I have just read this book and found it very interesting and helpful: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-...
fwiw, I found the 'the sleep fix' much more helpful
Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
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Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#112Tangentially related, but very important to me and hopefully helpful to others here: I have sleep apnea. So do most of the men in my family. Though I am overweight, I haven't always been, but I have always had the condition, as have they. For those who don't know, sleep apnea is a condition where you stop breathing in your sleep, wake up slightly to fix that and start breathing again, and then fall back asleep. It sounds like choking in your sleep. In my case, I was doing this more than 70 times an hour - often multiple times a minute! My blood oxygen was as low as 67% - a threshold that would have me on a ventilator, were it happening in a hospital.
Until I got my apnea treated, I never slept well. I had not had a really good night's sleep in years, and I hadn't had a great night's sleep as an adult probably ever. In school - decades ago - I fell asleep in class regularly and napped every day. Despite this, I have been successful, but I can't help but wonder who I'd be if I hadn't had that problem. What's worse, because you do not actually sleep, whatever happens during sleep that repairs your body doesn't really happen. Sleep apnea massively increases your risk for heart disease, stroke, and many other serious conditions.
Sleep apnea is treated with CPAP - continuous positive airway pressure - from a machine that sits on your bedside. You wear a mask like Bane and it forces air into your throat and opens it, making it easier to breathe. CPAP is not a cure, because it doesn't fix the underlying anatomical issue, but properly calibrated it results in complete remission. I now sleep normally. From a sleep perspective, I feel amazing, better than I have in years. For the first time in my life, I can rely on feeling good in the morning if I get enough hours of sleep in. Even four hours on the CPAP is better than eight or nine hours without it. (Also, over time, your brain becomes conditioned that CPAP = sleep, and you zonk out within minutes of putting it on.)
It is costly and time consuming, yes, and CPAP machines are a huge lifestyle adjustment. But good lord, is it worth it. I have never felt or slept better. In the years since my diagnosis I have not slept a single night without my CPAP and I don't think I ever will again, unless some magical cure comes out.
If you have struggled with insomnia, snoring, or feeling wakeful after sleep, I beg you to get a sleep study and look into whether apnea, or another similar condition, could be the cause.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've found, being overweight negatively affects sleep. As far as I can tell, the extra weight simply makes it hard to breathe at night, leading to apnea. This can then cause depression and anxiety, depression because you wake up tired and feeling awful every single day and anxiety because you may wake up with night terrors after suffocating in your sleep. At least it's easy to get a home sleep apnea test an…
Easy to get, hard to get used to for many. It’s common for doctors to offer little to no support after prescribing the machine.
How would support look like in this situation? Honest question I simply don't know
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#114Whatever sleep does, it's something nature has had a tough time optimizing out despite the extreme vulnerability it creates and the sacrifice of a little under half an organism's waking time. That should tell us it's something incredibly important that's hard to do any other way. Edit: on the other hand... if Earth had two suns and rarely had periods of darkness, you wonder if maybe there would have been more evoluti…
> if Earth had two suns and rarely had periods of darkness, you wonder if maybe there would have been more evolutionary pressure to find another way.
Cats sleep during the day without any issues. So the amount of light seems to not matter.
By the way I wonder do their ear sleep or not because they still wake up easily if there is some suspicious sound.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same, except we also have digestive issues. I'm really hoping a paleo diet and good probiotics will save me. It's already helped me a lot. I'll let you know in 40 years if it prevents me from getting Alzheimer's.
If you’re supplementing probiotics, there is some research about inulin to talk through with your doctor. There’s a chance that inulin is carcinogenic even at lower doses. A lower dosage might be 4g and a typical probiotic is 200g. Reasons to be wary of this research, including: -The rodent-to-human study element -causation v correlation -sample size Reasons to take this research seriously: -Probiotic supplements are…
This is a strange comment, inulin is not a probiotic, it's a soluble dietary fiber. It's at best considered a prebiotic. Probiotics are microorganisms.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#116I'm not a neuroscientist, but it's hard to understand why anyone thinks that this mandatory downtime for all animals is just for a special reason. Why wouldn't sleeping be a catch-all window for autonomous maintenance and overall survival? Always take the most likely reason.
The way dolphins sleep with half of their brain asleep is fascinating to me. https://us.whales.org/whales-dolphins/how-do-dolphins-sleep/
Actually makes sense - like CPU that deactivates extra cores to let them cool down.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife needs 8-9 hours, whereas I can get by just fine with 5-6. She is a very light sleeper who will wake up 3-4 times every night; I can sleep through almost any noise, and never get up in the middle of the night. My son takes after me -- he seems to need significantly less sleep than other kids his age, but he's an extraordinarily deep sleeper. Anecdotal, but I think that sleep depth might have something to do wi…
Anecdotal also but I sometimes sleep alone in my office (have a futon) where it is very quiet. I usually feel fully rested after 6 hours in there versus 8 hours in bed with wife, dog and the cat occasionally coming through. I wish culturally it was standard for houses to have something like `sleep` rooms that are optimized for that purpose.
I stopped sleeping with my wife in the same bedroom some years ago and it was great for our sleep quality.
It's very funny how people conflate that with other aspects of couples relationships.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#118I saw this post where Andrej Karpathy asks if hyperbaric oxygen therapy might work like exercise by boosting oxygen to tissues, I wonder if sleep has any correlation.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#119Tangentially related, but very important to me and hopefully helpful to others here: I have sleep apnea. So do most of the men in my family. Though I am overweight, I haven't always been, but I have always had the condition, as have they. For those who don't know, sleep apnea is a condition where you stop breathing in your sleep, wake up slightly to fix that and start breathing again, and then fall back asleep. It so…
Do you know if fitness trackers with integrated pulse oximeters can detect sleep apnea?
My Apple Watch has an oximeter (I bought it before that feature was pulled in the US), and there's a "sleep apnea notifications" section in the "Health" app, but I'm not sure if the absence of notifications implies an absence of a problem.
Would sleep apnea always be visible as a lower blood oxygen level when sleeping, or can there be negative effects even without that?
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#120Tangentially related, but very important to me and hopefully helpful to others here: I have sleep apnea. So do most of the men in my family. Though I am overweight, I haven't always been, but I have always had the condition, as have they. For those who don't know, sleep apnea is a condition where you stop breathing in your sleep, wake up slightly to fix that and start breathing again, and then fall back asleep. It so…
Is there any chance that Apple Watch or wife would not notice a severe apnea condition?