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On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

gwern.net

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Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#81
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should change it to closeyourdoors-crackyourwindow.org instead...

Police recommand you close your windows to prevent breakins.

If you believe that is a serious concern in your area, get bars for your windows. There is no shame in it, I've lived in numerous buildings that had barred windows.

However I suspect that most people don't sleep on the ground floor (either in a multi-level house, or in an apartment building) so for them this should be less of a concern.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#82
post #12

I'm eager to hear the results. I recently got an Awair 2.0 after seeing this talk by DHH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRqh8oLY7Ik It quickly confirmed that, without turning my thermostat fan to "ON", my bedroom CO2 jumps from about 1000 ppm to 2000 ppm within a couple hours of us going to sleep. In the fall, my wife and I started waking up in the middle of the night feeling like we couldn't breathe. What I figure…

If the human race gets to 5-6C of warming, the entire outside will have about 1000ppm of CO2. At 4C, about 800ppm outside, perhaps by 2100. https://www.co2.earth/2100-projections

My kids may well see stuffy room CO2 levels outside within their lifetimes.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#83

There's one big problem with this entire idea of co2 levels affecting sleep quality or humans in general: Even though there are cognitive effects of CO2, most often the CO2 levels in indoor rooms are simply a sign of low oxygen levels. In fact, there should be an inverse relationship between CO2 and oxygen in rooms. So an experiments would need to take this into account and supply pure oxygen to make up for the oxyge…

It should be noted though, that the effects of low oxygen are already very well known and well understood, thanks to decades of research funded by air and space agencies.

It should therefore be pretty easy for CO2 researchers to control the outcomes of their experiments against the known physiological effects of hypoxia, to determine what effects are actually caused by CO2.

And aside from that, the dosages being discussed here are far, far lower than would be a noticeable dent in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. 1000 ppm CO2, the lower bound of observed cognitive effects, is 0.1% CO2, way less than the point where hypoxia is known to cause problems. The atmosphere is 20.9% oxygen at sea level and while I am not an expert in the math of partial pressure, a decrease of atmospheric oxygen to 20.8% doesn't strike me as sufficient to explain the observed effects. That's a 0.4% decrease in the partial pressure of oxygen, or about the equivalent of a 300 foot increase in altitude, or taking an elevator to the 20th floor of a building, nowhere near enough increase in altitude to make you light-headed.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#84
post #34
post #29

I was lucky to get my hands on 5 proper co2 sensors from university, while I was teaching and working. So plenty of test places. What I found: -Just a couple of hours in a office, without ventilation spikes the co2 enough to make everyone dizzy and tired by the end of the day. Keeping eye on the meter and ventilating properly, increased everyones productivity and people werent so tired by the end of the day. - Classr…

Curious if you have a link to what sensors you had? Think this is cool and i've been on/off looking for co2/o2 sensors greater than recreational precision

They were too expencive to buy recreationally, at least for me. Evikon, small company that does science instruments. Sorry, cant find the model anymore, I think it was discontinued.

I do belive now though that even having recreational level sensor will give you at least understanding overall co2 levels and this something we should look into more.

I founs a paper using the same sensors that measured co2 in schools. In all cases, at certain times the measurement was higher than norm. occassionally over 2000. I can now understand much better kids getting sleepy and unable to concentrate in classroom.

Paper sadly in Estonian only: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#85
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police recommand you close your windows to prevent breakins.

If you believe that is a serious concern in your area, get bars for your windows. There is no shame in it, I've lived in numerous buildings that had barred windows. However I suspect that most people don't sleep on the ground floor (either in a multi-level house, or in an apartment building) so for them this should be less of a concern.

But the HOA won't let you and you'll have a hard time selling it then, because you have indicated that the house is in a dangerous area.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#87
post #69

This is especially pronounced at high altitude, and when running a furnace in the winter. I keep large black tents (4x4 ft or 2x4) in every bedroom in the house, and grow kale, spinach, chard, peas, tomatoes, etc inside (with handmade COB LED lights). I don't have any sensors to get a real idea of the difference in CO2 it makes, but it allows us to run the furnace less at night (heat from the lights), and makes a not…

> but it allows us to run the furnace less at night (heat from the lights)

Dear God, what's your power bill? There's no way a LED lights heat is as efficient as just using the furnace.

edit: I meant cheap, not efficient.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#88
post #75

There's one big problem with this entire idea of co2 levels affecting sleep quality or humans in general: Even though there are cognitive effects of CO2, most often the CO2 levels in indoor rooms are simply a sign of low oxygen levels. In fact, there should be an inverse relationship between CO2 and oxygen in rooms. So an experiments would need to take this into account and supply pure oxygen to make up for the oxyge…

Good observation. That said, co2 and o2 should move pretty much in tandem if the source of high co2 is human breathing + limited ventilation, right? This could potentially account for why no ill effects of high co2 were found in submarines. Presumably o2 supply there is well maintained. Do household air quality standards include o2 levels?

They do move in tandem on a molar basis, but because there is so much more O2 in the air, even very high concentrations of CO2 have barely changed the concentration of O2.

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#89
post #69

This is especially pronounced at high altitude, and when running a furnace in the winter. I keep large black tents (4x4 ft or 2x4) in every bedroom in the house, and grow kale, spinach, chard, peas, tomatoes, etc inside (with handmade COB LED lights). I don't have any sensors to get a real idea of the difference in CO2 it makes, but it allows us to run the furnace less at night (heat from the lights), and makes a not…

Have the police visited? Sounds like the sort of thing they'd think would be a grow house. (....a marijuana grow house, I mean, not one for eggplants and radishes)

Re: On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

#90
post #62

Self experiments like these are a great re-enforcement of how insanely hard it is to do accurate, reproducible science. This submission tells us absolutely nothing due to the lack of rigor applied. SO many potential confounding variables, there is zero value in what is being done here.

Here's a Nature opinion piece arguing in favor of N=1 studies: https://www.nature.com/news/personalized-medicine-time-for-o... And another more recent one https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07535-2

The n=1 isn't the problem, it's the environment. "Some guy's room" is hardly a lab, and then, when there is so much that can go wrong, such as in this study, n=1 is terrible.

This is terrible pseudoscience and not worth anyone's time.

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