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On whether changes in bedroom CO2 levels affect sleep quality

gwern.net

201–210 of 322 posts

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

#201

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.

I'm impressed by how low the score of your comment is. I know computer scientists aren't "real" scientists but I thought the lack of rigor in this one was apparent and it was only upvoted only as a conversation starter. I guess I was wrong.

There wasn't a "lack of rigor"

He just never finished. He collected data and then didn't follow up with graphs and conclusions and such.

There's nothing wrong with a blog post that tells you about 2/3 of a N=1 study on yourself, it's interesting. It doesn't owe you completion, it just is not complete.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I recently remember hearing forced air is bad for air quality inside! Did I hear wrong or is there something more to the story like “forced air brings in outside air, so if your outside air is bad you’ll have trouble”?

You can add filters on the blower to clean up the air. Especially important in cities.

Also important in the middle of nowhere when the clean, forest air turns to smoke each August.

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

#203
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…

It's unlikely you'll have a noticeable difference in co2 levels with indoor plants, even considering your unusual setup.

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

#204
post #10
post #3

No conclusion? What's the point of doing research or reporting it if you learned nothing? Is this a koan?

> No conclusion? What's the point of doing research or reporting it if you learned nothing? This attitude is (imho) a major problem in research/academia. If you've done research into something you should report it even if the results were unclear, ambiguous, or non-existent. For one it lets people know if this is a fruitful avenue to pursue and/or whether further study is warranted. It can thus reduce unnecessary rep…

Yes, if your experiment was well designed you will learn something from it and your experiment's design will indeed speak for itself because its conclusion diminishes the search space of what can be known -- on one side of your hypothesis or the other.

But to report no conclusion means your experiment has failed: either your method was bad (and your work deserves oblivion), or you reported only your data, or you didn't even report that. It's not clear in this case which of the last two scenarios apply here, but reporting only data without a discussion of results or conclusion adds precious little.

Ill-conceived, badly executed, or incomplete experiments add nothing to our knowledge of the world, except more noise. There are already too many unreplicatable experimental conclusions in science today. Let's not short-circuit the experimental method (to wit: missing negative/positive controls, incomplete discussion of results in the context of the DOE, and a judicious conclusion of the in/significance of those contextualized validated results).

The scientific method has a tough enough row to hoe these days. Let's not make it harder by inviting weeds through methodological neglect.

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

#205
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…

Reading reviews of the Awair, seems that many people complain that the measurements are not accurate or consistent with other measurements... can you speak to that at all?

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm impressed by how low the score of your comment is. I know computer scientists aren't "real" scientists but I thought the lack of rigor in this one was apparent and it was only upvoted only as a conversation starter. I guess I was wrong.

There wasn't a "lack of rigor" He just never finished. He collected data and then didn't follow up with graphs and conclusions and such. There's nothing wrong with a blog post that tells you about 2/3 of a N=1 study on yourself, it's interesting. It doesn't owe you completion, it just is not complete.

it's also funny how people assume blog posters owe them anything. get off their lawn!

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

#207
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…

My friend studied Interior Architectural Design, one of his professors there started one lecture a year by getting the CO2 sensors, placing them around the lecture hall, showing the readings at the start of the lecture, closing the doors and then after the hour long lecture showing the readings. During the lecture he mentioned the figures for CO2 concentration that led to symptoms, e.g. dizziness, sleepiness etc. The…

This might be a really stupid question but, wouldn't you _want_ sleepiness when you, I don't know, try to sleep?

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend studied Interior Architectural Design, one of his professors there started one lecture a year by getting the CO2 sensors, placing them around the lecture hall, showing the readings at the start of the lecture, closing the doors and then after the hour long lecture showing the readings. During the lecture he mentioned the figures for CO2 concentration that led to symptoms, e.g. dizziness, sleepiness etc. The…

This might be a really stupid question but, wouldn't you _want_ sleepiness when you, I don't know, try to sleep?

Followup rhetorical question: Do you like waking up sleepy and dizzy?

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend studied Interior Architectural Design, one of his professors there started one lecture a year by getting the CO2 sensors, placing them around the lecture hall, showing the readings at the start of the lecture, closing the doors and then after the hour long lecture showing the readings. During the lecture he mentioned the figures for CO2 concentration that led to symptoms, e.g. dizziness, sleepiness etc. The…

This might be a really stupid question but, wouldn't you _want_ sleepiness when you, I don't know, try to sleep?

But not in the morning.

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

#210
post #203
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…

It's unlikely you'll have a noticeable difference in co2 levels with indoor plants, even considering your unusual setup.

I think it’s as simple as biomass produced vs biomass consumed, and I agree a 4x4 garden is not going to fully replace O2 for two sleeping adults. I’ve experimented with building tower setups which would allow 3-5 times the biomass growth in the same space, but it’s a real pain tending to a garden at eye level, and introduces all kinds of new catastrophic failure possibilities when you have water above high power lights.
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