How much sleep is needed?

fixer27

fixer27

Joined
Nov 17, 2004
Messages
14,031
When outdoors, how much sleep is required? Sleep is a rejuvenative process
that never seems to be talked about.

Ten hours seems a good mark, Navy SEALS get no sleep during "hell week"
ditto for Army Rangers. Is that practical for normal campers/hikers./survival
people?
 
It depends on the person, but you aim for what you can get. It isn't like you are going to have to deal with oversleeping and you can tell readily when you have not slept enough.

I have gone without sleep for days to see what the effects were and it gets very bad after a few days, and by day 4 and beyond it is very difficult to concentrate at all.

I had problems with short term memory and found it very difficult to remember if I did something. The interesting thing is that yoru desire to sleep comes and goes, it isn't a constant state of being drowsy.

I would get periods where I really wanted to sleep but after a few hours it would fade away. The mental clarity was a constant issue though.

-Cliff
 
4-5 1/2 hours. not at once though. Take cat naps. Depending on whether you are a night owl(like me) or a morning person, you need to gear your sleep patterns accordingly. If you are a morning person, take shorter cat naps(roughly 20 mins - 45mins, you have to find what works for you). If you are a a night person, try taking 45mins-1 1/2 hr naps spaced throughout the day. Any less than 4 hours in a 24 hour period can be detrimental to performance. I tend to lean towards the theory that night owl sleeping patterns are better...simply because morning person sleep patterns don't neccessarily hit REM which contributes to long term memory. Not hitting REM isn't really a bad thing where performance is important. It is enough to refresh you for a couple months.

I picked all this up from my navy buddies that do two month long sail boat races. If you're a backpacker, this technique is amazing. You can cover 20 plus miles easily at an average 2mph pace. Be sure to know yoru physical limitations and stay focused or YOU WILL CRASH. Very bad. When you crash for long periods of time, it will drain all your energy(your body will burn it in order to sleep and repeat REM).

I also have insomnia so I stay up for about 5 to 6 days before I start my cat nap process.
 
I find that 4 hours per day is minimal for normal functioning. The odd part is it doesn't necessarily need to be at once- two two-hour naps is ALMOST as good as a solid four. You can easily go for 48 hours without any, but things get weird. Think low grade hallucination after that- you know where all of a sudden you think someone is standing besides you sort of thing- after 56- forget it- detrimental. From a survival standpoint I would guage how far you realistically have to go. Unless you are positive you can make it to safety in 48 hours, I would suggest sleeping at least four hours per day. This may need to be increased based on extreme circumstances. If you are humping it through bad terrain with little food in shitty weather you might want to increase it to 5 or 6...
 
It depends on age, but 7-10 hours is what is often recommended. Many can go with less and have no problems functioning. It really is a personal thing.
 
So should one eat before sleeping? Sometimes a good meal will knock me
out. Other times I get wired up from dinner and stay up all night.

Functioning on 4 hours sleep is about the minimum for myself. If I stop and
sit down though, I will take a nap.......
 
I typically sleep six hours or less per night. I read an interesting article a while back that stated that one should try to sleep in increments of 1 1/2 hours (ie: 3, 4.5, 6 hrs. ,etc.), as sleep patterns typically evolved around 1 1/2 hour periods. I don't know about the scientific basis for this, but it seems to work for me.
 
x39 said:
I typically sleep six hours or less per night. I read an interesting article a while back that stated that one should try to sleep in increments of 1 1/2 hours (ie: 3, 4.5, 6 hrs. ,etc.), as sleep patterns typically evolved around 1 1/2 hour periods. I don't know about the scientific basis for this, but it seems to work for me.
Click to expand...

Some people can reach a "deep REM" state quickly. So a one hour nap is
close to being a full nights sleep for them.
 
I agree with the 4 hour min.for longer periods- although for a short term/couple days you can go with less. Longest I got without any is around 60 hours and I share the experience that things do get strange. The level of sleep to feel comfortable for me is around 6 to 7 hours depending on the quality of sleep and also on how much pysical work was done before. Beeing outdoors under ok conditions I seem to need a little less (maybee 5 to 6 hours). Getting enough sleep means your concentration is good, you are awake and aware of your surrounding. The time of reaction is also dependend on that. So, to get enough sleep for me simply does not mean how much do you need to keep the body funtioning but rather how much you need to keep it functioning good.
 
