For people with a normal need for sleep that’s worse than going two days without sleep. Six hours a night for a week degrades mental performance about that much.
Ms Stembel could be far out on the bell curve in terms of her need for sleep. People who are perfectly healthy on four hours sleep a night for decades exist.
>Ms Stembel could be far out on the bell curve in terms of her need for sleep. People who are perfectly healthy on four hours sleep a night for decades exist.
Out of curiosity I dug up this article about Ms Stembel and in it she talks about her sleeping habits:
"When I do sleep more, I’m like, “Oh, that feels good. I should do that more often.” But I definitely believe in the power of habit. I’ve kind of honed the habit of not sleeping much, so my body can respond accordingly. It’s very normal for me now, but it’s not ideal. I probably sleep about 4.5 hours a night during the week, and then I try to get one weekend night where I can sleep seven or eight hours."
Even she herself acknowledges that this is not ideal and tries to create opportunities to sleep for the normal 8 hours. The problem with sleep deprivation is that it accumulates damage in the body which becomes apparent only later in life, so by sleeping this little she might be creating problems for herself in the future without even realizing it now. According to sleep researcher Matthew Walker, people whose bodies require less than 6 hours of sleep do exist, but they are extremely rare. It might be that Ms Stembel is one of those people, but I would still place my bet on that she is chronically and seriously sleep deprived.
If she naturally sleeps eight hours a night and usually sleeps less than five hours she’s basically drunk most of most weeks. I hope she has a driver because she’s not capable of driving safely.
Ms Stembel could be far out on the bell curve in terms of her need for sleep. People who are perfectly healthy on four hours sleep a night for decades exist.