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

Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 336 posts

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#161

Post by forgotmypw17 »

drclau wrote: post #135
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #115

I'd like to share my sleeping practice which I've developed after several years of focusing on it and trying to recreate the pre-industrial (and possibly pre-farming) sleep patterns my ancestors had for millions of years before the last few thousand. Whenever I feel tired, I lay down to rest. Whenever I am sleeping, I allow myself to sleep until I am "fully slept", meaning I can lay there for a while, still physicall…

How do you handle noise? Do you live in a house or apartment building?

My living arrangements vary. If there is noise, I wake up and then go back to sleep. If it keeps repeating, I gradually get used to it and it doesn't wake me anymore.

I surely sometimes have to get up when I don't want to, it just happens less often than it used to, every couple days or weeks rather than every morning.

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#162

Post by mckirk »

kovek wrote: post #30

Last night I worked out and my nose opened up and I slept so much better. Anyone experienced something similar?

I have this audiobook sitting on my virtual shelf waiting to be listened to: 'Breath' by James Nestor. Sounded pretty interesting, might be interesting to you too.

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#163

Post by stevewodil »

drclau wrote: post #135
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #115

I'd like to share my sleeping practice which I've developed after several years of focusing on it and trying to recreate the pre-industrial (and possibly pre-farming) sleep patterns my ancestors had for millions of years before the last few thousand. Whenever I feel tired, I lay down to rest. Whenever I am sleeping, I allow myself to sleep until I am "fully slept", meaning I can lay there for a while, still physicall…

How do you handle noise? Do you live in a house or apartment building?

If you have trouble with noise try getting a white noise machine to drown out the other noises. I have upstairs neighbors and my bedroom is attached to the kitchen here, so there's often quite a bit of noise. The white noise machine has helped a lot for me.

I didn't like it at first but got used to it eventually

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#164

Post by drclau »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #161
drclau wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you handle noise? Do you live in a house or apartment building?

My living arrangements vary. If there is noise, I wake up and then go back to sleep. If it keeps repeating, I gradually get used to it and it doesn't wake me anymore. I surely sometimes have to get up when I don't want to, it just happens less often than it used to, every couple days or weeks rather than every morning.

Thanks for answering. One more question, how about eating? Do you allow for some time before sleeping, as a rule?

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#165

Post by andrekandre »

kypro wrote: post #131

Around the age of 17 I used to regularly go to bed late so I could socialise, but I often had to be up at 8-9am for college / university / work. This meant I developed a fairly unhealthy sleep pattern and would often only get 6 hours of sleep a night. 10 years on and although I don't stay up to socialise anymore, I still really struggling to get enough sleep. No matter how tired I am throughout the day my mind seems…

- daily excercise really helps

- read a textbook before sleeping (works for me everytime)

- turn off the lights by 8 (not just dimming)

- get rid of your tv if you have one

personal anecdote:

for me, difficulty in sleeping is also caused by work anxiety, so... maybe changing that work environment might be something to think about

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#166

Post by forgotmypw17 »

lqet wrote: post #146
hndamien wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let them sleep when they are tired and wake when they want.

It takes considerable effort to "allow yourself to sleep until you are "fully slept"" if you are woken up by a 2 year old sitting on your head and trying to get you to look at a book with him.

Having kids changes many things. Certainly, your opportunity to sleep fully will be hampered.

However, if the responsibilities are shared between multiple adults, you can still get it done some of the time, and be well-rested and comfortable for when it's your turn to watch the kids and let other adults do their sleeping.

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#167

Post by Rivosa »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #115

I'd like to share my sleeping practice which I've developed after several years of focusing on it and trying to recreate the pre-industrial (and possibly pre-farming) sleep patterns my ancestors had for millions of years before the last few thousand. Whenever I feel tired, I lay down to rest. Whenever I am sleeping, I allow myself to sleep until I am "fully slept", meaning I can lay there for a while, still physicall…

> 24h sleep

I advise anyone reading this and experiencing similar sleep pattern or fatigue to visit their doctor. This could be anything from diabetes, iron difeciency, Vitamin D difeciancy, and whole other things that could be wrong. Please don't use someone's else experience as the whole truth.

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#168

Post by srl »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #115

I'd like to share my sleeping practice which I've developed after several years of focusing on it and trying to recreate the pre-industrial (and possibly pre-farming) sleep patterns my ancestors had for millions of years before the last few thousand. Whenever I feel tired, I lay down to rest. Whenever I am sleeping, I allow myself to sleep until I am "fully slept", meaning I can lay there for a while, still physicall…

> A couple of times I think I was coming down with something, I slept for more than 24 hours with only pee breaks. And I woke up feeling fresh as a cucumber, as they say.

I don't really take sleeping that seriously in general, but I used to get sick pretty frequently (sick enough to not work, a couple times a year). Nowadays I have a routine, and it's not so different: if I feel a tiny bit sick, I go home, lie in bed, and order semi-healthy Mediterranean food (I have specific cravings when I get sick -- is this common?). I stay that way until I can't stand being in bed any more. I also avoid any source of stress.

The number of days per year when I'm sick has probably gone down by a factor of 4: I get properly sick half as often, and when I am sick, I get better much faster. Almost as importantly, getting sick is no longer "miserable" in the same way. It seems a substantial part of the misery of being sick (with something mild, like a cold or, at my age, flu) just comes from trying to do things you shouldn't try to do. Lying in bed and executing a nap/snack/pee/read loop... that's not so bad.

(As others in this thread love to point out, this doesn't work for people with bad sick leave, or stressful jobs, or single parents, and so on and so forth. That's a strong case for sick leave etc., as far as I see.)

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#169

Post by forgotmypw17 »

drclau wrote: post #164
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My living arrangements vary. If there is noise, I wake up and then go back to sleep. If it keeps repeating, I gradually get used to it and it doesn't wake me anymore. I surely sometimes have to get up when I don't want to, it just happens less often than it used to, every couple days or weeks rather than every morning.

Thanks for answering. One more question, how about eating? Do you allow for some time before sleeping, as a rule?

I try to not eat for an hour or two before bed, but it doesn't often work out that way. In many places, I have food available to me around the clock in nearly unlimited quantities, which I also think is not natural and potentially harmful, but them's the breaks.

When I wake up, I usually don't eat for several hours, nor do I have any desire to, as my digestive system is still "booting up". I have heard countless times from various wise beings that drinking a glass of clean water after waking up is very beneficial, so I do that. Sometimes it is yesterday's tea, though.

My ideal eating technique is once a day, and then maybe a few light snacks here and there. It's to avoid processed food, meaning anything which I didn't see its original form of and wasn't prepared by someone I know, whether it is grinding up or mixing, and to avoid things with multiple ingredients.

However, because I co-exist with others who are not as far along as me, I stray from this quite a bit. I partially alleviate it with occasional water fasting to give myself a chance to clear out the junk.

(When I say "natural", it's shorthand for "how our life was for millions of years and what evolution tuned our bodies for".)

Re: Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance

#170

Post by ShamelessC »

pedalpete wrote: post #111

Though the subjective measure of this study is better than nothing, in the coming years we'll be able to use sleep data for more concrete evidence. At https://soundmind.co , we're building a headband focused on improving Sleep Performance, by monitoring your sleep state and using sound to alter sleep state. There is amazing research around improving sleep quality, by improving sleep maintenance (aka reducing waking d…

You could probably sell a similar product with zero scientific research behind it and people would buy it. So please do post back when you publish results! Very curious to see if something like this could help me have better sleep.

Are there at least preliminary papers you can cite as the basis for this idea? because it sounds super interesting.

Post reply on HN