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The big lie about sleep

businessinsider.com

11–20 of 76 posts

Re: The big lie about sleep

#11
post #7

Ok, I read the article. But I still don't know what the big lie is.

I think the big lie is that wellness companies, doctors, and sleep widget salespeople claim that you can improve your sleep with blackout curtains, less screen time, exercise, fancy tech, and a host of other strategies. But this article is saying that being healthier and richer improve your sleep more dramatically, and those are things that are not directly in your control.

> that being healthier and richer improve your sleep

Either that or, apparently, living in Nebraska or Minnesota

Re: The big lie about sleep

#12
post #7

Ok, I read the article. But I still don't know what the big lie is.

I think the big lie is that wellness companies, doctors, and sleep widget salespeople claim that you can improve your sleep with blackout curtains, less screen time, exercise, fancy tech, and a host of other strategies. But this article is saying that being healthier and richer improve your sleep more dramatically, and those are things that are not directly in your control.

I still don’t see any lie. You can have demography bias you for results and also take action for results, these aren’t mutually exclusive.

Re: The big lie about sleep

#13

I keep telling my kids that a vastly overlooked trick to success is going to bed earlier and getting more sleep. That and gratitude (which is why our family has evening rituals around this).

It was so hard for me to actually do that as a kid. You basically wake up, off to school, off to extracurricular, off to dinner, off to homework, and off to bed if you want a chance at 8 hours of sleep. Five days a week of that and your parents probably fill up your weekends for you. Oh and I worked in high school so that was shoehorned in somehow.

Staying up late cutting into sleep time was the only time of day I actually had any agency. College in contrast was amazing for sleep. No one pestering me out of rem because I was allowed to sleep in until my body said I had enough for the first time in my life. Even now after college I rarely get the luxury to sleep in anymore, and I mean really sleep in like until almost noon.

Re: The big lie about sleep

#15
post #2

> On the other end of the spectrum is Boulder County, Colorado, which you might call the sleep capital of America That city is famous for attracting a bunch of people who love hiking and climbing mountains. It isn't a good example here, it is just full of young people who love to exercise, of course they are healthier! Just having an average age of 28.5 years have a dramatic impact on sleep statistics! There are many…

>It isn't a good example here, it is just full of young people who love to exercise, of course they are healthier! Same how some Eastern European countries like Czechia top alcohol consumption per capita charts, when the numbers are pushed up by tourists going there to get shitfaced. Touristic cities that attract a lot of people for one thing or the other should just be excluded from some statistics.

What's the math here? Austria gets 2-3 times as many tourists per capita, but consumes 20% less. Tourists spent 56 million nights in Czechia in 2023, while the 10 million residents presumably spend a bit less than 365 nights in the country: how big of an impact could there be?

I can see how the argument would apply to certain cities or resort regions, i.e. I bet Palma de Mallorca has a much higher daily consumption during the summer season than in the winter.

Re: The big lie about sleep

#16
>Big, structural changes such as better access to affordable healthcare, expanding income-support programs like the child tax credit, and implementing mental-health programs in schools would go a long way to ending the sleep-deprivation doom loop.

Citation needed.

All of these exist in some places and don't in others, in varying degrees, so in theory a study should be able to look at the effects.

Re: The big lie about sleep

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the big lie is that wellness companies, doctors, and sleep widget salespeople claim that you can improve your sleep with blackout curtains, less screen time, exercise, fancy tech, and a host of other strategies. But this article is saying that being healthier and richer improve your sleep more dramatically, and those are things that are not directly in your control.

> that being healthier and richer improve your sleep Either that or, apparently, living in Nebraska or Minnesota

It's not a very good article and I don't agree with it.

If it was entirely wealth-based, the map should correlate to this map of counties ranked by personal income, but there are clearly differences:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_counties...

Re: The big lie about sleep

#18
post #5

Please the lie is probably to sleep how someone else tells you to so you can be a part of society.

Exactly. You are incentivized by societies structures not to sleep in or stay up late because we maximized business activity around the 9-5 paradigm.

Re: The big lie about sleep

#19
post #3

I like that they let you subscribe with Apple Pay, but I wish I could just pay $0.50 for the one article. I would pay. It’d be much less friction than either finding a proxy to read it for free, or subscribing properly and the dealing with the unsubscribe process which can be very difficult.

I really think the major credit card companies missed a tremendous opportunity by not figuring out micropayments. They have the infrastructure to be the ones to figure this out, but they didn't.

Re: The big lie about sleep

#20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It isn't a good example here, it is just full of young people who love to exercise, of course they are healthier! Same how some Eastern European countries like Czechia top alcohol consumption per capita charts, when the numbers are pushed up by tourists going there to get shitfaced. Touristic cities that attract a lot of people for one thing or the other should just be excluded from some statistics.

What's the math here? Austria gets 2-3 times as many tourists per capita, but consumes 20% less. Tourists spent 56 million nights in Czechia in 2023, while the 10 million residents presumably spend a bit less than 365 nights in the country: how big of an impact could there be? I can see how the argument would apply to certain cities or resort regions, i.e. I bet Palma de Mallorca has a much higher daily consumption d…

No one is going to Vienna for a stag party, so tourists per capita may not tell the whole story.
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