Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
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Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#2I remember reading the results of a study a few years ago that said people in poverty suffered something like a drop in cognitive ability. I wonder if the effect reported here is related.
Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#3Stress resilience is one of the most important things when it comes to knowledge work, also one of the most neglected aspect. Mindfulness, stoicism, exercise help, but nothing helps as much as a good night sleep. Also the other thing people usually fail to note is the vicious stress-sleep cycle (lack of sleep induced stress stress induced lack of sleep). It took me years to realize that so much of my problems with bedtime revenge, burnout, non-clinical depression, permastress was basically just lack of quality sleep. FWIW, it helps to think of productivity in terms of sleep and stress when you are working in the knowledge economy. Just like sleep debt, you can also accumulate productivity debt due to lack of stress resilience, lack of sleep, which can eventually lead to things like burnout.
Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#4I have anxiety / stress / depression issues and when it gets really bad I toss and turn all night, unable to sleep. By day 3 all of my muscles and joints ache terribly. During sleep your body is clearing itself of waste and healing. So not only are you a miserable zombie, your body itself is falling apart! I have enormous empathy for anyone who suffers from mental health issues.
I take Lexapro daily, have a low-dose benzo for situational anxiety that I try never to take except it true emergencies, practice mindfulness / meditation, see a therapist off and on. You get better at managing it but it's a problem that never truly goes away.
Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#5And with that... I'm going to go take a nap
Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#6Working from home, needing to log in to work with 2FA, if I'm very tired, I find it difficult to keep the 6 pseudorandom digits in memory simultaneously for long enough to log in.
Also, I should learn to touch-type the digits. It's funny that I've been touch-typing Dvorak for 20 years, but still haven't picked up the digits.
Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#7Thank you so much for sharing, this is a really insightful article!
By the way, a friend of mine is doing a Master's thesis in work psychology at the University of Turin on this subject.
I am a bit ignorant about this topic since I have a business background + work in tech-startups. But I am genuinely passionate about this kind of thing.
The gist of the thesis is that all these dynamic and interdependent aspects (e.g. lack of sleep, stress, social pressures, even for athletes before, after and during a race, even if we think about the influence on self-perception in relation to other people and related expectations on personal performance) can lead to somatization which can come in the form of concussion, but also to burnout or multiple injuries (as my friend is researching on the thesis) and as it happened to me too, in my life.
Practicing yoga or simply going for a walk daily, helped me a lot along that path... and helped many friends of mine as well. But some people can argue that it is the natural outcome of a "placebo effect".
All of these are very interesting talking points and the inherent dynamics behind vicious cycles (echoing @raghuveerdotnet's comment) is still not crystal clear and needs further research and experimentation.
What are your thoughts?
Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#8Stress resilience is one of the most important things when it comes to knowledge work, also one of the most neglected aspect. Mindfulness, stoicism, exercise help, but nothing helps as much as a good night sleep. Also the other thing people usually fail to note is the vicious stress-sleep cycle (lack of sleep induced stress stress induced lack of sleep). It took me years to realize that so much of my problems with be…
I think it goes beyond resilience, at least for me. Sleep is required to experience a state without stress.
Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#9Stress resilience is one of the most important things when it comes to knowledge work, also one of the most neglected aspect. Mindfulness, stoicism, exercise help, but nothing helps as much as a good night sleep. Also the other thing people usually fail to note is the vicious stress-sleep cycle (lack of sleep induced stress stress induced lack of sleep). It took me years to realize that so much of my problems with be…
The thing is, that when you have a high level of stress, you will find it hard to sleep well.
"Mindfulness, stoicism, exercise help, but nothing helps as much as a good night sleep"
So those are very connected. If you practice mindfulness and work out in a healthy way. And be conscious when and how you go to sleep ... things will improve.
Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion
#10I had great success picking up a consistent meditation habit with the greasing the groove-approach[1].. in essence, every time I would feel a bit foggy in the head, I would take a 3-15 minute meditation session. It usually results to 3-5 sessions per day. It's such a great mental reset, and I haven't since experienced the kind of complete depletion that you get from pushing yourself hard through the day.
I bet some Zen master would reprimand me for this being the wrong approach, but I found it quite difficult to get into the habit of doing, say, a single 30-60 minute session per day. Now I can consistently drop into the meditation session with no urge for procrastination and have also successfully experimented with longer ones.
[1] refers to the method of increasing your pull-up capability by installing a pull-up bar in your office / bedroom doorway and doing a set every time you pass through the doorway