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Engineering Sleep

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Re: Engineering Sleep

#151

Post by comboy »

exmadscientist wrote: post #30

Hey, discussion of orexin receptor stuff! As someone with clinically-diagnosed insomnia, I've been lucky enough to/unfortunate enough to have to try the orexin receptor antagonist sleep aids for a while. As recent, on-patent drugs, they are very, very expensive ($360/month was the number marked on the receipt slip, not that that means much in the US; I certainly wasn't paying that)... and they work. They really, real…

Have tried/responded to modafinil? It's supposed to also impact orexin pathways.

Re: Engineering Sleep

#152

Post by roland35 »

maleldil wrote: post #138
mettamage wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to just sleep 10 hours every day seems like an unfair advantage.

Why would it be an advantage? Aren't you "losing time"? I need 10 hours every day, so even if I go to bed at 10pm, I'd wake up at 8am, which is "late" for most people. I'd love to be able to wake up at 6am, but just can't. It doesn't feel like an advantage.

I think they mean that having the time available for sleep at all is a bit of a luxury. A lot of people need to take care of their family, or work an extra job, etc and can't afford to sleep much extra.

Re: Engineering Sleep

#153

Post by lll-o-lll »

stared wrote: post #44

> Familial Natural Short Sleep (FNSS), a benign mutation that allows them to sleep 1-2 hours less than the recommended 7-9 hours, without experiencing the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is one concern, but there’s a more subtle impact on cognitive functions (working memory, creativity, deep focus), overall health (particularly the endocrine and immune systems), and long-term health outcomes…

> > Familial Natural Short Sleep (FNSS), a benign mutation that allows them to sleep 1-2 hours less than the recommended 7-9 hours, without experiencing the negative effects of sleep deprivation

> Living on less sleep might not affect immediate action (and in some cases, it might even seem to enhance focus on doing), but it can impair deeper, more complex thinking.

You are making a mistake in thinking the aforementioned genetic variation “enables people to get by on less”. They just literally sleep less. I have a brother in law with this, and it’s a bit annoying for him as his wife needs the normal 8 hours a night. He cannot sleep 7-8 hours, only 6. He just reads in the bed for 2 hours a night. If he has too much to do, he skimps like we all do, but for him this is 4 hours a night during the week (needing to catch up on the weekend).

Other than sleeping less than others, he’s regular in every way. Very successful engineer, if it helps, certainly requires “deep thought” on the regular.

It is unfair, but so many genetic advantages are equally unfair.

Re: Engineering Sleep

#154

Post by joveian »

kator wrote: post #46

This article makes me want to get a DNA test. In my family, it’s very common to sleep in the six-hour range. I personally sleep from 10 pm to 4:25 am every day, often waking up around 4:15 am before my watch vibrates to wake me. If I sleep eight hours, I feel groggy, jet-lagged, and generally have a day where I’m slogging through molasses to get from one task to the next. My wife has raised concerns about my sleep pa…

Thanks for sharing! I have severe circadian issues: non-24, except that my body also still in some ways follows the sun and I do much worse when awake at night. I've noticed that other accounts I've read from people who do well with around 6 hours of sleep are similar to yours and feature highly regular sleep times. From the reading I've done it seems there are a number of hormones involved in both sleep and waking activity with strong circadian rhythms and I suspect that at any given time I have a mix of night and day hormones. Of course people can famously fool themselves easily that they are getting enough sleep when they aren't but based on my experience I could easily believe it to be a superpower to have everything unusually well synchronized and I fully agree with your doctor's advice.

Re: Engineering Sleep

#155

Post by mgh2 »

stared wrote: post #44

> Familial Natural Short Sleep (FNSS), a benign mutation that allows them to sleep 1-2 hours less than the recommended 7-9 hours, without experiencing the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is one concern, but there’s a more subtle impact on cognitive functions (working memory, creativity, deep focus), overall health (particularly the endocrine and immune systems), and long-term health outcomes…

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942096

Re: Engineering Sleep

#156

Post by safety1st »

Aurornis wrote: post #86
stared wrote: post #44

> Familial Natural Short Sleep (FNSS), a benign mutation that allows them to sleep 1-2 hours less than the recommended 7-9 hours, without experiencing the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is one concern, but there’s a more subtle impact on cognitive functions (working memory, creativity, deep focus), overall health (particularly the endocrine and immune systems), and long-term health outcomes…

> When I was younger, I was fascinated by various optimized sleep schedules. I was also fascinated with alternate sleep schedules when I was younger. Some of the books and biohackers of the time made them sound like magical ways to get more hours out of the day. Then every single experience report I found that was not coming from someone trying to sell me a book or get me to subscribe to their newsletter, YouTube, or…

Okay, but none of that is relevant to the article. This article is about a genetic condition called FNSS which results in you getting a full night's sleep in less time. It specifically addresses the concern that there might be unobserved negative effects and that so far, we haven't found any. If you have FNSS there is no reason to try and force yourself to sleep for 8 hours a night and it is not something being sold on YouTube.

