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Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

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Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#41

Post by TacticalCoder »

shykes wrote: post #2

Well, I'm screwed...

If it's of any help to you: if TFA is true, I should be dead already. I've got the absolute most fucked up sleep schedule. Thankfully I've got a lovely wife who accepted it (to be honest as it's been like that since I was 20 y/o, she knew...).

To me burning the midnight oil is my way of life.

In a past life, two decades plus ago, I used to write books: I'd write at night, when all is quiet. I'd go buy two or three warm "croissant" at 6:30am when the shop would open, then I'd go to bed.

And I love the hours later at night that then becomes early in the morning to get work done.

Because I'm such a night owl (not to party nor drink at all), I've got a different view on, for example, city life. Or rural area life. Things are different in the middle of the night.

Last night I had something that needed solving: went to bed at 8am.

My wife shall never ever take an appointment for me in the morning.

If it's of any comfort to you, I'm still fit and made it to 53 y/o so far and my doctor laughs at me when I go see him, saying I'm totally fine.

Anyhow seeing the old wreck my fater is at 78 y/o, I kinda came to peace with the notion that it's okay'ish if I don't make it that far.

Those with fucked up sleep schedules: you're not alone.

P.S: if I wasn't such a night owl, I'd never have met my wife... Long story but the butterfly effect: 25 years ago, coming back from my editor (who was also a night own) at something like 3am I decided to stop at a club knew but to which I'd never been, for there was some forms of life still awake too. There I met a girl, which became my girlfriend for a while. I kept in touch with her and through her I met a friend: a crazy dude. And through that crazy dude I met my wife. So had I not decided to stop at 3am at that club, I'd never have met my wife. So there's that.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#43

Post by aeonik »

hobofan wrote: post #31
estearum wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad example because yes it does make the car slow down.

I think the point is that while it does act as negative acceleration there isn't a causal relationship with the actual speed of the car, which is mainly related to how far the gas pedal is pressed.

Drag is a causitive input to speed though.

    nextCarSpeed(currentSpeed, wheelPower, dragForce, mass, deltaTime) =
    currentSpeed + ((wheelPower / currentSpeed - dragForce) / mass) * deltaTime
Increase "dragForce", and the resulting car speed decreases. That is a causal input, not an association.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#44

Post by Zababa »

acron0 wrote: post #3
shykes wrote: post #2

Well, I'm screwed...

My thought exactly. For people who struggle with this, and conventional wisdom doesn't seem to stick, what are we supposed to do?

Hard to answer precisely without knowing what conventional wisdom didn't stick.

The common levers I know and that worked at least a bit for me:

- start by having a fixed waking time, and get sunlight or bright light quickly after waking up. Normally relatively fixed sleep time is supposed to follow. For me waking up is the easy part, transforming that into getting up and going outside is harder. Another option here is a strong (like, really strong) lamp on a timer, or letting the morning light in your bedroom (this one is usually not recommended I think, most people seem to be blackout curtains style, but for me it gave me a nice 6am waking time with good sleep last summer).

- melatonin. Two main ways: using it as a kind of hypnotic, so ~30 minutes before sleep, experimenting with 0.3mg to ~2mg doses ; then using it as a circadian regulator, this is a good resource https://lorienpsych.com/2020/12/20/melatonin/, search for "TO TREAT" in the page.

- app timers, for me it was mostly no twitter and no youtube, or a very low time for each.

- light, ie reduc light before sleeping. Not just blue light and not just screens, if I'm on my phone in bed I'll reduce the luminosity a lot, same with computer, same with e-reader. I also try to avoid using too much the lights in my room. More light tend to make me feel more "wired" and less ready to sleep.

- "meditation" to cut rumination, by which I mean "lay down in my bed, gently try to find sensations in the body and to stay focused on them, by gently I mean it's a very low stakes game where the goal is to find sensations in the body and give them attention, but losing focus for a while is not a big deal".

- shower in the evening, as I don't like feeling dirty when I am in my bed, but also not just before bed as sometimes I don't really want to go take a shower and this delays my bedtime

- clean bedsheets, bedroom, stuff in/on your bed

- AC in the summer, I wouldn't be able to sleep properly without it

- sleeping mask. It helps going to sleep, but it falls of my head every night so it doesn't prevent waking up with light too.

