Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Impacts of lack of sleep

belkarx.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 254 posts

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#121

Post by Barrin92 »

randomcarbloke wrote: post #111
p-e-w wrote: post #46

I'm highly skeptical concerning the claimed 'effects' of lack of sleep. I don't doubt those are correlated with lack of sleep, but for many of them, obvious confounding factors exist. As a trivial example, overworked people typically get less sleep than average folks. And excessive work is also correlated with several of the 'effects' from the list, such as "fatigued and demotivated" and "lower libido". This means th…

for sure, I set the Set Daily Puzzle world record during a time of my life when I had been subsisting on an average of 1-2 hours sleep a night, if that. It's also the fluffiest thing I've seen on HN in a while.

it reminds me of Why We Sleep which turned out to be completely full of scientific errors (https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/)

Obviously that book sold like hot cakes. When it comes to sleep and diet people will repeat anything as long as it sounds intuitive.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#122

Post by Obscurity4340 »

nikkwong wrote: post #17
mmanfrin wrote: post #3

I'd wager most people here who don't get enough sleep aren't doing so out of some sort of grindset mentality, but because they simply cannot. I find it very hard to fall asleep, nearly impossible to sleep in (a consequence of getting older?), and more interrupted sleep. I'm reticent to try drugs to enable sleep because I've heard that the sleep they provide is not true sleep.

That may not necessarily be totally true, you're most likely referring to hypnotics (ambien, lunesta, etc)—which were used by doctors for patients in some circumstances but are slowly falling out of fashion for the reasons you describe. There are older and newer classes of drugs on the market that are being used as first-line therapies which not only preserve sleep architecture but in many cases even enhance it. Traz…

How did you come across desmopressin, isnt that a bed-wetting thing? How does it help with sleep outside of urinary issues?

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#123

Post by l5870uoo9y »

> More substance abuse/addiction (alcohol and caffiene, specifically) [ironically both depressants and stimulents]

Is caffeine really a depressant? I have great joy in consuming caffeine either from Japanese Sencha tea, Matcha, or occasionally a non-watery Americano.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#124

Post by otikik »

m463 wrote: post #113
000ooo000 wrote: post #5

For me, I find my sleep suffers because of what some describe as "revenge bedtime procrastination". When my job is shit (i.e. now), I'm more inclined to stay on the PC later doing things that bring me some level of joy, or play games to escape the mind spinning its wheels. I seem to more easily recognise that my job is unfulfilling because I'm staying up later or I'm dreading going to bed. Going to bed early for a go…

I created a bedtime nag program and it really helped, especially with hard deadlines like driving someone in the morning. 2 hours to bedtime, 1 hour to bedtime, 30 minutes, etc....

Can you expand on that? Is that just a bunch of alarms in your mobile phone, or something more ellaborate?

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#125

Post by TeMPOraL »

abdusco wrote: post #114
TeMPOraL wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish this worked for me, but my brain straight up ignores[0] any kind of alarm clocks, music, light, etc. until it's something like 10:00 in the morning, or until a person wakes me up (and checks 5-10 minutes later if I'm actually up)[1]. So, shifting time to morning turned out to be impossible to maintain when I was living alone - I could hold such schedule for maybe a week at most, gradually oversleeping more and m…

Did you try sleeping earlier? If you regularly sleep at 01:00, then you won't be able to wake up at 06:00. If you go to sleep at 22:00 then it's not as impossible as you think.

Yes. If I go to sleep at 22:00, I'll be half-awake tossing in bed from 6:00, but still unable to get up until ~10:00.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#126

Post by loa_in_ »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #123

> More substance abuse/addiction (alcohol and caffiene, specifically) [ironically both depressants and stimulents] Is caffeine really a depressant? I have great joy in consuming caffeine either from Japanese Sencha tea, Matcha, or occasionally a non-watery Americano.

