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Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

71–80 of 184 posts

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#71
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a North African, I instinctively understand and firmly believe everything mentioned in this article about sleeping is true. From my perspective, the way I see your comment is this: give me scientific evidence that walking is beneficial to my health. We lose our identity when we disconnect from Nature. I even read a post recently here in HN where it was said that "Urban humans have lost much of their ability to dig…

> I instinctively understand and firmly believe everything mentioned in this article about sleeping is true. Well, yes, but that's a standard quality of B.S. It's plausible, and intuitive. When you actually start trying to prove it out, though, you discover it's wrong. True, there is a category of "no duh" scientific findings, like walking is beneficial to one's health, that do align with our intuition. But where sci…

Even the "walking is beneficial" part is not just "duh".

I mean, what is "walking". What distance? What pace? There are negative health effects from walking too much. The general idea is that moderate exercise is the best, too little is bad, too much is also bad. But where is the peak? It seems that walking is beneficial to the average city dweller, which aligns with our intuition, but what about foot soldiers?

And where does the intuition that walking is beneficial comes from? Walking is tiring, it is not something we do naturally if we can avoid it, not very "intuitive". That's the problem by the way, because we can avoid it in modern society. I think the intuition comes from the fact that we get told over and over than walking is beneficial, so much that we made these thought our own, i.e. that's conditioning. And the reason we are told that is because it is backed by observation and science.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#72
post #13

I find this article quite insubstantial. He lists alternative sleeping positions, but no sources backing up the claim that "western sleeping positions" (whatever that is) are worse. Also only one citation, and that is to back up the claim that there are 200 primates. Nice pictures though - I feel happy that I can sit (relatively) comfortably in the squatting position (as an European).

This appears to be a journal article. Why should it have citations? This is an arena where people are supposed to be doing primary research. "I have a PhD and this is my opinion" is probably at least 20% of academics.

Journals publish articles beyond primary research: https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-type...

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#74
post #45
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pillow doesn't need to be a factory-made product that you buy at a store. Plenty of humans make pillows out of natural objects when sleeping outdoors. I can totally imagine a mountain gorilla using a chunk of wood, or even a body part of another gorilla, as a "pillow" if it makes them feel more comfortable.

Yeah im sure there are many tribespeople with pillows. It feels wierdly racist that this guy is acting like people in societies like this just live instinctually like gorillas and don't actually have the universal human trait of creating and relying on manmade tools.

He's viewing humans and gorillas as primates, not viewing tribespeople as gorillas.

Tribes people don't live instinctually. They have culture, like us. The critique here is our culture could benefit from observing how their culture does it.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to outright dismiss it because it is not a systematic/empirical study (and the author explicitly mention that). In the case of posture, stretching & training I think there's several exercises out there that doesn't have a rigorous empirical study to back it up, yet can be explained to be good/bad from our anatomical understanding of the human body.

> I don't think it's fair to outright dismiss it because it is not a systematic/empirical study That's how science works. Show sources/data/experiments or gtfo

Experiments are the part people fixate on. Science begins with observation.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course it is without a pillow, it's a mountain gorilla! That doesn't follow at all. Gorillas are well known for their habit of making nests. Making pillows isn't difficult.

I'm a human and I don't think I'd be able to make a (comfortable) pillow...

Go pull a bunch of grass, and put it in a pile. You now have a working pillow.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#77
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's fair to outright dismiss it because it is not a systematic/empirical study That's how science works. Show sources/data/experiments or gtfo

Einstein and Higgs predicted phenomena that were tested years resp. decades after their publication. A theory is also a contribution to a field as long as it tested (not necessarily in the same publication). Even an observation to a field can be a contribution if it helps people generate new theories and then test them.

In their defence: building a particle accelerator is a harder and more costly task than watching people sleep.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#78
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also incredibly active compared to any "civilised" people. There's a lot of evidence that sedentary lifestyles are bad for bodies. Presumably they're also, on average, younger than "civilised" peoples. Life expectancy for an Amazonian Tribe was just 53 years. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/how-to-eat-like-an-amazo... Muscle and joint issues are a symptom of aging. If nobody's making it to 60, then aging…

This is probably because of child mortality etc. I.e. the conclusion that people there don't usually live past 60 seems like a fallacy.

That is part of it, but there would also be things like high mortality during childbirth, and lack of antibiotics there at that time.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#79
post #55
post #44

> Forest dwellers and nomads suffer fewer musculoskeletal lesions than “civilised” people > I tried to carry out surveys to collect evidence but they were meaningless, as tribespeople give you the answer they think you want. Could they simply have higher thresholds for complaining?

They're also incredibly active compared to any "civilised" people. There's a lot of evidence that sedentary lifestyles are bad for bodies. Presumably they're also, on average, younger than "civilised" peoples. Life expectancy for an Amazonian Tribe was just 53 years. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/how-to-eat-like-an-amazo... Muscle and joint issues are a symptom of aging. If nobody's making it to 60, then aging…

Reminder that "life expectancy" is a useless metric if you don't specify the base age. Life expectancy at birth, at 5 years, at 15 years?

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#80
post #59

I’m sure there are some great points in this paper but this bit of un-evidenced bit of speculation turned me off: > It has been noted that guide dogs working in towns breathe the same pollutants as humans yet do not have asthma. Could this be because when they lie on their chests the kickback from the upper ribs keeps the corresponding vertebrae mobile, allowing the sympathetic system to work efficiently? Or could it…

He lists his profession as a physiotherapist so probably crossed into the chiropractic side a bit, some of his personal photos are a little hippy-ish. The article is also premised on one large appeal to nature (tribal people untainted by modern society do it therefore it is natural and therefore good). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

Appeal to nature is bad as a source of ultimate truth, "nature does it this way therefore it must be better." But it's good as a source of hypotheses, "nature does it this way, perhaps we should try it?" This paper seems more like the second.
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