Train myself to sleep less?

[magic]

Does anyone know any good studies or have experience with decreasing their sleep need?
For as long as I can remember I´ve always been such a sleep monster, sleeping for 10 or sometimes even 12 hours. (I´m 32 years old now)
I´m thinking of doing an experiment where I set the alarm where I sleep for 9 hours, and after a while maybe just 8.

Do you think I can train myself to sleep like this regardless If I work my night or day shift?
I´m always tired as hell in the dayshift even though I´ve slept for 8 hours.

I´m not sure if the tiredness is caused by the fact that I´m just not a morning person or if I´ve conditioned my body to always need 9-10 hours.
But on the other hand when I work the night shift I´m fine by sleeping 8 hours in the day.

My goal is to sleep 8 hours and be rested all day long when I work the day shift, do you think I can reach my goal?

/Magic

[Korpo]

Hello, magic.

Let your body determine the amount of sleep you need. It's really a bad idea to try to train it, as your sleep needs are determined by both your body and your soul.

There is a very interesting chapter on this in Kurt Leland's "Menus for Impulsive Living." Everything said in there about sleep has so far proven correct for me. It even includes advice for shift workers.

I sometimes get away with less than 6 hours sleep and feel fully rested, and sometimes I need 8. But it's not a conscious decision, I let my body decide. Whenever I override that and try to push my own reasoning - staying in bed, for example, when I actually know I got my "get up signal" - I feel groggy, unrested and might even have a bad day.

According to Kurt sleep is where you upload all your day to your soul, and the soul restores your life force. Messing with this can leave you with several undesirable outcomes - premature aging symptoms, lack of energy and also slower learning. And you don't gain anything from it, as you actually undermine the most effective rhythm.

You might actually sleep too much, but the best way to figure this out is listening to your body. When you wake up and have to pee, it's usually time to get up.

Cheers,
Oliver

[magic]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I´m not talking about decreasing the sleep need to six hours or less, but I don´t think I really need the 10 hours of sleep I need now,
my problem is that I perhaps don´t listen to the "get up signal" as you say and decide to sleep for a bit longer, which can sometimes be 2 extra hours.

/Magic

[sleeper]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I´m not talking about decreasing the sleep need to six hours or less, but I don´t think I really need the 10 hours of sleep I need now,
my problem is that I perhaps don´t listen to the "get up signal" as you say and decide to sleep for a bit longer, which can sometimes be 2 extra hours.

/Magic

I'm not attempting to diagnose or cure you, but you may have some kind of simple to fix problem such as low cortisol in the morning. I recommend that you get in touch with a FDN practitioner or a Holistic Health practitioner. You can run salivary tests, they're easy and cheap. But most importantly, you want to get a proper assessment so you're not guessing what the cause is - which is the reason i put the disclaimer in here. for instance: you could have low cortisol because of adrenal fatigue, or because you're so accustomed to waking up to a pot of coffee and the coffee does the work. Or perhaps you have adequate cortisol, but your hippocampus isn't getting the signal. If that is the case, you probably have more extra weight around your middle than on other parts of your body. or perhaps your cortisol levels are fine. Either way, a good health practitioner can sort this kind of stuff out easy for you.

that's my recommendation.

if you can get to the root of the problem, it's an easy fix.

~dale