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Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

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Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#81

Post by Silhouette »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #67
coldtea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Foreign languages aren't, as a rule, inherently super fucked up just because you don't speak them No, but German kinda is. It almost always sounds like someone in authority is screaming at you :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBIMvXpw0t0

It really doesn't. If anything German is a fairly soft, camp-sounding language. The whole shouting thing seems to be based on World War II stereotypes.

There is a characteristic gentle sound when many German people speak English as well. They also tend to enunciate more carefully than many native English speakers, so they are usually very easy to understand.

I find that same careful enunciation means German spoken by natives often has a slightly sharper sound than English, but that could just be because many everyday German words use sounds like ch, ck, b, d and z, and as a native English speaker and non-native German speaker I notice those more. As you say, this has nothing to do with shouting, though.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#82

Post by mratzloff »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #73
f_allwein wrote: post #28

> Bose just released an earbud that you can sleep with, for example Wait, what? These are 249.95$. Why not just use simple earplugs? In Germany, we have Ohropax, made from wax, which sell for less than 3€ for a set of 12: http://www.ohropax.de/en.html

Because earplugs also tune out the sounds of an alarm clock. This isn't an issue if I never have to wake before 11 or noon. A 6am waking time means I continually run the risk of simply not hearing the alarm, even with good sleeping habits and not sleeping in on weekends. Of course, most of the earbuds that say they are designed for sleep only hold a charge for an average of 6 hours, and at the most 8. These actually…

What time do you go to sleep that your body wants to sleep until 11 or 12? You might be staying up too late and not getting enough sleep.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#83

Post by tinco »

Ever since my teens I considered sleep the most difficult thing in my life, and the most detrimental to my health. For me falling asleep has been a difficult assignment that usually takes 1-3 hours. It's been a negative feedback loop where when I am tired I lose discipline and stay awake longer, which makes me even more tired the next day, which makes me stay awake even longer. It makes no sense at all and frequently throws me in bouts of grogginess that last days.

It's been that way for more than ten years now, and I've read and talked a lot about sleeping but nothing ever made me get rid of this problem of not being able to fall asleep. A couple of weeks ago however I read two HN articles that together seem to have finally given me some grip on falling asleep more quickly (i.e. in less than 1 hour).

Reading back that last paragraph makes me feel like I'm about to introduce a "doctors hate this one trick" product.. Anyway, the first article is the one about WW2 pilots having to fall asleep in two minutes:

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/fall-asleep-fast/

The key takeaway from that is kind of obvious, but it's nice to be made conscious of it, and that is that it's important to actively make yourself relax. Relax both your muscles, and your mind.

I can't seem to find the second article, maybe it didn't have sleep in the title or something, but it was the missing link for me. The article was a little bit controversial because it had a linkbaity title implying sleep is not important. The main point of that article was that since stress and stressful thinking inhibits sleep, you sleep better if you don't worry about sleeping. It's the old ice bear problem, you have to sleep, but you're not allowed to think about having to sleep.

I combined those two articles into a simple strategy that seems to be fairly succesful so far. First step is to get into a position where all my limbs are relaxed, and I actively relax my body.

The next step is to stop my mind from racing through the realization and acceptation that the most important thing right now is to sleep. That means that my ideas are unimportant, that my organization of tomorrows tasks are unimportant, that sudden realizations are unimportant, that nothing matters, not even falling asleep. I kill any brain activity with "it doesn't matter", almost as a mantra. When something pops up in my brain, I force myself to think "it doesn't matter" and cease working on the idea.

Maybe it sounds a bit silly, but I think it might help someone in the same situation as me. I think I let myself feel my thoughts were important for too long. I really enjoy thinking about how to do things, and apparently it's become a point of discipline to make myself stop thinking about things.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#85

Post by kaybe »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #73
f_allwein wrote: post #28

> Bose just released an earbud that you can sleep with, for example Wait, what? These are 249.95$. Why not just use simple earplugs? In Germany, we have Ohropax, made from wax, which sell for less than 3€ for a set of 12: http://www.ohropax.de/en.html

Because earplugs also tune out the sounds of an alarm clock. This isn't an issue if I never have to wake before 11 or noon. A 6am waking time means I continually run the risk of simply not hearing the alarm, even with good sleeping habits and not sleeping in on weekends. Of course, most of the earbuds that say they are designed for sleep only hold a charge for an average of 6 hours, and at the most 8. These actually…

