Live data from Hacker News

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

academic.oup.com

91–100 of 427 posts

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

#91
post #82

Magnesium supplementation solved my sleep issues. I have seen many doctors, including sleep specialists, regarding insomnia. They all pointed to one source as the reason for the sleep issues: stress. And they all wanted to put me on prescription sleeping pills. I said no to that. Sleeping pills can cause dependence, and they often treat the symptom rather than the underlying cause. As a software developer, I am used…

Magnesium is a great supplement in general. You can definitely have too much in your system and that is undesirable, but a bit before bed time along with 1-3mcg of melatonin work well for me. It is nice after workouts. I use magnesium glycinate in powder form, which is more bioavailable than some forms as well.

I also find sauna before bed is good. I have a bed chiller so I can crank up the sauna before bed and not sweat a lot. Generally if I sauna and take the aforementioned supplements I sleep well. Exercise also seems to help me out a lot. If I exercise during the day, and a 4-5 times that week in general, I tend to sleep well.

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

#92
post #79

Having just spent a few months reading circadian entrainment papers for a circadian rhythm app I just finished,[1] I wonder if this effect might be about circadian amplitude[2] (rather than phase, which has gotten more attention). [1] https://www.impulsearc.com/wavelength/ [2] e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41540-023-00300-w

Also just the general timezone stuff, genetics ~ I've moved from the right end of a timezone to the left end, it's been killing me.

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

#93
post #21

I wonder how much of this is driven by confounding variables they haven't accounted for. They do factor in shift work as a categorical variable, and employment status as a categorical variable not taking into account occupation. But probably occupation (not a variable here) interacts with sleep status. Any job that involves a lot of flying (pilot, crew, people travelling for business) get more cosmic radiation exposu…

usually these studies are done across a very narrow sample of Earth's population. often from similar region or country etc. Which dont get me wrong, is a lot of stuff to process for such a study, but the number is statistically insignificant. many more similar studies would need to show identical results.

this one selected about 100k people from a dataset of around 500k. All from one country/region (UK)

furthermore they dont measure sleep but they estimate if someone was maybe asleep based data from an accelerometer. so they cannot measure what sleep state someone acheived or if they were actually really sleep or just u know staring at the ceiling in an existential crisis....

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

#94
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you cut out all caffeine?

> conventional wisdom doesn't seem to stick

I’m asking a question to determine his view of “conventional wisdom,” which could be all kinds of things. Why would you assume that his view of “conventional wisdom” necessarily includes cutting all caffeine?

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

#95
post #82

Magnesium supplementation solved my sleep issues. I have seen many doctors, including sleep specialists, regarding insomnia. They all pointed to one source as the reason for the sleep issues: stress. And they all wanted to put me on prescription sleeping pills. I said no to that. Sleeping pills can cause dependence, and they often treat the symptom rather than the underlying cause. As a software developer, I am used…

> Sleeping pills can cause dependence, and they often treat the symptom rather than the underlying cause.

I found gwern's take on Melatonin interesting: https://gwern.net/melatonin

A small excerpt:

> One might object that they do not wish to tamper with their natural sleep, even if melatonin is a normally-secreted hormone.

> Sad to say, I would point out to such readers that they are already profoundly tampering with their natural sleep cycle, and indeed, all of Western civilization is tampering with it; most of my readers do not even sleep multiple times during the day, as ‘Nature intends’ and as humans have usually slept through history, but rather in a single 7–9 hour long block.

> [...]

> Finally, there are multiple lines of research suggesting chronic sleep deprivation is prevalent among young adults (including historical comparisons). It is striking that unemployed adults sleep a full hour longer than the employed , and that when normal adults are placed in settings without artificial light like camping or without any time indicators, they sleep longer than before - exactly as if they were sleep deprived.

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

#96
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what color is that bike shed ??? /s

Right??? The HN pissing contest...

Sorry but it's counterproductive to people's understanding of the causation vs correlation distinction to provide an example of the former and call it the latter.

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

#97
post #16

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"

What I wonder is even if they did the perfect adjustments, what would have been driver for different sleep regularity.

E.g. considering some common causes like work stress - if they did the causation and compared people who did the same type of work, and they controlled for stress levels then why did one group of people have sleeping regularity issues more than compared to others?

Like there has to be some other driver then that they didn't control for, as in personality, environmental or physical difference?

Most people do want to have healthy sleep, the ones who don't usually have something causing those issues.

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

#98
post #82

Magnesium supplementation solved my sleep issues. I have seen many doctors, including sleep specialists, regarding insomnia. They all pointed to one source as the reason for the sleep issues: stress. And they all wanted to put me on prescription sleeping pills. I said no to that. Sleeping pills can cause dependence, and they often treat the symptom rather than the underlying cause. As a software developer, I am used…

Don't eat pills. Fix your diet.

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

#99
post #82

Magnesium supplementation solved my sleep issues. I have seen many doctors, including sleep specialists, regarding insomnia. They all pointed to one source as the reason for the sleep issues: stress. And they all wanted to put me on prescription sleeping pills. I said no to that. Sleeping pills can cause dependence, and they often treat the symptom rather than the underlying cause. As a software developer, I am used…

Did you take a blood test for magnesium level?
Post reply on HN