- making getting good sleep the priority of the evening. This is easy/possible for me due to my circumstances (ie low responsibilities in the evening). The way I do it is that unless something is actually important, what I'm trying to accomplish in the evening is prepare myself for sleep and get good sleep. This can look like not starting a movie at 11pm, not booting up games, not eating a super heavy meal, not drinking too much water after 6pm to avoid waking up to pee, if I have things I want to do try to do them early so they're done earlier, move some stuff I want to do every day like spaced repetition in the morning.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#45

Post by sigmoid10 »

el1s7 wrote: post #42

Interesting, though it seems quite annoying to read research papers with all that jargon without using an LLM

Research papers are written to be read by other researchers, not laypeople. If you have no scientific background and want to read up on a topic that you are not familiar with, you'll have to find other sources of information.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#46

Post by pferde »

csomar wrote: post #13
shykes wrote: post #2

Well, I'm screwed...

Are you? Would be happy to die by 65-70 instead of struggling through 80s…

I'd rather live through my 80s without much struggling. Longevity and quality of life until the end. And I try to live in the way that lends itself towards that.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#47

Post by sammy2255 »

xrisk wrote: post #16
ssgodderidge wrote: post #11

Couldn’t this effect be classic cause vs correlation? Perhaps someone who has a consistent schedule is hypothetically more likely to make healthier choices on average?

tfa: "Results were adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, and sociodemographic, lifestyle, and health factors"

Did they explain how exactly they adjusted those results?

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#48

Post by malfist »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #20
elcritch wrote: post #5

Well that sucks, given I have a gene variant related to delayed sleep according to 23andme. Last year I did an experiment of sorts while unemployed for a time and found that if I just slept and woke when tired that my sleep time would naturally recess and eventually "flip" after about a month. My entire life I've wondered why I feel incredibly tired and found waking up so difficult. Turns out that if you follow your…

I've found my sleep regularity to be pretty malleable. It can become a habit. When I was in grad school I went to bed at midnight and woke up at 7am. Once I started running more in the mornings, I gradually shifted to going to sleep at 9pm and waking up at 5am. The first couple days or week will feel pretty bad, but if you give yourself enough time then you'll shift your sleep schedule around. Now I get tired at 8:30…

People are different. What you find easy and trainable, someone else will find it doesn't require training and someone else will try as hard as they can and won't succeed.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#49

Post by djoldman »

aeonik wrote: post #43
hobofan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that while it does act as negative acceleration there isn't a causal relationship with the actual speed of the car, which is mainly related to how far the gas pedal is pressed.

Drag is a causitive input to speed though. nextCarSpeed(currentSpeed, wheelPower, dragForce, mass, deltaTime) = currentSpeed + ((wheelPower / currentSpeed - dragForce) / mass) * deltaTime Increase "dragForce", and the resulting car speed decreases. That is a causal input, not an association.

Initially I assumed it to be negligible but the numbers are actually very close!

I calculate around a 3% drop in speed (from 60mpg) for holding an average sized book out of the window. That's surprising to me.

It's not quite right to use hazard ratios to calculate life expectancy. But if we force it, it looks like being in the top 20% of "regular" sleepers compared to the bottom 20% confers 3-4.5 years of extra life (from birth, assuming everything else equal, assuming USA, etc.). That's 3.8%-5.7% more life (79 year life expectancy at birth in the USA as of 2025). So the numbers are actually close.

I made a bad analogy :)

But you get my point!

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration (2023)

#50

Post by nickjj »

markus_zhang wrote: post #40

I kinda realize that the most important factor for personal success (whatever kind of success you want) is mental stability. Like, John Carmack said that he NEVER burned out, never went into a dark corner (verbatim from his interview), and everyone agrees that he works like a machine. And I don't think he actually spent a lot of mental training to achieve that stability, because, he has been like that from a young ag…

Carmack always seemed to have a really strong idea on what was important for him to work on. How much of that is mental toughness vs having a believable purpose?

Believable is important because you have to internally 100% without a doubt believe that what you're doing is the right thing to be doing now.

As soon as the "what ifs" starts to creep in for the big picture items or goals, that can destroy everything. I'm not talking about running into technical implementation problems along the way (those can be fun), it's more like "did I pick the right language for this?" level of questions that sit in the back of your mind.

Personally when I find something to work on that I like and will have what I think is a favorable outcome, it's easy to put in 8-10 real 100% laser focused hours into a task every day, even if it spans weeks or months. I'd like to think most people can do this too, the hard part (for me at least) is having these things to work on.

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