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The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

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Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#111

Post by pottertheotter »

DominikPeters wrote: post #63
spacephysics wrote: post #56

Since a few years ago (when I read Why We Sleep [0]) I’ve made it my priority above all else to allow myself 8 hours of sleep, even if I don’t ‘use’ all of it. With more sleep, an innumerable amount of things are better (as read in the book), but subjectively I noticed the following after about a month straight of good sleep: * Pain was far more manageable (IBS, MMA injuries) * Sleep was more restorative when I woke…

The author of the OP is not a fan of Why We Sleep, having found many errors and misrepresentations [1]. [1] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

I had just purchased and starting reading the book when this was first posted here. I haven't spent much time to look into either side, but I stopped reading the book because I felt like I may be filling my mind with false information. And I bought it in the first place thinking an expert was going to teach the most important things we know so far about sleep. It bums me to think about this.

Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#113

Post by collyw »

vikiomega9 wrote: post #110
hashmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

Could you point me to some of these studies, ie. one that's a good starting reference.

I dont know any off hand but Mathew Walkers book "Why we sleep" talks about them. Apparently there are more road traffic accidents the day after the clocks change in spring when many people loose an hours sleep.

Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#114

Post by renjimen »

abtom wrote: post #85

> I slept 4 hours a night for 14 days and didn’t find any effects on cognition (assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter scenario, and SAT). Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

So all my late nights playing video games as a teenager could've been justified had I only phrased it as "doing a PVT for cognitive studies"?!

Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#115

Post by hashmal »

vikiomega9 wrote: post #110
hashmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

Could you point me to some of these studies, ie. one that's a good starting reference.

Here you go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12683469

Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#116

Post by benibela »

elliekelly wrote: post #100
akersten wrote: post #6

I've always mused that we could somehow recover some of the "wasted" time of sleeping. 8 hours every night - a third of a human's lifespan - is just so much time. Sadly, I've never found any positive research that there's any way to do it safely. When I was younger I found schedules like the Uberman[0] and was amazed by the claim: only 2 hours of sleep a day required, as long as you stuck to a pretty rigid schedule a…

Have you tried lucid dreaming? I’ve been a lucid dreamer since I was a kid but I didn’t know what it was called and I thought that’s how everyone’s dreams work. Somewhere along the way in law school I started using my dreams to study. I’d slow-walk through hypothetical fact patterns or anticipate getting cold-called to recite a case we’d read. It’s been incredibly helpful and once I realized my classmates had no idea…

I have, but I wake up after every lucid dream, so I need to spend more time in bed to get a full length sleep.

And it only last a few minutes, so there is not enough time to study. Even if there was, I am always more interesting in flying around.

And most of the time I only reach a half-lucid state. Like tonight I got stuck in a time loop in a train station. Like I could not leave, because I did not have the right ticket or travel card. Then on a random train the ticket inspector wanted to arrest me. I was aware enough to realize that I could control the environment and could wish the ticket inspector away, but that just triggered the time loop and put me back in the train station where I started.

Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#117

Post by lemming »

vikiomega9 wrote: post #110
hashmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

Could you point me to some of these studies, ie. one that's a good starting reference.

The definitive reference for all things sleep is “why we sleep” by Matthew Walker. It’s a fantastic read, highly recommended. It single handedly moved getting enough sleep from a similar category to “I should probably eat less salt” to “this is the single most important thing for my health” for me.

Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#118

Post by shaftway »

I read about the Uberman sleep schedule stuff myself when I was younger and trying to recover time I "wasted" sleeping. I ended up trying Uberman myself (15 minute naps, 6x per day).

I did a decent amount of prep work. I talked to my doctor (who basically said as long as I'm not falling asleep while driving, go for it). I set up ways to track my cognitive abilities around work (remote software engineer at the time). I started tracking kill-to-death ratio in favorite first person shooter (I thought it was a good measure of my innovation, as you can't use the same tricks for very long against human opponents). I also started tracking my weight, strength, endurance, and food intake.

It was hard to get into the schedule, and it never really clicked and held. Eventually I found the schedule to be frustrating and difficult from a social perspective. So I ended up dropping it a little over a year after I started.

So yeah, a little over a year.

When I analyzed my numbers I didn't see any particular hits in any of the areas. Work stayed stable (I actually got promoted about 9 months in, so I'm fairly confident about that). My kill-to-death ratio in the FPS climbed steadily along a similar trajectory as it had before I started. I found I was eating more (from ~2300 calories per day to almost 3000 calories to day), but my weight stayed level. Strength and endurance went up slightly, but that's probably more because I was checking them regularly versus not doing any exercise leading up to it.

Would I suggest it to others? No. There were other issues I had with the plan, more societal. And it was frustrating to not be able to focus on something for more than 3.5 hours at a time. But it certainly was an interesting time.

Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#119

Post by snowwrestler »

hashmal wrote: post #66
snowwrestler wrote: post #31

When I go many days in a row without enough sleep, I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline--as judged by things I build and people I interact with. But, my endurance of focus (the amount of time for which I can perform at a high level) does suffer. The weird thing is that it doesn't feel like I can't keep going... it's just that I sort of somehow don…

> I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline It's very common. Studies on sleep deprivation report that subjects do not feel their cognitive abilities decline. However, measuring cognition using objective tests does show a significant decrease in these abilities.

Yeah, I think I should have been more specific that I'm judging against the things I usually need to complete for work--which do not necessarily take my utmost brilliance. I haven't been rigorously tested on low sleep.

Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days

#120

Post by kthxbye123 »

spacephysics wrote: post #56

Since a few years ago (when I read Why We Sleep [0]) I’ve made it my priority above all else to allow myself 8 hours of sleep, even if I don’t ‘use’ all of it. With more sleep, an innumerable amount of things are better (as read in the book), but subjectively I noticed the following after about a month straight of good sleep: * Pain was far more manageable (IBS, MMA injuries) * Sleep was more restorative when I woke…

>> or carnivore with a focus on ketosis

Following a "carnivore" diet is a really terrible idea. Unless you're an Inuit living in the frozen north, you should eat some greens.

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