How many hours of sleep do you take per 24 hours?

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........and are your sleeping hours unusual? If they're odd, do you know why?

I used to have about 8 hours or so, with a tendency to go to bed later than I thought I should which never really got bad. Now I've escaped the world of work, I often sleep much longer, typically 12 hours, and my bedtime and getting up time drifts later and later, though my motivation to stay in step with the rest of the world (to a degree) and possibly an internalised "early to bed, early to rise" ethic stop it getting completely ridiculous. When I was working I had little choice but to get up no later than 8.45am and to go to bed around 1am, and the job tired me out so much that I was usually able to sleep that "early." Now I've escaped the world of work I drift more towards 3am to 3pm, and it takes some will power to stop it getting any "worse." But I never take naps in the daytime, I just can't fall asleep. Are these just normal tendencies or do you think it's something to do with autism? I live a fairly stress-free life these days, and I try not to overwork, though I find it hard to stop myself from "playing hard," once I get immersed in a task or special interest.

Consuming milk before I go to sleep helps me require less sleep;
Meditating before I go to sleep helps me require less sleep to awaken refreshed;
Meditating soon after I awaken helps me to stay awake for longer without needing as much sleep;
Lack of thyroid-function from hypothyroidism will make me sleep practically 24/7;
Consumption of sugars (refined/processed) will also cause me extreme amounts of lethargy;
Sufficient Iodine & other health-supplements help my thyroid to function properly;
Consuming enough water and eating certain healthy foods help me to stay awake for much longer;
Varying levels of physical-fitness activity can affect the number of hours that I may need rest or not;

Optimally, provided I keep the routine, I can function on as little as 5 hours of sleep per day;
When I am not consistent with my sleep-regulating routines I may need up to 14 hours of rest instead.

I don't think your sleep-patterns are due to autism.

Could it be a common "co-morbid," I wonder? I tend to put the late bedtimes down to special interests and hyperfocus, and I would think Aspie burnout might do it. I was reading AS Partners today and they have a whole thread devoted to their "loved ones" sleeping too much, though as usual it's a pretty useless source of information about autism.

Thanks for the list of remedies. I'm sure meditation would help if I could get myself to do it more often. And I always eat before bed because otherwise I can't sleep for hunger. I know somebody else with hypothyroidism who sleeps a lot. Interesting about the effect of milk.

Very few adults can digest milk.


During my college years I used to run on 3-5 hours of sleep per day. Those were not good years. Lots of anger and pain. I would agonize over the past well into early morning and go to bed when I was about to pass out. During the day I would stumble around like a zombie.

After college I was running my own business and I developed a strange sleep pattern, I would run a 28-30 hour day, meaning every day my day was shifting 4-6 hours relative to clocks on Earth. Think of it as a longer day on another planet. For the 28-30 hour day I would be getting 7-10 hours of sleep, depending on workload.

Lately I've been trying to break that habit, though sometimes I slip back into it. When I try to do the 24 hour day I try to have myself sleep 8 hours.

It varies, at weekends i can sleep for 9-10 hours, but during the weeks i can wake up after 3-4 and try to go back to sleep, but fail and stair at the ceiling for a half an hour or more. Sometimes cannot go back to sleep, go to work, then come home and instantly crash into bed.

A lot of times i wake up for a minute or two during the night (4-6 times) and go back to sleep almost instantly, i have had an investigation for sleeping disorder, but i was just under the bar where it was considered to be a problem.

It depends, my average amount that I get is around 7-8 hours but some days I get as much as 10 if I'm feeling excessively tired for any reason whereas others I get as little as 5.

Depends on when I need to wake up, as regardless of how much sleep I have had the previous night I struggle to sleep earlier than around 3am. I usually have around 4 hours a night, but can sleep in at the weekend to get my eight hours.

7 to 9 for me. When I'm very excited, anxious, or a combination, I'll have the occasional 5-6-hour night or less, but then I crash hard. If my sleep is on the lower end for multiple nights in a row, my sleep becomes deeper to compensate. I've been told this change to deeper sleep is typical.

I often get tired too early at night or wake up too early, so this can throw off my sleep schedule a bit. I hate having to get through the days after I've had a bad night's sleep and wait for everything to balance out again.

Depending on many factors, i take as little as 5 or as much as 12 hours to get a full rest.
If i take a slightly different day though, a 28 hour one, i get a stable average of 7 hours.
During holidays, I take this rythm, and it feels natural, 7 sleep, 21 awake (or a 1/3 ratio)

I usually need between 8 and 10 hours of sleep. Generally I go to bed at 10-11pm

I depends on when I go to sleep, I wake up in the morning regardless for whatever reason not responsibility. I wasn't a morning person until I had nothing to do!

I'd say I probably average 6-7, some times less some times more

I usually sleep around eight hours.

When it's not a school night, I go to bed at nine and can't fall asleep until around midnight. Then I wake up at around eight.

Looks like we're indistinguishable from the non-autistic population then, in that respect. Most of us do the standard 8 hours or so, and the bedtimes and rising times aren't that wacky either. So I shouldn't put my weird sleeping habits down to autism. I was curious because I know somebody else with a DX of ASD and anxiety, with similar sleep patterns to mine. Two swallows don't make a summer.

I'd say I average about 5-7. Sometimes I'll only get 4-5 for several days in a row, then sleep in and go 10-11. A lot of this comes down to working irregular hours at a full-time job. I know a lot of my coworkers have a similar experience. My boss says he gets about 4-5 hours on average.

TD, do you usually sleep for most of that 12-hour period, or just lie in bed? Could it be medication side effects, or depression, or something doctors might find, like thyroid problems or vitamin D deficiency? My understanding is that as people get older, they tend to sleep less and may have poorer quality sleep. Not sure how true that is?