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Let Teenagers Sleep

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#421

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

fknorangesite wrote: post #408
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you consume any caffeine after 12:00 noon? Caffeine's half life is 6 hours. So if you consume at 3pm, you still have 1/2 that caffeine in your body at 9 pm. 1/4 of it at 3am.

I'm in the exact same boat as the commenter you're responding to: I'm in my 40s, been a night owl my whole life. I very, very rarely fall asleep before 1am, despite decades of trying. I usually (but not even always) have a cup of coffee when I get up in the morning, but that's it. Why is it so difficult to imagine that people have different sleep schedules? Like, we do not blink at the thought that, say, height exist…

No morals implied here. I had the same pattern as you until I learned about sleep health from Matt Walker. There are very specific things you can do to change sleep habits, but only if you want to.

Of tremendous importance to me was learning that not all sleep is of the same “quality”, and that quality affects you the next day. You can learn how to improve sleep quality. Matt Walker is a good start in case your interested. Andrew Huberman has some episodes on it, too, as does Rhonda Patrick.

If you’re happy with 1AM then by all means, don’t change. I wasn’t happy with how I felt during waking hours. I was getting enough sleep, but it was low quality.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#422

Post by thomastjeffery »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #17

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

The most effective methods of treatment for ADHD:

* Medication

* Exercise

* Healthy diet

* Healthy consistent sleep

Is it possible that you weren't just unhealthy? Is it possible that diet, exercise, and sleep had exactly the positive effect that they are generally expected to have?

I say this not to reinforce the "maybe" of your own personal ADD/ADHD diagnosis, but to open the door for empathy. You may indeed have been misdiagnosed. You may have a more mild case of ADHD than the mean/average case. You may have a relatively severe case, but experience significant enough relief from your current diet, exercise, and sleep to adequately manage it. Whatever the case may be, I want everyone here to know that it just isn't enough to say, "Just be more healthy." Life is more diverse and complex than that.

The primary effect of ADHD is "executive dysfunction". If the best treatment for ADHD is to eat healthy, exercise more, and get consistent sleep, we must still recognize that that very treatment itself exists behind a wall of executive dysfunction. Even if "healthy lifestyle" is enough, we still need a way to bootstrap it.

It's incredibly normal for anyone with an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, or lack of sleep to struggle changing any of those things. Someone with ADHD literally has a disorder that makes it incredibly difficult to even get started.

While medication has an immediate and direct benefit, getting through that metaphorical wall to the rest of treatment is widely seen as the primary utility medication provides.

---

Whatever your situation is, it sounds like you managed fine without medication. Lucky you. For a lot of us, life just isn't that simple.

When I try to eat my vegetables, I can put them on a plate, hype myself up for them, and then sit staring while my brain shuts down. I am God, and broccoli is damned. When I decide I want to exercise more, I can get dressed, go outside, even get inside a gym, and pace around the weights or the treadmills, or the swimming pools, and get lost deciding what to do, while my brain screams, "I know! leave." When I decide I want to get to sleep on time, I can lie in my bed, breathe deep, relax, start thinking about more things than I can count, while the amount of hours and minutes slide right off the ledger.

Medication doesn't solve any of that, but it makes some of it possible.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#423

Post by plorkyeran »

xypage wrote: post #78
solveit wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a decent state school) What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid advice?

Because a guidance counselor doing a good job is really boring, they ask you where you want to go to school, get you links to those applications, and maybe walk you through the application/point you to a campus resource that'll proofread your essays before you submit them. None of these are particularly note worthy, no one's going to go home and write about that experience, so you don't hear about it. That's what my…

Yep, my HS guidance counselor gave me some great advice. I went to a school she strongly recommended for me and it was a good fit for exactly the reasons she said it would be. This isn't a very interesting story so I think this is literally the first time I've ever mentioned it anywhere in the nearly 20 years since then.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#424

Post by temporarara »

hintymad wrote: post #299
gabereiser wrote: post #57

The real blame for early high school is extra-curricular sports. Basketball, Football, etc. For those sports to thrive, teams need to practice, in order for practice to be efficient, it needs to be at least an hour. So 2 hours are allocated (suit up, practice, suit down). In order for children to be able to commit to 2 hours extra of their time BEFORE their parents get home (5pm), class would have to end by 3pm. Now,…

> The real blame for early high school is extra-curricular sports. Basketball, Football, etc. It seems the real blame is the culture of the US, which values sports above many things. Case in point, people openly despise toiling in academia, yet praise highly toiling in sports. Sports jockeys are popular in schools, yet IMO medalists are not (not that I care. Just to contrast culture differences). It's not enough to g…

The fact that there are universities that strongly favor athletes feels so absurd to me. In my country you could be a world class athlete and it gives you exactly zero extra points when applying to any university here. Academic success and the possible entry exams are the only things that are considered. All "extra curricular activities" are completely ignored, the mindset being that if they truly are relevant they help you in indirect ways to achieve the required level anyway. I think that's how it should be everywhere, but ofc I'm biased here. And I do like sports, both watching and playing.

