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Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)

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Re: Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)

#41

Post by ogreveins »

globuous wrote: post #13
otherusername2 wrote: post #5

I once, involuntary, went without sleep for around 72 hours. I was at a music festival and we were either pulling through the night or I couldn't sleep because of the noise. When the time came to go home, I really felt pretty good. At that time I had been awake for around 60 hours. My body was tired and my thinking was a bit sluggish, but nothing too bad... Until I got home and tried to sleep. By then I was feeling d…

That's a crazy story, I could never imagine myself not sleeping for 72 hours!! When I mess up my sleeping schedule pretty bad (which happened a lot back in college), I usually do sleep paralysis when falling asleep (as opposed to when waking up). And I can do it 6 or 7 times in a row, it's a nightmare. Usually though, I realize what's going on (it's happened to me so. many. times.) after the second or third 'paralysi…

Ah I get that too. I figured out why sleep paralysis happens and here's how to fix it. When you sleep on your back your pillow is compressing your brain stem at the base of your skull. Get the pillow further up on your head so as much as possible it doesn't touch your neck or the fleshy part just below the back of your skull. It'll feel a bit different (weird?) but you should be able to sleep without issue.

Tell as many people as you can after you see for yourself.

edit: As an additional tip, the way I get out of the paralysis is by trying to rock my body as if I'm building up momentum to jump or at least jerk a limb. Once I twitch a limb it feels easy enough to break everything else out. That rocking feeling is probably imaginary so I don't know how transferable the technique is to other people.

Re: Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)

#43

Post by tedks »

perfTerm wrote: post #32
nicboobees wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if you sleep well, and live 25% longer, that 25% will be when you're old, senile, and unable to do anything useful. Studies about sleep are often just crazy. When did people stop using their common sense? Just have as much sleep as you think works for you.

Has every old person you've ever met been old, senile, and unable to do anything useful? My Grandma walked to the supermarket the morning of the night she passed and was totally lucid for the entirety of her years.

I'm sorry to hear that your grandmother passed. How did her startup take the loss?

Re: Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)

#44

Post by ojbyrne »

nicboobees wrote: post #18
wargaarbl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that extra time spent sleeping is time spent not being awake to do things. So the overall number of useful hours is the same either way?

Also if you sleep well, and live 25% longer, that 25% will be when you're old, senile, and unable to do anything useful. Studies about sleep are often just crazy. When did people stop using their common sense? Just have as much sleep as you think works for you.

Or perhaps the point where you become "old, senile and unable to do anything useful" will also happen later?

Re: Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)

#45

Post by dreamcompiler »

alexholehouse wrote: post #17

One angle not touched on here is the link between Alzheimer's disease (AD) and sleep. There has always been evidence that AD patients sleep less than the general population, but obviously there's a chicken and egg problem here - are they sleeping less because of neuronal disruption caused by the disease, or is the disease progression catalyzed by a lack of sleep[1-3]? While I think this is still an open question, the…

Thanks for putting these links together. It's beginning to look like sleep is the brain's garbage collector.

Re: Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)

#46

Post by marincounty »

otherusername2 wrote: post #5

I once, involuntary, went without sleep for around 72 hours. I was at a music festival and we were either pulling through the night or I couldn't sleep because of the noise. When the time came to go home, I really felt pretty good. At that time I had been awake for around 60 hours. My body was tired and my thinking was a bit sluggish, but nothing too bad... Until I got home and tried to sleep. By then I was feeling d…

I have panic attacks too. How do you deal with them?

Re: Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)

#47

Post by perfTerm »

tedks wrote: post #43
perfTerm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has every old person you've ever met been old, senile, and unable to do anything useful? My Grandma walked to the supermarket the morning of the night she passed and was totally lucid for the entirety of her years.

I'm sorry to hear that your grandmother passed. How did her startup take the loss?

Hahaha I don't usually laugh at jokes about Grandma's passing but that got a good chuckle out of me.

Re: Getting too little sleep can have serious health consequences (2013)

#49

Post by nsgi »

leni536 wrote: post #10
wargaarbl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that extra time spent sleeping is time spent not being awake to do things. So the overall number of useful hours is the same either way?

Let's assume you spend 30% of your time sleeping (7.2 hours a day), and your expected lifetime to be T. Then your "useful time" is 0.7T. So you decide to sleep 25% more (9 hours), so you sleep through 37,5% of a day and your life expectancy is now T'=1.25T, so your useful time is 0.625T'=0.625 x 1.25T=0.781T. Your useful time grown around 12%. Note that if you take your working hours into account and you are only int…

But on the other hand, getting less sleep gives you more time when you're young.
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