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Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

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Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#41

Post by mwwilson »

newacct500 wrote: post #31
andor wrote: post #23

Apart from quantity, quality of sleep is also important. I just realized how much a little light can disturb sleep. My blinds are opaque but hung 1-2 cm from the window frame, letting in just a few unwanted photons. I temporarily taped the blinds to the frame, leaving the room in almost complete darkness. I haven't felt this rested in years. Do try this at home!

I've never understood how this could be the case, evolutionarily speaking. Even in the absence of electrical light, there is rarely complete darkness. Did our remote ancestors just sleep extremely poorly whenever there was a lot of moonlight?

My understanding is that different wavelengths effect sleep hormones differently. My less than educated guess would be that evolutionarily speaking there are different optimal sleep environment cycles based on wavelength, intensity, and temperature variables depending on location and habits of ancestors.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#42

Post by tgb »

coldtea wrote: post #11
tedajax wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is one of those oft repeated pieces of advice that has never made sense to me. It's always worded such that it sounds like the effects of any sleep deprivation ever are permanent.

I guess what they mean is that if you don't sleep for 24 hours and the next day you sleep for 16 (to make up for the lack of sleep in the previous day), after you wake up you still wont be as good (mentally, immune-wise, etc) as you'd be if you've slept properly on both days. Obviously that can be corrected over a few days period and you get back to normal (except if you had abused yourself will lack of sleep over ma…

He seems to be saying that you won't sleep for 16 hours the second night.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#43

Post by _5ysi »

We have had industrial shift hours for nearly two centuries, and before that in the Army and Navy. Yet large organizations are still implementing new shift/watch schedules to (or sometimes purportedly to) improve health and alertness based on scientific results. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2016/10/28/this-lif...

What is the problem with science here? Without being an expert it seems like there are three possibilities:

1) Sleep studies are too difficult to discern results and control.

2) We have culturally been focused on the wrong results, organizational efficiencies rather than individual health.

3) Humans actually adapt to new conditions faster than expected.

Everyone is at least mildly interested in this topic and mildly an expert. Its easier to see problems than remedies and there are conspiracy theories too: http://rotateshift.blogspot.com/

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#44

Post by afarrell »

andor wrote: post #23

Apart from quantity, quality of sleep is also important. I just realized how much a little light can disturb sleep. My blinds are opaque but hung 1-2 cm from the window frame, letting in just a few unwanted photons. I temporarily taped the blinds to the frame, leaving the room in almost complete darkness. I haven't felt this rested in years. Do try this at home!

An $8 sleeping mask is another good option.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#46

Post by freehunter »

eigenspace wrote: post #28
coldtea wrote: post #3

> Sleep is not like the bank, so you can't accumulate a debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time. And the reason is this: We know that if I were to deprive you of sleep for an entire night — take away eight hours — and then in the subsequent night I give you all of the sleep that you want, however much you wish to consume, you never get back all that you lost. You will sleep longer, but you will neve…

What is meant is that there are long term health consequences of sleep deprivation and you can’t cancel those effects by oversleeping the next couple days after an all nighter.

I'm not a sleep scientist but it sounds pretty logical to me. If I'm chopping vegetables for dinner and I cut myself with the knife, it takes time to heal. But chances are it's never going to be completely healed. There will be a scar. If I cut myself with a knife then for the next few days I don't cut myself with a knife, the wound will heal but the scar will remain. I can't cut myself one day and then go several days without cutting myself and expect that it somehow cancels out the day I got cut, and I certainly can't say "eh I'll only cut myself on the weekdays and make up for it by not getting cut on the weekends". I'll still have that scar.

Brain injuries are too often discounted because you can't see them. If someone was purposefully cutting themselves with a knife we wouldn't think they were cool, we wouldn't celebrate them as heroes in our society, we would try to help them stop injuring themselves. So why do we celebrate people who actively injure their brains? Because we can't see the damage.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#47

Post by dota_fanatic »

coldtea wrote: post #3

> Sleep is not like the bank, so you can't accumulate a debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time. And the reason is this: We know that if I were to deprive you of sleep for an entire night — take away eight hours — and then in the subsequent night I give you all of the sleep that you want, however much you wish to consume, you never get back all that you lost. You will sleep longer, but you will neve…

Every single day is a unique and precious moment in time; spending that day sleep deprived has many disadvantages from a human's perspective. You might have caught a cold you otherwise wouldn't have, or been slightly less emotionally stable during an argument with loved ones and been overly harsh, or any other number of things where if you'd been well-rested, you would have been Better. Oversleeping the next night and undoing causal effects of that short sleep day can never be reversed, both external and internal to the body.

The benefits and effects of sleep are many and I highly recommend reading his book, after which you too will probably agree, you can truly never get it all back, not even close. One fine example that blew my mind was that getting your flu vaccination the same day as getting short sleep will effectively short circuit your immune system's ability to integrate the vaccination, making it much less effective that you're vaccinated for that strain(s)!

His book represents to me a paradigm shift in understanding of what sleep even is. We sleep so that we may live, not the other way around.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#48

Post by Lio »

This is unrelated to the article but I love that npr.org allows opting out of tracking and in exchange for a plain text version of the site.

I’ll happily give up eye candy for privacy and I’m sure it’s much cheaper for them to serve bandwidth wise.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#49

Post by Tomte »

If you‘re feeling tired over the day, maybe in the afternoon or early evening when you get home from work, go to a doctor and have your sleep monitored. You get a portable machine that reads your breathing, your oxygen level in the bloodstream and your sleeping position.

There is a chance you have sleep apnoea, and you stop breathing a few times over the course of your sleep at night, lowering your oxygen levels until your body has a suffocation reaction, over and over again. That can happen dozens of times every night and you won‘t remember any of it.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#50

Post by bloopernova »

mwwilson wrote: post #41
newacct500 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood how this could be the case, evolutionarily speaking. Even in the absence of electrical light, there is rarely complete darkness. Did our remote ancestors just sleep extremely poorly whenever there was a lot of moonlight?

My understanding is that different wavelengths effect sleep hormones differently. My less than educated guess would be that evolutionarily speaking there are different optimal sleep environment cycles based on wavelength, intensity, and temperature variables depending on location and habits of ancestors.

You're absolutely right, our body most definitely reacts in different ways to different wavelengths of light.

A specific green has been shown to help reduce pain. [1] 525 nm seems to be the magic wavelength in this particular case.

I'm a chronic acute pain sufferer. I'd love for something as simple as an array of green LEDs to help with my pain. I keep meaning to get a large breadboard, a bunch of LEDs, and make such a device.

I wonder what effects other wavelengths might have? Would lights help sleep if they matched sunset darkening to night time through purple and indigo? It's fascinating stuff.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28092651

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