The answer is that you cannot achieve 8 hours of sleep in 4 hours. For complete rest, our body needs a minimum of 7-8 hours of sleep. This is because our body goes through different stages of sleep involving different cycles and this is essential to ensure you feel refreshed and rejuvenated the next day.
Unfortunately, most people cannot have a healthy lifestyle with only four hours of sleep, research suggests. However, personal and anecdotal evidence supporting shorter sleep by using polyphasic sleep suggests otherwise. This means that we cannot say for sure if you can thrive on four hours of sleep.
Elon Musk says he's upped his sleep to 6 hours per night—and that his old routine hurt his brain. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, speaks with CNBC on May 16th, 2023. Elon Musk says his days of trying to sleep less and work more are over — at least, relatively speaking.
If you force yourself to get out of bed a couple of hours early every day will your body eventually become accustomed to it? Sadly not. There is plenty of evidence that a lack of sleep has an adverse effect.
This is because our brain is constantly forming new connections while we are awake. The longer we are awake, the more active our minds become. Scientists believe that this is partly why sleep deprivation has been shown to reduce symptoms of depression.
The Dangers of Sleeping Only 3 Hours
One major side effect may be a decrease in cognitive function and proper decision-making. This could lead to accidents, irritability, depression, or memory loss. There could be multiple physical ramifications caused by sleep deprivation as well.
For most of us, five hours of sleep is not OK. Most adults need about eight hours of sleep. And while some people need five hours, it's extremely rare. For most of us, five hours of sleep can lead to sleep deprivation, low energy, poor focus, and long-term health issues.
Modern research suggests that sleeping twice in a 24-hour period (a sleep pattern that is alternately referred to as biphasic sleep, segmented sleep, or siesta sleep) may facilitate greater energy levels, alertness, cognitive function, and productivity.
When you sleep longer than you should or less than you should, you disturb your sleeping patterns, or circadian rhythm. This causes you to either wake up during a REM(deep sleep) cycle and feel even more tired or to wake up before you even hit the deep sleep cycle and be more alert.
So why do people think they are able to function optimally on 6 hours of regular sleep? This is because of a natural human phenomenon known as 'renorming'. Renorming means that we are only able to compare how we feel today to how we felt yesterday or the day before.
Finding yourself wide awake after a few hours of sleep, or waking often during the night is called "parasomnia" or "sleep maintenance insomnia," and it's much more common than people think.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, sleep is a busy time for your body. Various processes are at work that help everything from your cardiovascular system to your brain function at their best. It's because of this that getting enough sleep can improve your overall health, which may help boost your longevity.
Make sure you are getting enough sunlight and exercise during the day, not drinking caffeine too close to bedtime, and restricting activities in your bed to just sleep and sex. Limiting screen time prior to sleeping may also help reduce sleep issues.
The Bottomline: Using a “sleep bank” strategy by adding two hours of additional sleep for six days prior to a period of sleep deprivation may improve performance by improving perceived exertion of the training bout.
If you are not getting enough sleep, your body will eventually make you sleep. How long it takes you to fall asleep (sleep latency) is affected by how much your body needs to sleep.