31–40 of 66 posts
Quotes like this are typical of the American tendency to be pseudo-proud of being unintelligent, uneducated or apathetic. I'm surprised they included it and disappointed they did. Perhaps to help the readership identify with the columnist? But then again the readers are actually reading something scientific, so I don't get it.
It would be great if this opened the door to sleep aids that activated the brain's natural sleep induction mechanisms, as opposed to today's sleep aids, which are basically just sedative/CNS depressant/muscle relaxers.
Well, this is what melatonin does and its OTC. My horrible insomnia was cured not by Ambien, but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it. Its also probably time we admitted human beings can't fit into lifestyles where they're bombareded with blue light, stress, etc right before bedtime. The Western lifestyle is fairly anti-traditional and old fashioned things like prayer/meditation/whatever befo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OTC melatonin has fairly unpredictable quality though. The amount of melatonin in the entire bottle might be correct, but the amount in each pill may vary wildly. You can get prescription melatonin that's actually controlled so each pill has the same amount in it.
Or you can get it in pure powder form and make your own dose (like http://www.powdercity.com/products/melatonin-powder ) Note higher dosing is NOT better...most OTC melatonin supplements give too much. 0.5 to 1.0 mg should be used 1-3 hours before bedtime.
"Sleeping animals are incredibly vulnerable to attacks, with no obvious benefit to make up for it — at best, they waste precious hours that could be used finding food or seducing a mate; at worst, they could get eaten." It seems pretty obvious that sleep had an evolutionary advantage to conserve energy when the species couldn't be productive. For example, human sleep during the night because we can't forage / hunt /…
I suspect it's more that sleep is a necessary requirement for consciousness, but it's not clear why. Maybe recalculating weights for the neural net based on new input data requires 'downtime'.
There was some earlier evidence that 'cleanup' is happening the brain or some chemical pathways were being reversed. Either way behavioral speculation based on evolution isn't very good science.
to some of us (ahem, yours truly) the idea that there's a "mystery of sleep" might seem a bit, well, strange. Don't we sleep because we get tired? Quotes like this are typical of the American tendency to be pseudo-proud of being unintelligent, uneducated or apathetic. I'm surprised they included it and disappointed they did. Perhaps to help the readership identify with the columnist? But then again the readers are ac…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or you can get it in pure powder form and make your own dose (like http://www.powdercity.com/products/melatonin-powder ) Note higher dosing is NOT better...most OTC melatonin supplements give too much. 0.5 to 1.0 mg should be used 1-3 hours before bedtime.
1-3 hours? Do you have a source for that advice? Everything I've read, and my personal experience with it, suggests taking it (as you say, .5 to 1mg) 30 minutes before you want to fall asleep.
http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/how-to-use-melatonin-correctly...
Number of hours are all over the map. Hey, if you feel its effects within 30 minutes, then that's what you should use...
We sleep because that's when we are logged out of the virtual game that this world is.
I'm only semi-serious.
But let's work with it. What if we research sleep right until there is nothing left to find out, and we since can't figure out any reason at all for it?
Could we use that to postulate for a reason that is non-physical? Spiritual? Virtual reality? Something else?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, this is what melatonin does and its OTC. My horrible insomnia was cured not by Ambien, but by .5mg of Walgreen's melatonin and even now I rarely take it. Its also probably time we admitted human beings can't fit into lifestyles where they're bombareded with blue light, stress, etc right before bedtime. The Western lifestyle is fairly anti-traditional and old fashioned things like prayer/meditation/whatever befo…
The problem with your "melatonin" suggestion is that there's no way to know how much melatonin you actually took, since there is no regulation on the chemical, and the "sleep pills" that are purchasable don't say on the label what concentration they're made at, and concentrations vary by brand, and could vary bottle to bottle (due to an inexact manufacturing technique, for example).
Although I think your worry about quality excessive, it's not like making pills is rocket science. The supplement companies most likely get the powder in bulk from biochemical factories that also manufacture prescription drugs.
I have my own theory. We sleep because that's when we are logged out of the virtual game that this world is. I'm only semi-serious. But let's work with it. What if we research sleep right until there is nothing left to find out, and we since can't figure out any reason at all for it? Could we use that to postulate for a reason that is non-physical? Spiritual? Virtual reality? Something else?
to some of us (ahem, yours truly) the idea that there's a "mystery of sleep" might seem a bit, well, strange. Don't we sleep because we get tired? Quotes like this are typical of the American tendency to be pseudo-proud of being unintelligent, uneducated or apathetic. I'm surprised they included it and disappointed they did. Perhaps to help the readership identify with the columnist? But then again the readers are ac…