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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)

#301

Post by codedokode »

Could it be that irregular sleeping is caused by inner clock being off due to genetic errors, and genetic errors are the main cause of mortality? I.e. irregular sleep is not the cause but the indicator?

Or irregular sleep corresponds to bad habits like drinking and using drugs and they are the cause of mortality?

Or, could it be that problems with sleep are caused by using alarm clocks, i.e. not waking up naturally but forcefully at unnatural time? Waking up at the same time every day benefits people whose inner clock has 24h period and disadvantage people with clock tuned to 23h or 25h day.

Or I am wrong?

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

#302

Post by timbaboon »

myroon5 wrote: post #272
timbaboon wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh for sure. It's a carrot-type program though. So you don't get any penalties for not doing something, but you get rewards for doing things.

Discounting from higher default prices rather than penalizing from lower default prices is more of a branding difference than an economic difference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952034

Yeah but in South Africa medical aid rates are regulated by the government and all companies have to stick with that rate. The idea is that if you keep your customers healthy then there are fewer claims.

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

#303

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

tmule wrote: post #279
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they didn't. A control group inherently implies the researchers made an intervention in the first place (or else there was a "natural experiment" where people were randomly placed in group or another). That didn't happen here, as this was purely an observational study.

Observational studies can have synthetic controls. The term, as such, doesn’t mean precisely what you think it means.

I understand that. But saying "they had a control" in any case implies an "intervention" group of some sort, whether synthetic or natural, and this is very different from saying "they controlled for other factors", which is what they did in this study.

The study authors aren't even purporting to show a casual relationship (i.e. that improving sleep would necessarily reduce mortality), just that irregular sleep predicts mortality.

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

#304

Post by port11 »

shiftingleft wrote: post #95
petilon wrote: 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…

Eh, I was prescribed 2mg of slow-release melatonin to help with insomnia (baby-related).

Man, were these the worst nights of my life! I’d get 2-3 hours of shut-eye and then be FULLY awake. Ready to go, couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. I was dead tired by day 7 and gave up.

Tried 0.3mg. Tried 5mg. Nope. There’s some evidence that melatonin can mess you up if you’re sensitive to cortisol/have too much of it. I’m not touching it again. No side effects? Sure.

N=1, but if it’s not working for you, don’t push it. My doctor instead prescribed a bit of therapy (CBT-i) and my sleep went back to normal after a couple of sessions.

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

#305

Post by running101 »

petilon wrote: 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…

Which form do you take? Have you tried different forms?

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

#306

Post by gib444 »

petilon wrote: post #300
jorblumesea wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you talk about treating the root cause, and take magnesium, instead of addressing the workplace stress factor.

You are absolutely right about that. It is important to reduce stress. Insomnia is only one of the ways excessive stress shows up.

> You are absolutely right about that

Not helping the 'AI ad' claims lol

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

#307

Post by kulahan »

nialv7 wrote: post #176
A1kmm wrote: 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…

If you did read the paper, you'd have noticed that people who slept more regularly in this research were also wealthier, and more physically active. They did say they adjusted for these variables, but who knows. Maybe they didn't adjust them enough, maybe there are more covariates they didn't consider.

I guess it just seems extremely obvious to me that people who live a predictable-enough life to sleep and wake at the same time every day are less likely to face mortality than people with schedules so chaotic they sleep at different times regularly. It’s still good science to do, but without a solid cause or two, I don’t think anything helpful is actually being revealed by this study, at least from a layman’s perspective.

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

#308

Post by Aurornis »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #287
Aurornis wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment above just said “sleeping pills” which is ambiguous. Melatonin is an OTC supplement. True “sleeping pills” are usually controlled substances and few doctors would prescribe them as first-line options for a patient who shows up with first time complaints of sleep problems. They won’t be prescribed long-term either. The part of the post that says doctors (plural) tried to prescribe the pills makes me think…

> They won’t be prescribed long-term either. Tramadol is routinely prescribed long term where I live. I know someone with a massive bottle good for something like 6 to 12 months of daily use. (I don't know if that's a good thing but it is certainly a thing.)

Tramadol is a pain medication, not a sleep medication.

It has opioid effects and can cause drowsiness but would never be prescribed for sleep.

It’s also typically a controlled substance. I don’t know where you live but I’d be surprised if anyone was handed a 12 month supply in a bottle.

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

#309

Post by jr3592 »

shiftingleft wrote: post #95
petilon wrote: 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…

I find it impossible not to reflect on my personal experience whenever this comes up. I spend 8+ hours a day on a computer, looking at screens. Probably more. I am looking at a screen literally 10 minutes before falling asleep (watching stuff on my iPad).

I can easily sleep 8+ hours. Today slept 10.5.

I'm either not convinced screens are an issue, or they simply are not an issue for me personally, but if thats true -- WHY?

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

#310

Post by el1s7 »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #45
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.

Sure, by "other researchers" you mean other people who learned jargon terminology.

And why would someone need to have a scientific background to read about sleep regularity and how it affects mortality?

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