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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

#11

Post by hyperpallium2 »

raghuveerdotnet wrote: post #3

Stress 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…

> revenge bedtime procrastination: a phenomenon in which people who don't have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#12

Post by sradman »

Many of us are wearing devices with continuous optical heart rate monitors. Heart rate variability at rest is one of the best indicators of stress and these devices are pretty good at estimating sleep duration and sleep cycles.

Regulators need to recognize that continuous tracking devices are a new tool for establishing a health baseline and they should not be expected to match the performance of single-test medical devices. Apple, Garmin, and Fitbit need to build standards to share this baseline data with medical professionals and offer analytics to determine when changes occur.

Questionnaire based medicine seems backwards given the digital tools available.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#13

Post by wongarsu »

uppsalax wrote: post #7

Thank 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…

> But some people can argue that it is the natural outcome of a "placebo effect".

What would a placebo effect even be when talking about lack of sleep, stress, etc.?

In medicine the size of the placebo effect seems to depend on the procedure. A placebo surgery is more effective than a placebo injection, which is more effective than a placebo pill. So if you want to test if an injection is better than a placebo you compare it to a placebo injection like saline water, something where there's no way it can have a medical effect beyond the psychological effect. But that would mean that to evaluate meditation you would have to compare it to some kind of fake meditation, maybe breathing exercises that have no viable way to be effective beyond the placebo effect. But we don't know nearly enough about neuroscience to come up with such a thing.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#15

Post by wongarsu »

KMag wrote: post #6

Working 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.

Number pads are a bit out of fashion, but they are awesome for touch-typing digits.

That being said, if you can't remember 6 digits, just imagine how the rest of your work suffers at that point. Everyone is better served by you taking a nap first

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#16

Post by koheripbal »

raghuveerdotnet wrote: post #3

Stress 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…

During a very difficult time in my life recently, I found it impossible to sleep. I would have stress nightmares and even when i did fall asleep, I would soon wake myself up with specific scenarios my mind was trying to work out.

I was incapacitated by this, which exacerbated my situation.

I eventually noticed that I could fall asleep if I sat with my daughters while they watched TV. This evolved to me falling asleep with the TV on. ...but the light, noise, and discomfort of the couch made this poor quality sleep.

Which then evolved to me falling asleep in bed with earphones on just listening to old tv, not watching. But I noticed that as soon as the tv show stopped, I would have nightmares again.

This evolved into me selecting 8 hours of movies that, on low volume, keep me asleep all night and I've essentially solved my sleep problem - despite this stressful situation persists.

My colleagues has instead started taking prescription sleeping pills.

I have found that selection of audio is important. It cannot be interesting or novel. It cannot be sound only - there must be speech. It must be content you enjoy, but have seen multiple times before. ...and it must have peaceful audio without screaming, shooting, abrupt sounds.

Interestingly, I no longer dream at all. The audio has essentially supplanted dreaming. I know this because on the occasions that the audio fails, my dreams return and are a notable experience.

I have been doing this for over 6 months now. 8 solid hours of sleep per night on the same programming all night. No ill effects noted. It has been instrumental in coping.

Food for thought. It seems stress caused insomnia can be cured without drugs, and dreams are optional for humans.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#18

Post by amirs »

waihtis wrote: post #10

I 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 Z…

Highly doubt any Zen master would reprimand you. Any habit you want to keep needs to be sustainable, if it doesn't fit the way your life works, you probably won't keep it. They would however most likely encourage you to challenge yourself from time to time when possible to see if you can get comfortable doing a longer session once in a while.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#19

Post by gedy »

sradman wrote: post #12

Many of us are wearing devices with continuous optical heart rate monitors. Heart rate variability at rest is one of the best indicators of stress and these devices are pretty good at estimating sleep duration and sleep cycles. Regulators need to recognize that continuous tracking devices are a new tool for establishing a health baseline and they should not be expected to match the performance of single-test medical…

I will say that learning about and monitoring my HRV after getting a smart watch has been useful to monitor stress and trends. Like with anything though, I've had to try and not self-induce more stress watching this number continuously ha.

Re: Lack of sleep, stress can lead to symptoms resembling concussion

#20

Post by sedgjh23 »

koheripbal wrote: post #16
raghuveerdotnet wrote: post #3

Stress 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…

During a very difficult time in my life recently, I found it impossible to sleep. I would have stress nightmares and even when i did fall asleep, I would soon wake myself up with specific scenarios my mind was trying to work out. I was incapacitated by this, which exacerbated my situation. I eventually noticed that I could fall asleep if I sat with my daughters while they watched TV. This evolved to me falling asleep…

I am sorry you are going through this. Thank you for sharing.
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