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Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

nytimes.com

61–70 of 223 posts

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#62
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we would all go on DST and be done with it forever. The extra hour of usable daylight after work is a net win for societies mental health. We have farming machines that do the heavy lifting and are mostly automated now anyway. Unlike when it was enacted, there simply are much fewer farmers.

I'd rather have the hour of daylight in the morning, so why not just stay on standard time? I'd also much rather work 7-3 than 9-5.

What's stopping you working those hours now? I'm not a morning person so when I had jobs I would have to fight to start at some (to me) civilized hour like 10, but I don't mind working late. I had the impression that early birds had a much easier time of it since nobody is ever accused of being lazy for wanting to start work at 7am.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#63
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand this argument. Noon should be when the sun is roughly directly overhead. And there will be no increase in daylight compared to businesses adjusting working hours to open an hour earlier.

I never understand why people care what number it is on a wall when the sun is anywhere. I go even further with this and say the whole world should be on the same clock. Who cares if it says 03:00 when you eat dinner or 17:00 when you eat breakfast - and think how much easier it will be to plan anything that spans timezones!

Because people's daily cycles are tied to the orbit of the sun. It's nice to have a measurement of that. With our current system, noon is the middle of the day. So 12 feels like a nice time to schedule lunch. And 6 feels like a nice time to have dinner. And if you say something is happening at 10, I know it will be dark.

If you say you were up at 3 am, I know that was very late, no matter where on the Earth you are referring to. I don't need to adjust my sense of time whenever I change timezones. 12 is always roughly the middle of the day no matter where you are.

I don't want to like DST because it seems so inelegant. But it does give people an extra hour of sunlight. And I think that is a very desirable thing. There are a lot of mental health benefits associated with outdoor activities and exposure to sunlight. I have personally noticed my mood is very affected by the weather and whether I'm in sunlight.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#64

I thought this was interesting until I saw the author was a psychiatrist, and psychiatry has zero scientific validity. And his article is just referencing a bunch of tiny sample size studies of dubious merit.

Psychiatrists hold a medical doctorate, so unless you are claiming that medical science has no scientific validity I believe you are thinking of Psychology, which is an entirely different field.

Psychiatry does have some validity, but clinically and scientifically it's a disaster, basically just stamp collecting and black box experiments. If psychiatry took its own project truly seriously then it would merge with neurology but frankly I think most psychiatrists find neurology too intimidating and son't want to give up their existing social benefits so it's not happening.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#65

I don't know about sleep and depression. My Mom was bipolar and the topic never came up, other than her being up to all hours when she was manic. But I recently read an interesting article about vitamin D and that lead me to supplement magnesium and vitamins D, A and K. I only do it once every three days to be conservative. http://www.precisionnutrition.com/stop-vitamin-d And I've found I'm much more decisive and lik…

Do you mind me asking what age you are?

>last December I became a morning person using early morning light and exercise //

Where do you live that gets light on December mornings?

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#66
post #12

> Tübingen who was hospitalized for depression and claimed that she normally kept her symptoms in check by taking all-night bike rides. He subsequently demonstrated in a group of depressed patients that a night of complete sleep deprivation produced an immediate, significant improvement in mood in about 60 percent of the group. I thought this bit was neat. I'd heard that sleep deprivation can bring on a feeling of eu…

Your anecdotal experience is far from uncommon. For the article to even imply this as any sort of cure for depression, though, massively misinterprets the small amount of research on this. edit: And as a sibling comment mentioned, we do know that cognition suffers immensely when sleep-deprived.

I was thinking maybe the poorer cognition actually helps relieve the depression. Because a lot of depressives overthink (some past event, etc).

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#67

I wonder what damage our twice yearly clock changes do. An hour doesn't seem like much but, giving an entire population a little bit of jet lag simultaneously has to be bad for us, right?

Clocks should be a means to measure time, not manipulate when people do things.

But think of the chaos if every person and business had to implement their own alternative to DST. Every business would change it's hours on a different date, and many wouldn't change their hours at all. Everyone would have to completely change their routines ad hocly. It's nice to have a single standard, and only have to change the clock.

If it helps, don't think of clock as a measure of the sun. Think of it as a measure of humanity's daily cycle. 12:00 is the middle of most people's day. Even if that isn't necessarily when the sun is highest in the sky. It's nice to have everyone's cycle regulated to a single standard.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#68
post #58

If you suffer from depression, you should thoroughly research LSD and then make your fully informed personal decision. On the negative side, this substance may become one of the reasons the pharmaceutical industry will lose recurrent revenues from disappearing dependency on expensive anti-depressants.

LSD is not an automatic cure for depression, and definitely not a permanent one. That said it's had by far the best impact on mine.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#69
post #12

> Tübingen who was hospitalized for depression and claimed that she normally kept her symptoms in check by taking all-night bike rides. He subsequently demonstrated in a group of depressed patients that a night of complete sleep deprivation produced an immediate, significant improvement in mood in about 60 percent of the group. I thought this bit was neat. I'd heard that sleep deprivation can bring on a feeling of eu…

I noticed that stupid jokes and stuff seem much funnier to me when I am sleep deprived. One time I pulled an all nighter and then looked at some meme subreddits. I was laughing incredibly hard to stuff I wouldn't even normally find amusing. This seems to be a well known phenomenon. There's a whole subreddit called 3am jokes ( https://www.reddit.com/r/3amjokes/ ) for this.

I'm much better at making puns while sleep deprived.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#70

I don't know about sleep and depression. My Mom was bipolar and the topic never came up, other than her being up to all hours when she was manic. But I recently read an interesting article about vitamin D and that lead me to supplement magnesium and vitamins D, A and K. I only do it once every three days to be conservative. http://www.precisionnutrition.com/stop-vitamin-d And I've found I'm much more decisive and lik…

Do you mind me asking what age you are? >last December I became a morning person using early morning light and exercise // Where do you live that gets light on December mornings?

I recently bought a Philips HF3520. I've read great things about it but unfortunately I'm too heavy of a sleeper that it doesn't work for me. Give it a shot, it's definitely worth it in the long run if it works for you.
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