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Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

nature.com

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Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#51

Post by dodongobongo »

Damogran6 wrote: post #44
trollbridge wrote: post #5

Some people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.

I sleep 5-6 hours a night. I also seem to be bi-phasic...on the weekends if I wake up after 5 hours, hang around for an hour and successfully go back to sleep, the second cycle is the sleep of the dead. Like, I don't move. Wake up with limbs fallen asleep, a deep divot in the memory foam...and a lot more rested. (as an aside: have CPAP, apnea is not a factor.)

iirc, biphasic sleep is the “usual way” people sleep without the advent of electricity, yes? “the waking hour”, and all that.

I wonder if there was an increase in dementia-related disorders once lightbulbs kept people up longer.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#52

Post by genter »

EncomLab wrote: post #20

The generations in my family are full of people who had dementia/Alzheimer's/auto-immune disorders. They all had anxiety, and they all had sleep disorders - I'm certain there is a connection among it all. I joined a Stanford study and had a spinal tap sample submitted for testing - in theory I am "unlikely" to develop anything for the next 20 years - but that only gets me to my late 60's :(

Same, except we also have digestive issues. I'm really hoping a paleo diet and good probiotics will save me. It's already helped me a lot. I'll let you know in 40 years if it prevents me from getting Alzheimer's.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#53

Post by magneticnorth »

shlant wrote: post #37
trollbridge wrote: post #5

Some people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.

> with no deleterious health effects Is that actually the case? do we have long term data on these people? or are we just going off of "I feel fine on 5 hours of sleep" stories? Or are you only referring to day to day health effects?

It's a fairly well studied phenomenon known as short sleeper syndrome.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-id...

There are no known health problems caused by this syndrome, according to a Cleveland Clinic overview page: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/short-sleeper...

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#54

Post by delichon »

Damogran6 wrote: post #44
trollbridge wrote: post #5

Some people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.

I sleep 5-6 hours a night. I also seem to be bi-phasic...on the weekends if I wake up after 5 hours, hang around for an hour and successfully go back to sleep, the second cycle is the sleep of the dead. Like, I don't move. Wake up with limbs fallen asleep, a deep divot in the memory foam...and a lot more rested. (as an aside: have CPAP, apnea is not a factor.)

A CPAP had a severe negative effect on my sleep even after two years of getting used to it. I had severe apnea measured in a sleep study, but even so I've done better without it.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#56

Post by NoTeslaThrow »

magneticnorth wrote: post #53
shlant wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with no deleterious health effects Is that actually the case? do we have long term data on these people? or are we just going off of "I feel fine on 5 hours of sleep" stories? Or are you only referring to day to day health effects?

It's a fairly well studied phenomenon known as short sleeper syndrome. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-id... There are no known health problems caused by this syndrome, according to a Cleveland Clinic overview page: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/short-sleeper...

> There are no known health problems caused by this syndrome

Presumably they mean there's no evidence of this syndrome causing health issues (presumably the "known" part is redundant). Trying to position a causal hypothesis as a matter-of-fact-finding is crazy.

EDIT: that article is insanely poorly written and even worse cited. How are these websites giving super-sketchy medical advice even legal. There's no author to hold accountable, no way to remediate the quality of the article, no sources cited, and it's making statements that wouldn't hold up in a court of law.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#57

Post by ericmcer »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #22
trollbridge wrote: post #5

Some people seem to need a lot less sleep than others with no deleterious health effects. It would be very interesting to find out why.

My wife needs 8-9 hours, whereas I can get by just fine with 5-6. She is a very light sleeper who will wake up 3-4 times every night; I can sleep through almost any noise, and never get up in the middle of the night. My son takes after me -- he seems to need significantly less sleep than other kids his age, but he's an extraordinarily deep sleeper. Anecdotal, but I think that sleep depth might have something to do wi…

Anecdotal also but I sometimes sleep alone in my office (have a futon) where it is very quiet. I usually feel fully rested after 6 hours in there versus 8 hours in bed with wife, dog and the cat occasionally coming through.

I wish culturally it was standard for houses to have something like `sleep` rooms that are optimized for that purpose.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#58

Post by hombre_fatal »

parpfish wrote: post #9
1970-01-01 wrote: post #4

I'm not a neuroscientist, but it's hard to understand why anyone thinks that this mandatory downtime for all animals is just for a special reason. Why wouldn't sleeping be a catch-all window for autonomous maintenance and overall survival? Always take the most likely reason.

Isn’t that the crux of the question? Figuring out what all the maintenance stuff our bodies need to do every night and how it works seems useful

And whether we can recreate it without sleep.

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#59

Post by cut3 »

sparsely wrote: post #41
esafak wrote: post #25

So you can concentrate your energy on maintenance tasks, like memory consolidation and physical restoration, during the down time during which it is cold and dark -- when you can't effectively hunt and stay warm. If you did not do that, you would have to constantly allocate some energy towards these tasks, at the expense of more urgent ones. And the higher up you are in the food chain, the less risky it is to rest.

Which maintenance tasks, why does it require us to be unconscious, why can't we apply constant energy towards them? Lots of interesting questions to answer

Mental and physical body process refactoring is my guess

Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why

#60

Post by bregma »

parpfish wrote: post #14
moate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was also a mistake calling it "AI".

Should’ve just gone with calling it Al. Seems friendly and you’ll mistake it for actual AI until you look closer

You can call it Betty.
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