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One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

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Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#181

This must be why new parents always seem so bubbly and happy! But seriously, that’s very interesting and explains what I’ve experienced. I’ve been in a depression since quitting my phd a couple months ago and not having a direction in life, but whenever I have trouble sleeping I end up feeling better the next day. Maybe I’ll trying utilizing it to get my portfolio looking better.

There's something about getting 2-3 hours of sleep that makes me feel like I'm on top of the world throughout the day. I've always assumed it was a kind of wild delirium.

For a while there have been theories stating that monophasic sleep 8 hours a night is actually disordered sleep. Maybe that’s worth looking at again.

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Therapy and SSRI:s worked much better in the end. How did you find that therapy helped you? I've started therapy a few months back and so far I can't find all that much value in it. They can't fix any of the stuff that is making me depressed, so it mostly feels like I'm mainly getting self help style advice.

That’s my experience as well- though my therapy was a while ago. I had worked a stretch of utterly miserable jobs back then and conversation would always drift back to the work mess I likely left just prior and only frustrate me more. I saw several, mostly because I’d be on different insurance plans, etc. But not once did anyone say “maybe you need a new career path?” If anyone of them had followed that up with “and…

While I def got more from therapy, I concur regarding ACT being the methodology that worked best for me and that it’s wild how much it overlaps with mindfulness and Buddhist practices.

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#183
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tapering off very slowly (over weeks or months) will probably work better than cold turkey.

I’m just now sure how to taper off. They don’t come in smaller doses than 5mg and that’s where I’m at.

What form is it in? If its a capsule with dissolved oil, break the capsule and dilute the oil.

If it's a solid, just break it.

If you can buy a THC tincture, you can easily use dilution and volumetric dosing to titrate your doses down over time.

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#184
post #160
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll get plenty of advice and it's worth evaluating it all (as we're all different), but trazodone has been a miracle worker in aiding sleep. It's cheap, well understood, and the only negative aspect I've encountered is the risk of priapism (which can sound like a joke but should be taken very seriously)

Did nothing for me

Same. All it did was give me an incredible hangover the next day, blurry vision, tremors, and — scariest of all — made me feel sad. Had to quit within a week. Glad it works for others, but easily one of the worst things I've ever tried.

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#185
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I feel like you exactly identified the long term problem in the same paragraph. I learned years ago that any chemical that helps you sleep ensures that you can't sleep without it. I've used everything from thc to Benadryl to lavender and everything in between. It all had the same effects: slowly degrading effectiveness and sleeplessness without it. Pro-tip: find the source of your insomnia. Is it chemical or is it…

Yeah. I’ve tried. My problem is that 3-4 days of no sleep and I’m just about ready to sign off from this life. I’ve managed with 5mg THC pills for years. Never had to increase the dosage. I’ve never ever slept well. But back before kids it was easier to just sleep in if I had to. As best as I can tell, the cause is my adhd or related. My brain will simply. Not. Stop. Racing.

I'm with you - I have a few hits of some low-grade stuff maybe an hour or two before bed, and then I doze off naturally when it's dark out.

i also eat well, and make sure to not have blue light exposure for the last hour of my day.

But what really helped me, especially since I have crazy ADHD, is exercise. I lift when I get up, and do 1-2 hours of hard HIIT in the evenings after work. My body is absolutely shot by the time I'm done so I really don't have the energy to have my brain go all over the place. This coupled with a nice cold plunge in the evenings after said workouts (and another cold shower before I sleep), and good nutrition has helped me big time.

The THC does help, especially if I do it at the right time. If I smoke in the afternoons I am absolutely destroyed by sundown. I do fear it's creating an addiction or a physical dependence, but I value my sleep considerably.

