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Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#151

Post by friend_and_foe »

There are a lot of things that we do that wild animals and wild people don't do, and a lot of things they do that we don't do. If "do what they do" were a panacea we wouldn't be living like this in the first place.

They don't have access to antiparasitic medications, for example. Another example, they don't stare at screens ever. Plenty of our habits are better for us and plenty are worse, and the same is true for them. I'm sure plenty of habits of all people have trade offs. We have a higher life expectancy. What's a better metric for healthy lifestyle than that? It doesn't mean everything is better, but it is a good yardstick for determining if we are doing more right than wrong to our health, all in all.

So just "this is how it's done in nature so we are wrong about how we do it" isn't a good heuristic. A dog will lay on something soft given the opportunity.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#152

Post by pcrh »

lonelyasacloud wrote: post #139
pcrh wrote: post #67

Amazing demonstrations of casual racism in that article. It reads as if it was written in 1850 rather than 2000. There's no plausible reason to suppose that Tibetans or "tribesmen" have more natural sleeping positions than "civilized" (i e. White) people.

> There's no plausible reason to suppose that Tibetans or "tribesmen" have more natural sleeping positions than "civilized" (i e. White) people. So Tibetan tribal society is likely to have exposed its members to the same level of furniture and mattress adverts as the average American or European then?

Tibetans traditionally sleep on beds that are not much different from European beds.

The porters shown in the article are "camping", so to speak, i.e. not in their typical sleeping postures.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#153

Post by avery17 »

olalonde wrote: post #144
thaumasiotes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go pull a bunch of grass, and put it in a pile. You now have a working pillow.

That doesn't sound comfortable. I'd probably rather sleep on my arm than a pile of grass...

Im sure if you spent your whole life sleeping on the ground youd work something out to make it more comfortable

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#154

Post by watwut »

adrian_b wrote: post #31
looping8 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also feels a little strange in writing. Examples: "Figure Figure11 shows a mountain gorilla lying on the ground on his side without a pillow" - Of course it is without a pillow, it's a mountain gorilla! What is this clarification? "To start with, some Westerners have to hold on to a doorframe." - Would it not be better to say "you may have to hold on" or "newbies"? It is not like Westerners have some special physi…

I have read your comment before reading the article, and at that time I have thought that you must be right. Nevertheless, after reading the article I have seen that the clarification about the gorilla sleeping without a pillow made perfect sense in its context, because it has not been added to provide any additional information, but it was added for emphasis, in a context where the sleeping positions in modern envir…

It did not made sense to me, because I am not a gorilla. They have different bodies. They look kinda similar in body shape, but they climb treat the way I will never be able to no matter how much I train.

So, gorila sleeping position implies exactly nothing for my sleeping position.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#155

Post by watwut »

olalonde wrote: post #144
thaumasiotes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go pull a bunch of grass, and put it in a pile. You now have a working pillow.

That doesn't sound comfortable. I'd probably rather sleep on my arm than a pile of grass...

It can be actually comfortable.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#156

Post by pedalpete »

keybored wrote: post #150

This is so fascinating. I slept (on my back) on the floor for a while. It was at times amazing—I would wake up and feel ready to go. Not like my muscles were weak or temporarily atrophied. Like, I didn’t know that was possible after a full nights sleep. There seems to be so much potential in just reflecting on an considering what a “paleo” approach to something would be. And then you can just do that. You don’t even…

I also slept on my floor for about 5 months - until I saw a huge cockroach (common in Sydney) run across my floor and hide under my pillow.

I agree, it felt great.

When I moved into my new, almost cockroach free apartment, I built my own shikibuton by taking a futon cover and stuffing it with a comforter and a thin foam mattress topper. The whole thing is about 7cm (2.7 inches) thick. I roll it up each morning and have been sleeping like this for the last 8 months.

I also use only 1 thin pillow, and for a while was placing it lengthwise along my spine, which is apparently good for fixing the hunchback posture of modern humans.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#157

Post by dotancohen »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #112
bee_rider wrote: post #103

IMO it would be better for the government to keep this sort of general library content on a url that doesn’t contain NIH. They have the disclaimer, > As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. Anyway, it seems like an interesting collection of anecdotes that would b…

Totally agreed. I also liked some of the anecdotes in this article, but I always have to do an eye roll when I read an article that claims that "primitive" cultures don't suffer from disease X, and look they do thing Y that modern cultures don't, so of course thing Y must be the the reason for the difference! Conveniently ignoring the 6387 other stark differences in culture, behaviors and diets between the cultures.…

  > 6387
I like that you picked the Earth's radius in kilometres for illustration.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#158

Post by olalonde »

avery17 wrote: post #153
olalonde wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound comfortable. I'd probably rather sleep on my arm than a pile of grass...

Im sure if you spent your whole life sleeping on the ground youd work something out to make it more comfortable

But that was the point... why don't gorillas make pillows then? My contention was that making a pillow is actually difficult. I wouldn't be surprised if pillows were seldom used by early humans.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#159

Post by dmix »

tlb wrote: post #80
dmix wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He lists his profession as a physiotherapist so probably crossed into the chiropractic side a bit, some of his personal photos are a little hippy-ish. The article is also premised on one large appeal to nature (tribal people untainted by modern society do it therefore it is natural and therefore good). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

Appeal to nature is bad as a source of ultimate truth, "nature does it this way therefore it must be better." But it's good as a source of hypotheses, "nature does it this way, perhaps we should try it?" This paper seems more like the second.

I don't see the difference between those two statements absent scientific data. That's merely a useful seed of an idea, not a sufficient premise for an argument.

Re: Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

#160

Post by thaumasiotes »

olalonde wrote: post #144
thaumasiotes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go pull a bunch of grass, and put it in a pile. You now have a working pillow.

That doesn't sound comfortable. I'd probably rather sleep on my arm than a pile of grass...

This is a failure of your imagination, not the grass.
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