Simple, I put one in and sleep on the other side. The pillow is good in attenuating noises but I can still hear the alarm clock.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#86

Post by orf »

throwawayqdhd wrote: post #41
telesilla wrote: post #23

If there is one thing in this world I'd like to see, it's the worker's right for an afternoon nap: I really would become highly anxious if deprived long-term of my siesta. I've been lucky in most of my environments to find somewhere to close my eyes and sleep for 10-15 minutes - I just need somewhere to lie down or recline and something to block the light: if I'm tired enough sound doesn't bother me. Some people tell…

I freelanced through college and continued doing that after I graduated. Since I was working from home, I was used to taking afternoon naps. When I finally did join an office, I was surprised that afternoon napping wasn't a thing. My 20-30 minute naps completely re-energize me and drastically improve my focus. And for some reason, I have extremely vivid dreams during these naps.

I also have increasingly vivid, utterly nonsensical dreams when taking an afternoon nap. I do feel more focused and the random dreams are often a funny bonus.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#87

Post by psychedelic »

watwut wrote: post #57
thrav wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m the same way. Exercise and eating healthy just makes my body want even less sleep. When I’m firing on all cylinders, eating right and working out, I can get away with 5.5-6 and feel better than I ever do trying to push up past 7 by going back to sleep in the morning. I my experience, the most important thing is, wake up when you wake up. Don’t go back to sleep because you feel like you should, or the alarm has 20…

How much do you exercise? Because when I exercise to the point that I am really tired, sweating and have sore muscles next day, I sleep more then normally. The theories I read on internet seem to confirm the same - your body rebuilds when you sleep, exercise is sort of damaging it (it is damage good for you, but I dont know better term), so if you exercise you should sleep more.

You have asked the correct question. "Exercise" is a wide spectrum of intensity levels and energy expenditure depending on who is exercising and for what reason. If you are training like an athlete then 8 hours of sleep usually isn't enough.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#88

Post by Steve44 »

coldtea wrote: post #65
rdiddly wrote: post #46

Zeitgeber isn't "like totally this weird German word OMG." (Foreign languages aren't, as a rule, inherently super fucked up just because you don't speak them.) It just means "time-giver" - a cue (like the sunrise) that tells your body what time it is.

> Foreign languages aren't, as a rule, inherently super fucked up just because you don't speak them No, but German kinda is. It almost always sounds like someone in authority is screaming at you :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBIMvXpw0t0

> No, but German kinda is. It almost always sounds like someone in authority is screaming at you

I disagree, I find German very clear and as Silhouette explains "They also tend to enunciate more carefully than many native English speakers, so they are usually very easy to understand"

I find the Dutch I deal with always seem to be firmly instructing you. It's not shouting but more their translation where they say thing like "you will do ?????". Hard for me to describe, personally I'm fine with it but I know some people find it difficult. I've not found this with Germans.

Re: Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

#90

Post by brlewis »

scrollaway wrote: post #18
anxiousguy wrote: post #8

I believe I'm one of the "short sleepers" they mention in the article. I've bought wirstband mostly to track my sleep patterns. Even though article says that devices like fitbit are not accurate enough in tracking different phases of sleep, my goal was largley to see how much time do I spend sleeping. In the last four months, I average out at 6,1hrs. 90% of the time I will wake up before the alarm and will sleep the…

You mention you bought a wristband. Tracking my sleep is one of those things I want to start doing. Do you have any recommendations? I don't particularly want to remember to put it on every night. I know Nokia launched a mattress pad recently ( https://health.nokia.com/gr/en/sleep ) but I'm concerned about how reliable this is if I don't sleep exactly on top of it. (Plus I don't know how this could actually tell anyt…

Hi. I'm a software engineer at Fitbit. It is not my job to speak for Fitbit or to sell Fitbits, but I'm answering you because it gives me the chance to point out three reasons why this article's quote about Fitbits not being accurate about sleep stages is wrong.

1. The researcher is also an entrepreneur whose product's sales depend on people thinking Fitbit isn't good enough. https://sonicsleepcoach.com/about-dr-dan/ 2. The quote lumps Fitbit and Apple Watch together in terms of how frequently heart rate is measured, when there's a 60x difference. A sincere quote would be more along the lines of "Apple Watch's 1-5 minute sample rate certainly isn't enough, but even Fitbit's 1-5 second sample rate won't give the accuracy you need..." 3. He doesn't say what's wrong with any published study showing sleep stage accuracy of Fitbit, notably https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/40/suppl_1/A26/378095...

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