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you build up a "Beer Debt" that grows as it depletes like sleep and hunger. Cute wrong example but there's really nothing all that malevolent or irresponsible about the suggestion. Maybe keep it to the weekend (like don't start till Friday/Sat night) and obviously you need the set it up so you don't have to be places or hold meaningful convos although Im not going to rule them totally out

> there's really nothing all that malevolent or irresponsible about the suggestion You are underestimating the impact of sleep deprivation, and the ability for a person to recognize the impacts while sleep deprived. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... "It was concluded that sleep deprivation has a greater impact on driving performance than a BrAC of 22 μg/100mls of breath, as measured by d…

Can I ask how heavily everyone desire I pre-caveat the main lede here in order to get the discussion centered more on the idea itself and competing views on the extent to which folk's have found some usecase or success with it? Like, obviously if you're a pilot who needs to be able to thread needles and sew while you're able to still control the plane should maybe wait till they're relieved of duty for the weekend or some amount of time allowing the latitude to try this thing out but I feel like there's an amount of obtuseness and ridgidity on display here.

Edit: also, Polyphasic is insane so anyone making a false equivalence here can simply stop. I'm referring to an occasional all-nighter for the joint purposes of resetting ones mental slate and also helping prime oneself for a better quality and faster easing-into the next sleep

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#187

I have experience with this and commented on a similar thread in 2018. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16557500#16558442 Update if anyone cares: I feel like I'm damn near 100%.

None of that worked for me but the important thing is... WONDERFUL that you're still on track! Thanks for sharing and congrats.

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#188

Having suffered from severe depression for over forty years, this reminds me of when I was 17, 18, etc. and suddenly discovered that if I stayed up for two days, the problem went away. So I knew this a very long time ago; but it always seemed to me that, besides smoking, this was just about one of the worst habits you could develop. By my mid-twenties, I had stopped.

Seems that I'm in the opposite. If I don't get enough sleep I would have noticeable bad mood.

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#189
In my life, I've observed occasional sleepless nights (one night per 1-3 month period) to coincide with positive moods, abundant activity, and a general sense of fulfillment. And when my mood and motivation drops, I reflect back and recall that it's been a while since I've enjoyed a sleep-free night.

I've always conceived of this as a consequence of being highly dynamic – my system is being stretched/pushed/twisted/strained by skipping sleep [1] – and a correlation to generally being enthusiastic about what's going on (I stayed up all night in the first place because I was obsessed with a fun problem). Of course, it is difficult to parse cause/effect/correlation, so I'm aware of the limits of these observations [2]. However, from the beginning I've felt confident that these sleepless nights were part of a broader pattern of good health.

[1] – As a general rule, I find "stress" to be healthy if it is acute (but survivable!) and unhealthy if it is chronic. This case (sleep) fits the rule... infrequent sleepless nights have a net positive effect, and prolonged sleep deprivation (even mild) is absolutely terrible for pretty much all aspects of health.

[2] – In observing my sense of happiness, I consider "seasons," or 3-6 months periods, so the previous analysis is actually quite feasible. Do I wake up motivated? Do I feel pleasure lying down to sleep? Am I being kind to the people in my life? Do I enjoy interacting with acquaintances? Do I feel capable? To me these questions offer clarity on some rough level of happiness, and makes possible an imperfect analysis of the effects of something like a sleepless night or other lifestyle change. It's not perfect – but it doesn't need to be perfect, as it is already a more effective analysis than the alternative (no analysis at all).

Re: One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's really nothing all that malevolent or irresponsible about the suggestion You are underestimating the impact of sleep deprivation, and the ability for a person to recognize the impacts while sleep deprived. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... "It was concluded that sleep deprivation has a greater impact on driving performance than a BrAC of 22 μg/100mls of breath, as measured by d…

Can I ask how heavily everyone desire I pre-caveat the main lede here in order to get the discussion centered more on the idea itself and competing views on the extent to which folk's have found some usecase or success with it? Like, obviously if you're a pilot who needs to be able to thread needles and sew while you're able to still control the plane should maybe wait till they're relieved of duty for the weekend or…

> in order to get the discussion centered more on the idea itself and competing views on the extent to which folk's have found some usecase or success with it?

So you only want "competing" views if they line up with your views?

The study was about driving, something many/most of us do on a regular basis. It shows that:

1. Sleep deprivation while driving is comparable to being intoxicated while driving.

2. Those who are sleep deprived are not reliably able to recognize their impairment.

If you think it's "obtuse" to bring this up, then I don't know what you're trying to do here. Those are extremely important pieces of information to bring up.

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