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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

#111

Post by Andys »

klyrs wrote: post #97
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…

> Many of us are wearing devices with continuous optical heart rate monitors. I don't know how representative you folks are. I know a few people who invest time, money, and effort into tracking and measuring every aspect of their health. It looks like neuroticism to me. Especially when they look for explainations of every blip on every chart.

On the other hand, its incredibly useful to establish what is a healthy baseline for your own body, so that when you do get a disease it is easier to compare your results.

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

#112

Post by klyrs »

Andys wrote: post #111
klyrs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of us are wearing devices with continuous optical heart rate monitors. I don't know how representative you folks are. I know a few people who invest time, money, and effort into tracking and measuring every aspect of their health. It looks like neuroticism to me. Especially when they look for explainations of every blip on every chart.

On the other hand, its incredibly useful to establish what is a healthy baseline for your own body, so that when you do get a disease it is easier to compare your results.

You're not wrong, but my point is that folks who are interested in knowing every little detail; who have the time, energy, and funds to invest into tracking these statistics; will provide a very biased dataset. That isn't necessarily a good baseline for everybody else.

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

#113

Post by missedthecue »

"Symptoms range from persistent headaches, dizziness and fatigue to anxiety, insomnia and loss of concentration and memory"

These are the symptoms one would experience after anything happened to them that involved their brain, be it a little lost sleep or getting knocked out by a 300 lbs linebacker.

Given this, the headline seems a little exaggerative and reductive to the point of being meaningless. I mean, spinning around in an office chair a dozen times will cause a few of these symptoms, but that's not anywhere near the level of harm caused by getting concussed.

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

#114

Post by aantix »

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…

You're leaving out nutritional deficiencies. Specifically, magnesium, for which most are deficient.

When you increase your levels of magnesium, suddenly it's easier to be present, meditate, mental endurance increases, you can endure much more mental stress.

If you're deficient, it can lead to a bad, downward spiral.

Magnesium Status and Stress: The Vicious Circle Concept Revisited

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/12/3672/htm

"The idea of a bidirectional relationship between magnesium and stress was first introduced by Galland and Seelig, in the early 1990s [9,10] and then referred to as the vicious circle. This vicious circle implies that stress can increase magnesium loss, causing a deficiency; in turn, magnesium deficiency can enhance the body’s susceptibility to stress"

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

#115

Post by gkop »

baby wrote: post #68
koheripbal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Two things that work great with me: smoking weed & wearing a sleeping mask (a bit of light can really fuck w/ my sleep and for some reasons no US apartments seems to have real blinds).

Weed is a fairly heavy-handed solution IMO. It’s likely to help with insomnia, but also to have significant side effects. Many people enjoy some of the side effects, which is great. But many do not, which makes it hard to recommend generally for insomnia.

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

#116

Post by banana_giraffe »

vinni2 wrote: post #105
banana_giraffe wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found a similar solution to my sleep problems. I used to fall asleep listening to audio books. I eventually found audio books that are barely interesting, with certain narration styles to put me to sleep faster. I now have a series of audio books, mostly gumshoe detective novels, that I use to sleep on nights when I'm dealing with stress. I set the sleep timer for 6 hours, and invariably get a good night of slee…

Can you suggest some books like that?

Lately I've been using books from the "Dark Tower" series by Stephen King.

My thoughts on the book series aside, it's long, and I find the narrator rather soothing.

I'd absolutely check out samples first though. One person's soothing narrator is another person's grating narrator.

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

#117

Post by gkop »

closeparen wrote: post #40
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…

I get a lot more done as a knowledge worker than I ever did in college, because in the real world nobody cares if something is a day or three later than the nominal deadline, and “this turned out to be harder than I anticipated” is a legitimate excuse. Consequently I never start the cycle of staying up to meet a deadline and then blowing the next deadline because I was trying to work on it sleep deprived. This is eas…

I worked very closely with somebody when we were both about 10 years out of college. Unlike you and I, she still believed that “cramming” by staying up late to meet a deadline was a worthwhile strategy. I shared my reasoning with her, and nudged her over time, calling attention to the concrete detrimental impact of pursuing short term goals at the expense of intermediate term capacity and personal well-being, but she wouldn’t budge. This is a very smart person who ostensibly shared similar educational and professional experience to myself, that simply reached a very different conclusion. She ended up modifying her behavior only after going through a painful and damaging burnout.

How does a person go through university and not learn this lesson? Should we teach them the better way? How?

Edit: I remembered a potential clue- my coworker was able to transition from work to sleep rather easily, where I require a substantial wind-down period. Perhaps this shifted the equation.

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

#118

Post by gkop »

mcbuilder wrote: post #55
closeparen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a lot more done as a knowledge worker than I ever did in college, because in the real world nobody cares if something is a day or three later than the nominal deadline, and “this turned out to be harder than I anticipated” is a legitimate excuse. Consequently I never start the cycle of staying up to meet a deadline and then blowing the next deadline because I was trying to work on it sleep deprived. This is eas…

In the real world, 2 or 3 days doesn't mean a failing grade most of the time. However, when you start to get 2 to 3 weeks behind the deadline in the real world there is no escape hatch. Worst case in college, you submit the later assignment, settle for a D, and vow to study hard for the final. In the real world, you manager calls you to his office, asks you why you're weeks behind, it's going down now in your evaluat…

Would you see my sibling comment? What about your experience do you think caused to conclude that losing sleep is justified to meet a deadline, when others have reached the opposite conclusion?

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

#119

Post by pdfernhout »

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…

In "The Body Keeps the Score", Bessel van der Kolk discusses the effects of psychological trauma and how important it is for people to process traumas via dreams which essentially remove the emotional component but leave the learning. When, say, veterans wake up from nightmarish dreams of a trauma, they don't complete processing it. Then they keep waking up from the same extreme nightmares stuck with that trauma unprocessed. He found a medication that helped veterans stay asleep through the entire nightmare, and within weeks the veterans moved past their traumatic dreams. There may also be non-medical interventions to help get past that trauma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Keeps_the_Score

Another book "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker also goes into how important various stages of sleep are for learning and good health: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep

So, while you have found something that seems to work for you to prevent regular dreams, I wonder if it could leave you stuck somewhere emotionally with a trauma or otherwise may also interfere with other healing and learning aspects of good sleep? On the other hand, maybe your approach help keeps you call enough at night, and so you are dreaming OK but don't remember your dreams (which is fine), and so you do have dreams and do process memories through them, and so your approach is a breakthrough in that sense? Anyway, there remain a lot of unknowns about sleep and dreams...

"Sleeping pills" in general are bad news for healthy sleep (as Matthew Walker explains in depth), so good to avoid them. This is because they interfere with normal sleep (as do many other things like alcohol late at night).

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

#120

Post by alwillis »

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…

For me, it’s a podcast—-but one I’ve already listened to.

It can’t be a new one or else I’ll get too interested in it.

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