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

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131–140 of 186 posts

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

#131
post #95

Strangely whenever I have a great nights sleep it always makes it hard to go to sleep at a descent hour the next night. My children are up at 6am, so that’s when I have to be up.

I'm the same. I suspect if I actually got decent sunlight exposure during the day I wouldn't have this problem.

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

#132
post #4

I'm currently in my 20s and I've been a type 1 chronic insomniac my whole life. Physically, I'm healthy and fit and I have been my whole life, but mentally my mind feels slower and foggier than my peers and I struggled through high school and college because of it. I know this might sound morbid, but I am fully expecting to die early despite doing everything in my power to live a healthy, balanced lifestyle. I can't…

Yeah we are going to die early. Work is killing me. No choice but fit in with the business schedule.

There are other choices - night shifts, part time work, freelance work where you don't have to be on a regular schedule, working somewhere with really good flex time...

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

#133
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…

Lose weight and most likely you will stop snoring. Most likely you are obese or overweight.

Stop giving out unsolicited, ignorant, mistargeted medical advice.

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you still don't remember that friends name?

> And you still don't remember that friends name? Some information can be relearned. Some cannot. It would be relatively easy to discover the name of someone from your past (ask a coworker, check a yearbook). I think the better example in the parent’s comment is a lost password. I changed the pin on my phone while I was in a sleep deprived state and had to erase it to recover from not knowing the pin after I finally…

I don't think you're relearning your friend's name so much as reminding yourself. You haven't lost the memory, you just can't bring it up in that moment. And given time you might remember. But it's a bad example like you said.

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

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

#136
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. The need for a CPAP is almost always mitigated by weight loss.

As far as I've read, weight loss almost always helps (assuming a person is obese, which is common with OSA because it's also a symptom), but it's unusual for it to totally eliminate the need for CPAP.

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Red light helps cells heal [1], ultraviolet light can kill bacteria. I'll find sources and measurements.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4148276/

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

#138
post #99

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…

Matthew Walker, the author of Why We Sleep, was on the Joe Rogan Experience recently. I've been in material cognitive decline over the past year or so and I'm nearly certain it's due to my abhorrent sleep patterns. This episode really helped me prioritize a fix over other things that would normally result in a night of 3-5 hrs in bed or on the floor (who knows how much actual sleep). It's a great episode: https://www…

I preferred his interview on the Kevin Rose podcast: https://www.kevinrose.com/single-post/matthew-walker

Incidentally a previous podcast covered a lot of the same ground, plus much more: https://www.kevinrose.com/single-post/Serge-Faguet

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The need for a CPAP is almost always mitigated by weight loss.

As far as I've read, weight loss almost always helps (assuming a person is obese, which is common with OSA because it's also a symptom), but it's unusual for it to totally eliminate the need for CPAP.

I experienced the reverse: using a CPAP finally gave me enough energy to start exercising, which helped me lose weight. I imagine if I stopped using the CPAP I would slowly start losing energy again and probably stop exercising and gain the weight back. The few nights I've gone without CPAP have left me feeling awful, even without as much weight.

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

#140
post #91
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 seems to contradict recent study that I came across [1]: The mortality rate among participants with short sleep during weekdays, but long sleep during weekends, did not differ from the rate of the reference group. Among individuals ≥65 years old, no association between weekend sleep or weekday/weekend sleep durations and mortality was observed. In conclusion, short, but not long, weekend sleep was associated wit…

I'm someone who often gets insufficient sleep during the week and, anecdotally, sleeping 12 - 16 hours on Friday and Saturday night seems to rejuvenate me. I've always felt like I could pay off sleep debt if I really get a lot of sleep on the weekends in proportion to how much I lost during the week.
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