Sleep

[phenylalanine]

Does anyone know any ways af drastically cutting down the amount of sleep one needs?

[iansmith]

Exercises. At first you might not see the difference and sleep might be longer but after a couple of weeks you body get used to it and you sleep will start to fall a sleep faster and wake up more nergized.

[recon]

Other than exercises, is there another alternative? I'm just such a lazy bum, and I go out only 4 times a week for 30-minute brisk walks. Is this enough?

[jacksonpeeble]

There's a great article on this in Wired (it's within an article that talks all about biology how-to improvements). I'll try to locate it, because I'm sure I kept it since it was so fascinating. Exercise was definitely one of the things that it mentioned, but there were a whole bunch of other suggestions.

[jacksonpeeble]

I found multiple articles within Wired that may interest readers of this thread (or people simply browsing, since I just noticed that this post is archaic), and they can also be accessed online (in part).

Davis, Joshua. "The Perfect Human." Wired: 1-2. 8 Feb. 2009 <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/ultraman.html>.

See also, "How To Build a Better Body" in the same issue.

Scientific journals also have better (and often more controversial) information on this topic, but most of those can't be accessed online (as I've discovered the hard way).

[DaveC426913]

Why do you want to drastically cut down on your sleep?

What is so important to you that you would risk your physical and mental health?

[jacksonpeeble]

...Wasn't my idea, I was just trying to answer the question. ;-)

[stochastic]

from what i have read, if you can pull it off you want to sleep from 10:00pm to 6:00am. from 10:00pm to 2:00am is the physical repair cycle and from 2:00am to 6:00 is the psychological repair cycle. getting to bed by 10 can be tough, i know! if you find it hard like i did the two most common reasons are caffeine after 3:00pm and watching TV or using a computer once the sun has gone down. tv and computer light is interpreted basically the same way as sunlight, so your body thinks its still daytime and can continue to release cortisol (think of it as a natural stimulant) instead of melatonin which helps calm you down for the night. exercise, hardcore learning or anything that causes increased neural drive will spend energy. so if you just sit around watching tv all day your body will be fooled into thinking there is no reason to sleep, however you always need sleep. this modern mind set of 'ill sleep when im dead' is ridiculous, i say to those people 'you will be dead if you dont sleep' as you will surely limit your life span if you sleep less than 8 hours a day. look into lucid dreaming, then you can do ANYTHING you want while you are asleep. i can time travel, play instruments i have never learned how to play and use any super power that i want :)

[DaveC426913]

...Wasn't my idea, I was just trying to answer the question. ;-):confused: Why would you think I was addressing you rather than the OP?