Does Anyone Know Ways To Reduce The Need For Sleep?

[lampofred]

Not talking about caffeine because that doesn't actually reduce your need for sleep.

I think a need for sleep is caused by serotonin + glutamate, so I would guess the key is raising baseline dopamine + GABA (aka increasing brain progesterone and decreasing brain estradiol).

Thyroid, high altitude, red light, tobacco, gelatin, aspirin should all help, but does anyone know of any other ways to develop your brain in the long-run in a way such that it requires less sleep (besides avoiding PUFA)?

 

[Cirion]

Man, if you find out, let me know, because I have a never ending struggle.

That said, thyroid, a proper circadian cycle, avoiding excess fats/PUFA's/randle cycle, sufficient calories seem to be some of the main factors.

Taking T3, eating enough food, and trying to maintain a proper circadian cycle has helped me a bit. I have at least been able to consistently wake up with a 98.3F temp or better this whole week, but I still sleep 9+ hrs...

Ultimately, once your metabolism is fixed, that's when I think need for sleep will decrease a bit. Unfortunately there's no shortcut supplement you can take to make this occur. It takes time...

 

[lampofred]

@Cirion

I've been reading and these are the theories seen so far (these are not things that Peat has said, and some of them are just my own guesses, so I might be completely off...):

-Left brain is the "hot" brain that needs a lot of sleep/food (particularly starch, this might be why Peat is pretty strong on avoiding starch), right brain is the "cool" brain does not, so needing a lot of sleep means you are left-brain dominant.
-Left brain is stimulated by estrogen, PUFA, and activities that raise prolactin/growth hormone (such as hot showers, alcohol, sex), and these all stimulate each other in a vicious circle. I think estrogen needs prolactin to produce its negative effects, which is why kids who have virtually no prolactin can eat all the junk they want and still be right-brained.
-Avoiding starch, salt, iron, and PUFA, and sleeping less, are painful because they are weakening your left-brain, but if you are right-brain dominant, you do not crave them.
-Thyroid function (aka the total amount of carbon dioxide your body has been exposed to over its life) is closely related to right brain development.
-Coffee and aspirin help to shift things in the right direction.
-Lastly, a pretty mechanical way to stimulate the right brain/thyroid is to breath in through your left nostril, retain for as long as possible, and breath out through the right. This increases CO2 only in your right brain.

I think it pretty much comes down to increasing CO2 because not only will CO2 reduce fatigue in the short run, it will also stimulate the parts of your brain that don't require a lot of sleep/food to function in a positive feedback loop, whereas estrogen does the opposite. So high CO2/low estrogen over a long time will shift brain growth in the proper direction to reduce the need for sleep.

I am beginning to find religious implications in the goal of improving thyroid function...

 

[Cirion]

What is this left brain right brain theory and does it have any actual scientific relevance? I am not dismissing it, I am just saying I know little to nothing about it. Other than that I agree with a lot of your points like

- Avoid/lower estrogen, prolactin, PUFA, growth hormones, increase salt and iron intake (from food like beef), increasing cellular CO2. CO2 is supposed to increase via intaking carbs normally. I've recently cut out most fats from my diet as you probably know from my recent posts, and hoping that alleviating the problematic randle cycle effects should be helping me out. Avoiding prolactin is one reason why nofap is an extremely powerful tool for someone who is hypothyroid. Someone who is hypo will be extremely prolactin sensitive. In my experience, even when you're not hypo excess prolactin is easy to run into (I started to feel negative effects pretty quickly when I got into a relationship despite being in the best health of my life prior). I wonder if some people are just always susceptible to estrogen, prolactin even when healthy and need to be careful.

Some other suggestions seem to be mixed bags in my experience. Caffeine, aspirin, and T3 can be helpful but only in the right context and right dosages in my experience.

 

[Runenight201]

Buteyko practitioners claim to only need 2 hours of sleep a night once their CP is in the 120s...

Sounds like a ludicrous claim to me!

 

[Hugh Johnson]

Reducing the need of REM sleep is possible if you reduce the open loops you create. Depressed people ofte sleep a lot because they need so much REM. Otoh meditation, emptying the mind, self-hypnosis, and not thinking when you don't need to should all reduce the need for REM.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Increasing you CO2 levels with Buteyko did lessen my need for sleep. The effect faded to an extent but I still can do with less sleep than I used to.

 

[Marquis777]

I don't know if that's a good idea? Doesn't your body need rest? The brain cleans up crap in there 10 times faster when your asleep.