Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

massgeneralbrigham.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 93 posts

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#41

Post by ckdarby »

jghn wrote: post #38
AstroNutt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, melatonin makes me feel like crap after a few days of use and it's hit or miss. One thing I've done for years is focus on breathing. Get in a comfortable position and totally relax your body. Slowly take a deep breath. Then exhale until you can't no more. Repeat this 10 or 15 times. For whatever reason, this works for me probably 75% of the time. The other 25%, forget it. On a side note, I'm sure most of us her…

Have you tried smaller doses of melatonin? Can be hard to do as the smallest dosage I usually see at stores is still much higher than what I’ve found to be my max dose

Was going to reply the same thing.

I buy 1 mg tablets and even that is too much for me. I use a razor blade to cut them into 1/6th pieces.

Takes less than 30 minutes to kick in.

A lot of other comments here about poor sleep I believe are the result of drinking caffeinated products past 1 PM.

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#42

Post by jonahrd »

webnrrd2k wrote: post #39

Taking melatonin has been mentioned several times in different threads here, and I just wanted to add my experience... I find that taking the minimal amount make a big difference here, and it's about 3 micro-grams (not milli-grams) for me. The trick is to get some liquid melatonin drops. There is a brand that has 3 milligrams per 30 drops as a recommended dosage, so I just take 3 or so drops and let them dissolve on…

That would be 300 micrograms

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#43

Post by warp »

v7engine wrote: post #21
submeta wrote: post #17

Tangential: Have had sleep disorders my whole life. Until I read an article here about melatonin (an article that was about substances that have an effect on longevity). So I started taking melatonin every night, 0.5mg. I must say: Never had this kind of deep sleep. Over such a long period of weeks (since I started taking it). My Garmin watch has a sleep tracker. And it confirms that I get way more deep sleep.

I am considering taking melatonin supplements. Could you recommend any? I wake up several times in the night.

My understanding is that melatonin helps you fall asleep, but doesn't help you stay asleep.

In general, I have no trouble falling asleep, but I typically wake up once or twice at night and am usually unable to sleep more than 5.5 hours. I've tried 3mg Melatonin tablets in Ecuador, and I've tried a couple of different brands of 10mg time-release Melatonin gummies from the US. None of them had any noticeable effect on me.

The only thing that has worked so far, is physical activity. We just moved to Europe, and the first two weeks was a lot of buying and building furniture, slept great those two weeks. Now that I'm back to my normal office worker life, my sleep has also gone back to not being great.

(I track my sleep using the AutoSleep app on iOS, wearing an Apple Watch at night)

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#44

Post by mallomarmeasle »

webnrrd2k wrote: post #39

Taking melatonin has been mentioned several times in different threads here, and I just wanted to add my experience... I find that taking the minimal amount make a big difference here, and it's about 3 micro-grams (not milli-grams) for me. The trick is to get some liquid melatonin drops. There is a brand that has 3 milligrams per 30 drops as a recommended dosage, so I just take 3 or so drops and let them dissolve on…

As pointed out above me, 250-300 micrograms is what you likely meant. You might have to hunt for such low doses. I split a 1 mg tab in quarters. Repeated studies have shown that there is not an increase in efficacy, but there is an increase in adverse effects when doses are higher. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#45

Post by dpeckett »

I'm pretty sure at this point I have familial advanced sleep phase syndrome of an unknown genetic etiology [1].

Wake up stupid early in the morning, get drowsy very early in the evenings etc. For a long time due to social pressure/habit I'd just power through the evening drowsiness. That lead to me only being able to sleep six hours or so (due to waking up stupid early), which over time lead to a substantial sleep debt.

Going to bed early helps a lot, but over time it seems like I easily start drifting earlier and earlier. I've recently had some success stabilizing my rhythm using sublingual melatonin when I first waken at 2-3am. Let's me get a couple extra hours of additional quality sleep which is a lifesaver. Wears off quick enough that by 9am or so it's basically out of my system.

I've actually been tinkering/hacking the last year or so on sleep tracking wearables. Initially focused on EEG/HRV monitoring but I'm taking a very modular approach and ultimately want to build a full set of sensors/effectors/etc.

I've recently been experimenting a lot with skin temperature gradients, turns out in the lead up to sleep it's not just blood flow in the brain that is altered [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_sleep_phase_disorder#...

2. https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/ajpregu.2000...

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#46

Post by thunderbong »

Melatonin has helped, of course. But a few other steps I had read on a Reddit thread [0] also helped me - specifically the point about relaxing facial muscles. For some reason, doing this also seems to calm the mind and reduce random thoughts.

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/sleep/comments/1bn2emp/how_do_yall_...

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#47

Post by fasteo »

elric wrote: post #30
submeta wrote: post #17

Tangential: Have had sleep disorders my whole life. Until I read an article here about melatonin (an article that was about substances that have an effect on longevity). So I started taking melatonin every night, 0.5mg. I must say: Never had this kind of deep sleep. Over such a long period of weeks (since I started taking it). My Garmin watch has a sleep tracker. And it confirms that I get way more deep sleep.

Two things: 1. Too much deep sleep might not be desirable. 2. Sleep staging by activity trackers is generally pretty inaccurate. Garmin is no exception.

Could you please elaborate on 1. ?

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#48

Post by dpeckett »

warp wrote: post #43
v7engine wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am considering taking melatonin supplements. Could you recommend any? I wake up several times in the night.

My understanding is that melatonin helps you fall asleep, but doesn't help you stay asleep. In general, I have no trouble falling asleep, but I typically wake up once or twice at night and am usually unable to sleep more than 5.5 hours. I've tried 3mg Melatonin tablets in Ecuador, and I've tried a couple of different brands of 10mg time-release Melatonin gummies from the US. None of them had any noticeable effect on…

Melatonin has a short half life (~1h), that's why melatonin receptor agonists [1] are a thing. So just mechanistically it's unlikely to help with sleep maintenance.

Do you wake up after 5.5h at a consistent time of the day and the first half of the night is peaceful? If you fall back asleep do you then wake again shortly after?

I mean waking in the night can be many things (apnea, etc), but you could very well have a rather advanced sleep phase.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin_receptor_agonist

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#49

Post by elric »

fasteo wrote: post #47
elric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things: 1. Too much deep sleep might not be desirable. 2. Sleep staging by activity trackers is generally pretty inaccurate. Garmin is no exception.

Could you please elaborate on 1. ?

Different processes happen during different sleep stages. Typically people go from light sleep to deeper sleep stages (slow wave), to REM in a cyclical pattern. We go through each of the stages roughly every 90 minutes of "quality sleep". There's usually more deep sleep at the start of the night, and more REM towards the end of the night.

If you end up with too much deep sleep (e.g. after being very physically exhausted for a while), you will have little or no REM sleep and your sleep quality will suffer.

It's not just "too much deep sleep" that could fuck things up, being woken up multiple times can also mess up your sleep cycle, whether it's by crying children or sleep apnea.

Re: How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep

#50

Post by nervousvarun »

amaccuish wrote: post #31
nervousvarun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI it's unlikely you will eventually develop a tolerance, but it's important to not increase dosage: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-mi...

The linked article doesn't mention tolerance at all? I don't believe there is any evidence out there to suggest that melatonin tolerance is a thing.

You're right! Edited the post...thanks for pointing this out was actually a mistake on my part the article was about incorrect dosage which was the point I wanted to make.
Post reply on HN