It's not, it's neither IIRC.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#127

Post by InSteady »

The caffeine trap can be particularly insidious, especially for those of us who metabolize it slower. Its half-life can range from as low as 1.5 hours all the way up to 9.5 hours.

So on the high end of that scale, if you drink 3 cups of coffee, containing say 300mg of caffeine, between 7 and 10 AM then you still have around 100mg of caffeine kicking around in your system when 11pm rolls around, clogging up your adenosine receptors and disrupting your body's ability to signal to itself (and you) that it wants and is ready for rest.

[And if you don't follow any sleep hygiene practices, you are also probably depriving the body of its primary mechanism for initiating the sleep processes. You can take supplemented melatonin but it is usually only effective for short or medium-term use, and in my personal experience is way less effective than the home-grown good stuff produced in the pineal gland]

So you lose 30 minutes here, and hour there of sleep. Not necessarily every night, but on a weekly basis you find yourself worn out, mentally ready to rest and recharge, but there is a disconnect in your brain and body that doesn't allow a smooth wake-sleep transition. The longer this trend occurs, the more sleep debt you find yourself in, the more you tend to throw in another half-cup around noon from time to time just to make sure you can keep going.

Worst of all is when you hit on the realization that alcohol or some other drug can help to knock you out when you're still too wired to sleep even though you really want or need it.. unfortunately (with the possible exception of a few herbs) basically every medication or drug that puts you to sleep also negatively impacts the quality of that sleep. Which in the above scenario is going to spell out more caffeine in the routine, sooner or later, to compensate further. Do be aware that this doesn't necessarily have to be conscious realization, it is an extremely easy and I assume common habit to fall into.

If you happen to process caffeine at a 1.5 hour half life, and can conk out like a light under most circumstances, I am truly jealous. Enjoy your God-given gifts ya lucky bastard!

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#128

Post by loa_in_ »

notsurenymore wrote: post #13
mmanfrin wrote: post #3

I'd wager most people here who don't get enough sleep aren't doing so out of some sort of grindset mentality, but because they simply cannot. I find it very hard to fall asleep, nearly impossible to sleep in (a consequence of getting older?), and more interrupted sleep. I'm reticent to try drugs to enable sleep because I've heard that the sleep they provide is not true sleep.

I have this pattern of getting really tired in the early afternoon, and then by night time, I would be fully awake. I couldn’t just sleep when I was tired because then I won’t sleep at night, and it just become this terrible cycle. I can’t stay awake at night because things need to be done during the day. It’s been better recently, but some years ago, I would come home from work just completely exhausted and pass out…

That sounds a lot like the kind of "brain desynchronization" as I call it, related in my experience to alcohol use. Alcohol kind of puts half of my brain to sleep, and after I sober up and go to sleep that same half us behind schedule, so to speak.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#129

Post by morjom »

As a narcoleptic these always remind me that I'm kind of screwed on many fronts. I still try to do the good things (been going for morning walks, slowly getting to the point I don't have my phone with me in bed, drinking lots of water).

Sorry kind of a rant.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#130

Post by sinman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #104
plorkyeran wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A life changing thing for me was specifically scheduling time to do fun things in the morning before doing the things I have to do. If I wake up at six, I still don’t start my day until eight, and instead spend those two hours on things I otherwise would have done the night before. This broke the feeling of dreading mornings that lead to a negative spiral. Even if I know most of the day will be awful, if I can look f…

Wish this worked for me, but my brain straight up ignores[0] any kind of alarm clocks, music, light, etc. until it's something like 10:00 in the morning, or until a person wakes me up (and checks 5-10 minutes later if I'm actually up)[1]. So, shifting time to morning turned out to be impossible to maintain when I was living alone - I could hold such schedule for maybe a week at most, gradually oversleeping more and m…

You sound a lot like me - I've even uttered the same line about multiplying two digit numbers in my sleep.

Not sure if you already tried it, but the only thing I ever found that worked was melatonin (I've tried both before bed and around 6pm). Much info here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...

Post reply on HN