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The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

mosaicscience.com

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Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#21

Post by ClassyJacket »

I can anecdotally confirm that for me, sleep deprivation appeared to significantly alleviate symptoms of severe anxiety. Around a year ago I was having what I think you'd call panic attacks every day and general anxiety all day. I had a breakdown of I think about six weeks, mostly focused on my insecurity about not having a better job, masters degree, etc. Etc. I was non functional.

I read about the sleep deprivation studies then. One day I had stayed up very late anyway, so I decided I would just wrap it around and stay up all night. I had no job to go to anyway.

That day I had no strong attacks and generally felt far more relaxed. It was a great respite.

However, it's very temporary. For me it felt like respite, not a cure. A break from attacks and nerves. It came back over the next few days. I wish I'd kept a more detailed diary. Why I'm okay now I can't say for sure, however I sleep too little and quite badly now, being busy with work, clubbing, parties, and coding in my spare time, so there's possibly a correlation there - causation, who knows. I don't think eight hours of sleep is bad, I think it's beneficial, but I do think over sleeping is harmful to mental health and easy to do - my theory is that like high calorie foods, we didn't evolve with unlimited sleep available to us, so getting too much just wasn't a thing.

Of course, it's one data point and could be the placebo effect for coincidence, but, much like my experience using MDMA to improve a depressive attitude (careful: may make it worse for some people), the effect was real enough to me that I personally believe in it and think it can be valuable to at least a subset of people if used carefully.

Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#22

Post by psyc »

ehnto wrote: post #13
mjfl wrote: post #8

So the cure for depression is to take hallucinogens like ketamine or deliberately deprive yourself of sleep? It's like making yourself happier by making yourself less sharp. Perhaps, then, one is depressed because one is rational - because there are real, serious problems with life that need to be dealt with, not escaped. The recent "cures" sound almost Huxley-an.

You can have everything you want in life and still be depressed. I find even people who have been there and overcome can forget this about depression. Depression is a thing that happens to you, an ailment that occurs. Sadness about a sad thing is not depression, apathy because things aren't going okay is not depression. They can lead to depression if they go on long enough, but they aren't themselves a mental disorde…

This isn't wrong, but it is a simplistic model of one layer of depression, which can be a pragmatic way to look at it for some people during some periods, typically the most severe periods. I've suffered from severe depression for my whole adult life, and I am thankful that I haven't had a psychiatrist who subscribed to the medical model as an absolute, in many years. The big picture of depression can indeed be about your life, and no psychiatrist I've seen in the past 15 years has failed to acknowledge that. It's well known that major depression often follows major life stresses such as divorce, breakups, deaths, trauma, other illnesses, and so on. I've never found it fruitful to make it either all about the brain, or all about your life. It's rather a feedback loop between the two. The very nature of subjectivity makes it almost nonsensical to try to distinguish between your mind and your life, from your own perspective. And there's a reason treatment almost always includes talk therapy. I've always been able to articulate what my depression is about. Some people can't. It's just not so clear cut.

Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#23

Post by pgt »

uhhyeahdude wrote: post #17

How very odd for me to find this on HN this evening. I'm on "day 2" of my once a week sleep fast, which means things are a bit surreal to begin with. For each of the last seven weeks, I stay awake from Thursday morning until my "regular" bedtime hour Friday evening. I do this because it actually seems to be an effective way to avoid falling into a hole of anhedonia and "stuck-ness." I am hip to many of the cognitive…

Wow! I awoke early this morning from a bit of a bender last night and have a similar feeling of mania (the positive, productive kind). At first I attributed it to a GABA rebound, but thinking back, a sleep fast has historically injected a sense of urgency and vigour.

I have been fasting intermittently after reading Valter Longo's metabolic oxidation research (the term they used for aging research to get it published). I skip breakfast and try to leave 16-18 hours between meals. Have been losing weight but keeping muscle tone almost effortlessly. My skin has also improved. No negative effect so far.

Good interview about I.F.: https://youtu.be/d6PyyatqJSE

Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#24

Post by mtgx »

perlgeek wrote: post #20

Somehow my quackery detectors go off on this one, but I'm not quite sure. The article talks about "recent studies" without linking to them. The "references" section at the end links to a single peer-reviewed article ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5447205/ ) in a journal with an impact factor of less then one (compare https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0379-5284_Saudi_medical... for example). If it w…

There are a bunch of them on PudMed, and not all are that recent. This is what I found on a quick search.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7893848

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14522011

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16408408

Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#25

Post by jimnotgym »

amelius wrote: post #18

Ok, so this is one possible thing to try when one has depression. Who is keeping a list of all things to try, and where does this experiment fit in that list?

Sounds like a a web app with voting would be a useful thing. In the UK mental health services have almost disappeared, especially for those who are not extreme. Maybe a list of things to try yourself is useful?

Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#26

Post by kevingrahl »

> “We can think of it not as sleep-depriving people, but as modifying or enlarging the period of the sleep–wake cycle from 24 to 48 hours,” says Benedetti. “People go to bed every two nights, but when they go to bed, they can sleep for as long as they want.”

That reminds me of the sleep experiments performed by Michel Siffre [1] in the 60‘s & 70‘s who studied the experience of time underground without time cues. He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre

[2] www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer.php

Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#27

Post by te0006 »

yedpodtrzitko wrote: post #11

inb4 a lot of sources sleep deprivation is hurting your brain in a long term. Not sure what's better.

it can have many other nasty side effects too, such as weakening your immune system. Which can in turn cause rising levels of inflammaton which is really undesirable w.r.t. the original objective. So if your physical constitution is not perfect, better don't do this.

Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#29

Post by karussell »

uhhyeahdude wrote: post #17

How very odd for me to find this on HN this evening. I'm on "day 2" of my once a week sleep fast, which means things are a bit surreal to begin with. For each of the last seven weeks, I stay awake from Thursday morning until my "regular" bedtime hour Friday evening. I do this because it actually seems to be an effective way to avoid falling into a hole of anhedonia and "stuck-ness." I am hip to many of the cognitive…

Are you experimenting with this? E.g. doing a very short sleep of 20 minutes to reduce safety hazards or sleeping longer but only when it is dark and wake up before sunrise?

Re: The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

#30

Post by LoSboccacc »

pgt wrote: post #23
uhhyeahdude wrote: post #17

How very odd for me to find this on HN this evening. I'm on "day 2" of my once a week sleep fast, which means things are a bit surreal to begin with. For each of the last seven weeks, I stay awake from Thursday morning until my "regular" bedtime hour Friday evening. I do this because it actually seems to be an effective way to avoid falling into a hole of anhedonia and "stuck-ness." I am hip to many of the cognitive…

Wow! I awoke early this morning from a bit of a bender last night and have a similar feeling of mania (the positive, productive kind). At first I attributed it to a GABA rebound, but thinking back, a sleep fast has historically injected a sense of urgency and vigour. I have been fasting intermittently after reading Valter Longo's metabolic oxidation research (the term they used for aging research to get it published)…

I’ve irregular sleep patterns. Often sleep four hours or less, with a sleep binge every now and then.

As long as I go to sleep when I feel tired and I can get past the post dinner stump I’m exceptionally energeting the afternoon and the whole evening, but a bit groggy in the morning.

Fair trade since evening is time for me and family while morning is mostly work.

The effect on metabolism/hunger seems crazy tho. When I get back to a regular sleep pattern I usually lose 3 to 6 kiloes just from that.

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