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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'

#101

Post by wenc »

Tharkun wrote: post #86

You can be in an "underslept state" even if you get 8 hrs a night. I usually am. I snore. Most of the time and very loudly. So do maybe a billion other people. It negatively impacts the quality and quantity of your sleep (and that of the people around you). It can greatly increase the risk of a whole slew of nasty diseases. And yet there is no cure and no effective treatment. As near as I can tell, no one is working…

I suffered from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and snoring, and the two things that helped were sleeping on my side and weight loss. The latter was difficult to achieve but was the most high-leverage thing I ever did.

I had no idea at the time, but my OSA was contributing to a slew of health problems like hypertension etc., and when I removed the cause, my overall health got better.

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

#102

Post by hanley »

Reason077 wrote: post #77

In the UK we have a fantastic service called Radio 4 which has remarkable sleep-inducing powers. Much better than any narcotic sleep aid, in my experience. Podcasts also work well, in my experience.

The Sleep With Me podcast has been incredibly helpful for falling asleep during times when I'm stressed or otherwise can't sleep. It's the right amount of goofy and rambling that just lulls me to sleep.

https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/

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

#103

Post by rdiddly »

freehunter wrote: post #52
wierd0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our ancestor's sleep might not have been optimal due to the fact we had other things to care about, like shelter. But that does not imply there is nothing to gain from feeling perfectly rested.

Yeah it's sometimes hard to understand that evolution is not a perfection machine, it's not survival of the fittest, and it does not select the "best" outcome and discard the second best. It's survival of the least unfit, and it selects any option that doesn't cause the individual to die before reproducing. Just because our ancestors did something and nature didn't punish them with death because of it does not mean i…

The point of that argument is never "This is perfect." It's exactly as you say - "This is not bad enough to cause serious harm and therefore" (they're saying) "not bad enough to get worked up over it."

"It survived evolution" = "It won't kill you" = "It's good enough"

They're setting the bar a bit lower than optimum.

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

#104

Post by aguynamedben »

guiambros wrote: post #21

I've read a lot about sleep over the years (and wrote a bit [2]), but I just finished reading the book mentioned in the article ("Why We Sleep" [1]) and found it fascinating . The author presents a vast amount of scientific evidence amount pretty much every corner of why we sleep, from its evolutionary roots thousands of years ago, to the importance of dreams and REM sleep for your memory, reasons and impact of insom…

+1 the book Why We Sleep is great

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

#105

Post by rdiddly »

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…

Do you need 16 hours the next night after losing 8 the first night? What happened to "Sleep is not like the bank?" If it's unlike the bank in your ability to pay back, maybe it's also unlike the bank in the bank's need to be paid back. Seems weird of them to frame the point using a bank analogy they just said was inapplicable.

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

#106

Post by tasty_freeze »

> You're trying to sleep off a debt that you've lumbered your brain and body with during the week, and wouldn't it be lovely if sleep worked like that? Sadly it doesn't.

But it does somewhat, just not fully.

Thought experiment for the author. Say he slept 6 hours every day during the week, and come the weekend, is he going to say that there is no benefit to sleeping more than 8 hours, or will that 10+ hour sleep do any good over 8 hours? I strongly suspect that, yes, "catch up sleep" is useful, but just not 100% restorative. But the original claim sounds more like the former, "catch up sleep isn't useful".

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

#107

Post by cfmcdonald »

lithos wrote: post #78
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.

Of course they are. You'll learn less in your sleep deprived states, Which are days you aren't going to get back. Your sleep deprived self will also be better at creating tech debt, which takes away time from the future.

That is an odd perspective. That's like saying that the damage from a twisted ankle is permanent, since you'll never get back the two days of lost activity.

From that point of view, all injuries are permanent.

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

#108

Post by nshepperd »

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…

This sounds like a confused retelling of the actually true fact that you can't sleep sixteen hours on the first night, then go without sleep entirely on the second night without any ill effects (on the theory that you have 8 hours of sleep "saved up"). Sleep is not like a bank in that sense.

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

#109

Post by Tomte »

Bradenski wrote: post #97
Tomte wrote: post #49

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 unti…

I've tried the take home mask, and it was very uncomfortable to sleep with. I did wake up once in a way I normally don't, so I felt the study was invalid at that point. Surely the technology has changed in 5 years, but for light sleepers like myself, sleep studies with equipment attached to your body don't feel like fair trials. MRI sleep studies can be an option, and if I had to do it again I think that would be opt…

Patient compliance is the bane of doctors‘ lives.

You don‘t decide that the recording is invalid. You tell your doctor what happened and he decides which conclusions can be drawn from the data.

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

#110

Post by rout39574 »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #107
lithos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they are. You'll learn less in your sleep deprived states, Which are days you aren't going to get back. Your sleep deprived self will also be better at creating tech debt, which takes away time from the future.

That is an odd perspective. That's like saying that the damage from a twisted ankle is permanent, since you'll never get back the two days of lost activity. From that point of view, all injuries are permanent.

Well, yes. But the difference comes in the nature of the deficit you can't get back.

By not sleeping, you magically turn some fraction of the previous day's learning into wasted time, just throw it away.

The appropriate analogue in the twisted ankle case would be if the twist magically "un-walked" the 4 miles you walked the day before, and that increment of weight loss and cardio health were lost to you. This is of course not the case.. :)

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