, though the opinion of most folks does seem to be that it's not a replacement for a full nights sleep. I just can't figure out how they know, rather than merely think so. There seems to be a tremendous amount of regurgitation of party lines and mentioning of the same few, mostly dubious, sources. I think damned near everybody involved in the conversation, including you and I, understands less about sleep than they think they do.
You're right, however, that there is a cult-like feeling around polyphasic sleep discussion, and I view that sort of thing with extreme skepticism...but I'm surprised to find it happening on both sides. The "debunkers" are just as guilty of making unbacked claims, and poorly citing their opinions.
Every time I've seen a straight up assertion about how long one should sleep, whether napping can reduce the total number of hours needed, etc. I'm unable to find a study that directly backs the assertion. I guess such studies must exist, but no one is linking to them. Even Wikipedia is surprisingly lacking in citations of directly relevant scientific research on the matter.