Enough and with Modanafil less. About 4 for me if necessary, prefer more. :D

TLM
 
There is some strong research out that 30-45 minute catnaps are all we really need to recharge our batteries. I believe Outside magazine had a good article about around the world sailboat races, and the sleep patterns of their captains. Performance seemed to be about equal between people who took a 30 minute catnap every 2-3 hours and those who slept for 8 hours straight.
 
The question needs to be put in the context of long term health vs short term performance. Sleep deprivation over the long term has a negative effect on your overall health and performance over the short term is not a good measure. For those here who like to read, more articles on sleep deprivation can be found at Mecola.com
 
I had read something somewhere that stated it had to do with your sleep cycles as well( like X39 was saying). If you had to sleep , you were better off at least getting thruogh a cycle or you could wake up worse than when you started. If you don't get into REM state, your mind wasn't resting and you almost wake up with a hangover -type sensation. Also , during my adventure races , we would time our sleep to get up with the sunrise to trick the bodys' natural clock into thinking it got more rest than we actually did . It worked over bonking in the middle of the night when you would typically be at deepest sleep. In climbing, it's not uncommon to get alpine starts to make the most of the day light and sometimes the return trip might be more than 24-36 hours without sleep.There's no question you can push through a couple of days with little or no sleep, but it will catch up and could do so at the worst time. I remember watching one of the eco challenges where one team didn't sleep for three days and one of the members bonked in mid-rappel on a 200 foot wall. Needless to say, the team did some sleeping on their next race before they got to that point.
 
Some studies have shown that people that have been awake as little as 16 hours have similar results on Field Sobriety tests. Sleep deprivation is a problem for many that work off shifts and regular lack of sleep is harmfull to the Circadian Rythms. The body must be Re-Booted much like a computer to run smooth. This is a huge problem and causes many dollars in insurance premiums due to accidents on the road from sleep deprivation.

But your question was about sleep deprivation in the woods. The catnap is a very valid solution to 'I can't sleep long right now.' But you got to Re-boot.

The body naturally produces Melatonin when it is exposed to the sun, this is the chemical in your body that regulates/ tells you when you are tired. If you fight through this you can reach a point of Insominia. Many people on Shift work take Synthetic Melatonin to regulate their sleep because they sleep during the sun and work under the moon. This can be dangerous because the body can become reliant on the Synthetic Melatonin and stop producing it naturaly. If you are taking Melatonin look at the doesage, usually around 3mg. This is several times the amount that the body produces in a day, less than a mg.

Search 'Sleep Deprivation' on Google and lots of sites come up.

Badge54
 
When outdoors, I require as much sleep as I would on a regular basis. If I can't have a normal 8-10, 2 hours is the very least I can get and still function well. It is different for everyone.

Sleep deprivation is not good. Read Stephen King's Insomnia.

Do you see auras?
 
My absolute minimum for normal functioning is 4.5 hours a day. The best seems to be 3 hours straight, and a 1.5 hours nap (or two 45 minutes, but that is sub-optimal).

A complete sleep cycle is 90 minutes long. When you wake up in the middle of it, you feel extremely tired and want to go back to sleep (thanks alarm clock). Without being disturbed, we pretty much always wake up at the end of a cycle.

Sleeping in 1.5 hours increments thus makes perfect sense.

A good minimum is 6 hours a day, with a 4.5 hours night and a 1.5 hours nap. With that I can function AND don't feel too tired during the day (except after the mid-day meal, after which I take a nap).

In a 6 hours straight pattern, and no nap, I feel much more tired in the afternoon, but still function ok.

At 7.5 hours straight, I'm fully operational and feel good all day.

At 9 hours straight, I'm over sleeping but this is excellent to "put sleep under my belt". We are actually always more or less in a long term cumulative sleep deficit. Going "marmot" like this thus reduces this deficit and is a great way to improve health (psychological and immune system, especially). After such an over-sleeping period, I can make MANY short nights without any alteration of performance.

Over sleeping is also good to memorize things or sort out difficult and stressful times. Students should sleep a lot. It helps the data to stick in there and be useful later.

Cheers,

David
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top