It feels just wrong that somewhere kids have to market themselves into university by carefully choosing what they do in their free time, just having good grades (and actual knowledge/skills) is not enough.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#425

Post by thomastjeffery »

tmpz22 wrote: post #40

As a teenager I used to stay up until 2-3am watching movies on my ipod touch - which had a ludicrously small screen by todays standards. I'm in favor of moving back start times but we should also better study and educate on the consequences of bad personal habits.

Seems to me that teenagers in general have a very predictable tendency toward staying up late.

Going to bed in the evening isn't a solution to healthy sleep schedules: it's an accommodation to waking up in the morning.

Why do teenagers need to be waking up early? Since we know that most struggle accommodating an early rise, why not, as a society, accommodate a late rise?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#426

Post by ajmurmann »

Eisenstein wrote: post #420
throwaway2037 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you to share about your childhood experience. This part: I wonder if it's possible because everyone isn't constantly threatened by looming bankruptcy if they don't save big piles of cash. I'm confused. What does it mean?

I assume they are referring to lack of a safety net, though I don't know what in particular that has to do with volunteering to coach youth sports.

Less time to coach when you gotta grind

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#427

Post by Salgat »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #352
Etheryte wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced this is the real root cause, this is just a reasonable sounding theory that's easy to nod along to. Other countries don't follow this time pattern and have extra curricular activities and nonsense school hours all the same. As a single data point, where I'm from you usually have a gap after school so you can do your homework and then you do extra activities in the evening. Transportation is handled…

Yep, I was in school district that was 9am-4pm for high schoolers and I was still able to swim for 2 hours every morning beforehand just fine.

Of course other times are doable, it's just a matter of how much blowback the school board is willing to take from parents.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#428

Post by ArchOversight »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #92
ArchOversight wrote: post #51

> This shift reverses at adulthood. The biological nature of this daily rhythm means that sending a teenager to bed earlier won’t necessarily mean they fall asleep earlier. No, this shift does not reverse in adulthood for some people... I am in my 30's and I still fall asleep midnight to 1 AM, and wake up "late" by most adult standards at around 8/9 AM. I can not shift my sleep schedule to earlier, I've tried many ti…

do you consume any caffeine after 12:00 noon? Caffeine's half life is 6 hours. So if you consume at 3pm, you still have 1/2 that caffeine in your body at 9 pm. 1/4 of it at 3am.

No. One cup of coffee at around 9:30 AM after I wake up, except on very rare occasions.

That being said, when I used to be on aderall for my ADHD I would often take my second dose of the day right before going to bed, as it would help me calm my brain down and fall asleep.

Caffeine does not affect me or my sleep cycles, it does help me focus though by quieting my mind down, and on the weekends I enjoy drinking a cup of coffee and going back to sleep for 30 - 90 minutes of deep relaxing sleep.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#429

Post by ArchOversight »

xyzelement wrote: post #141
ArchOversight wrote: post #51

> This shift reverses at adulthood. The biological nature of this daily rhythm means that sending a teenager to bed earlier won’t necessarily mean they fall asleep earlier. No, this shift does not reverse in adulthood for some people... I am in my 30's and I still fall asleep midnight to 1 AM, and wake up "late" by most adult standards at around 8/9 AM. I can not shift my sleep schedule to earlier, I've tried many ti…

If you are anything like me, what you are able to do is driven by what you have to do :) I used to be a developer/dev manager and in that life, if you booked a 9 or even 9:30 am meeting with me, the odds of me being in by then were low. I loved sleeping in. Then I moved to the business side and my life was that quite often, I had to be at the airport say 7am. So now there was a REASON to move my life to an earlier sc…

I used to have to be in the office by 8 AM. That was the absolute worst thing for me ever. I would be groggy and tired till around 11/12 and only then would my brain engage. Even though I was tired all day, I could not fall asleep before midnight or 1 AM.

Trying to shift my sleep schedule for a "REASON" does not work. In fact I used to be late so often that my boss let me have an exception and work slightly shifted hours, this gave him more of my productivity.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#430

Post by ArchOversight »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #411
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have similar sleeping habits, and I generally have caffeine only at breakfast.

I stop drinking caffeine at 5pm and I can fall asleep at 10pm or 11pm. Sometimes it feels like if I don’t drink enough caffeine during the day I can’t fall asleep.

Do you have ADHD? For me caffeine helps calm my mind, and I can fall asleep having had caffeine without any issues.
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