Re: Engineering Sleep

#157

Post by theptip »

safety1st wrote: post #156
Aurornis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I was younger, I was fascinated by various optimized sleep schedules. I was also fascinated with alternate sleep schedules when I was younger. Some of the books and biohackers of the time made them sound like magical ways to get more hours out of the day. Then every single experience report I found that was not coming from someone trying to sell me a book or get me to subscribe to their newsletter, YouTube, or…

Okay, but none of that is relevant to the article. This article is about a genetic condition called FNSS which results in you getting a full night's sleep in less time. It specifically addresses the concern that there might be unobserved negative effects and that so far, we haven't found any. If you have FNSS there is no reason to try and force yourself to sleep for 8 hours a night and it is not something being sold…

You’re missing the point being made in this thread, which is that there might be subtle long-term impairments to the genetic condition described in the OP.

Indeed the article discusses this thoroughly, noting that since it’s a very small sample you can’t rule out anything but very strongly negative fitness impact.

There’s simply not enough data to rule out the hypothesis that folks with this condition are slightly sleep-deprived vs their theoretical without-mutation genotype baseline.

Re: Engineering Sleep

#158

Post by davisp »

gavmor wrote: post #99
carlosjobim wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got it backwards, the awake part of life is the sacrifice all living beings have to make to support the primary function of dreaming.

This is a fun thought experiment, but our working definition of life is something along the lines of heritable metabolizing, which dreaming doesn't so obviously serve.

A wild tangent but reading “heritable metabolizing” really hit me on the “are viruses alive” question.

I’ve been around enough biotech to have considered the differences between plasmids and viruses versus archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. I’ve always considered “heritable change” as the base definition of “life”. As in, “life” is progeny resemble their parent(s)? Or “heritable change”.

“Heritable metabolizing” quite nicely captures that difference between the levels of single molecule “life” and singular/multicellular “life”.

Apologies for the random aside, it was just one of those random “I have a vague idea of why mitochondria are important, but I don’t see them as fundamental” parts of my “What is life?” definition being refined.

Re: Engineering Sleep

#159

Post by joveian »

wslh wrote: post #111
bsamuels wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

had the same thing coincide with covid, but much harder to fall asleep once disrupted. Melatonin only seems to last for an hour or so, so I would take one to go back to sleep after a disruption

Thank you very much for the tip. I will try it out for a month, and let you know how it works.

The one I like to take at night is Life Extension 300mcg (.3mg) 6 hour timed release (they make a bunch of different ones), which is the closest to natural melatonin release of any supplemental melatonin I've seen, although it sounds like there is massive variation between people in how much makes it to the blood from a given dose. There are a couple of ways to use melatonin and for circadian use a small non-delayed dose earlier may be better (or use both):

https://circadiansleepdisorders.org/treatments.php#melatonin

I have had issues waking up more frequently when taking melatonin. It sounds like while not common this side effect is not that rare either. Based on my severe sleep issues (primarly circadian) I suspect that one part of "sleep issues" for many people is actualy waking up issues and that the detailed process around waking up has a bigger influence than is currently appreciated. I suspect one reason that melatonin is helpful is that it sets the stage for a better wake up, however if something causes this wake up procedure to start after not enough sleep it can be more difficult to get back to sleep. The delayed release seems to help quite a bit to limit the chance of this happening for me, although it does still happen at times. I'm not sure if melatonin is a particularly good option for staying asleep.

Unfortunately, there aren't particulary good options. Magnesium is the easiest and as effective as anything for me but unfortunately a high enough dose to be effective will also make me tired the next day. However, if your diet is low on magnesium then just increasing that some might help or possibly you won't have the issue with tiredness the next day. baclofen helps me but has issues and I certainly would not recommend it for your case.

A short (few minutes) nap mid day helps the circadian rhythm but longer naps can make it harder to stay asleep at night. If you nap for longer periods, multiple times, or later in the day that is the first thing I would suggest changing. I'm not sure what length causes more trouble but I think getting to sleep but staying asleep as briefly as you easily can is the ideal (though if you will naturally wake up after a bit longer that might be better than an alarm).

I also noticed covid made my already bad sleep worse when I had it (most likely covid, not confirmed by test; cold or flu usually give me better sleep for a day or two). However, I didn't notice any lasting issues (I still have severe sleep issues but it was just that first week of covid that they seemed to be different from usual). I wonder if it could be just your memory of how you sleep that changed after you noticed it due to the disruption. As long as you can easily get back to sleep and aren't staying awake for long it should not cause trouble and is not uncommon. If you feel rested there is nothing to fix while worrying about it or trying to change it could case worse trouble.

These are my thoughts anyway, hopefully something in there is helpful :).

Re: Engineering Sleep

#160

Post by cvoss »

euroderf wrote: post #92
stared wrote: post #44

> Familial Natural Short Sleep (FNSS), a benign mutation that allows them to sleep 1-2 hours less than the recommended 7-9 hours, without experiencing the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is one concern, but there’s a more subtle impact on cognitive functions (working memory, creativity, deep focus), overall health (particularly the endocrine and immune systems), and long-term health outcomes…

> I noticed a stark contrast: many of my math friends consistently slept 9–10 hours a day. I'm curious, in order to reach this duration, did they need to do some kind of exercise at some point in the day, to gain physical fatigue ? Or could they sleep this long whilst being (I exaggerate here) couch potatoes ?

You say that like it's hard for an oversleeper to achieve their oversleeping. As an oversleepr, I'll suggest that it's the other way around. When you're an oversleeper, the thing that's hard is to stop sleeping after the socially normal amount of time.
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