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How to Sleep

theatlantic.com

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Re: How to Sleep

#171

Post by restalis »

balladeer wrote: post #31
rrggrr wrote: post #8

1. Room temperature should be between 60 - 67 degrees F. 2. No electronics, games, and minimal to no blue light 30min to 1hour before sleep. 3. Do not exercise less than 3 hours before sleep. Exception: sex. 4. Coffee and other stimulants before 12pm, not after. 5. Avoid naps longer than 15 minutes day of. 6. Stretch before going to sleep, particularly if you experience minor restless legs or periodic leg movements.…

1. I am surprised how 15-19°C could be the temperature range for sleeping. That's just too cold; at least here in India. It's usually around 22°C (72°F) minimum people who have ACs, or the room temperature in temperate places like Pune and Bangalore. My friends say the same thing about SF at least. Is it common to sleep at this relatively cold (15-19°C) temperature in the USA? Also, there must be places/states where…

The given temperature range tries to cover the optimal condition for a broad range of people. Optimal here means that below that many muscles that have to rest in the sleeping state are instead working to compensate the loss of heat (and with them also a bunch of neurons), above that you are kind of forced to move constantly to cool off by exposing the overheated parts of body. 15°C may be too cold for most, but it's ideal for overweight and obese people.

Re: How to Sleep

#172

Post by chatmasta »

chippy wrote: post #163
ziglef wrote: post #158

I consider myself one of those short-sleepers. Ever since I was a kid I averaged 5-6h of sleep a day. While the differences perceived (which can always be misleading) from sleeping 6 or 8 hours weren't noticeable, if I slept 4-5 for a week my short term memory would suffer, reflexes and split second decision making (think fast passed multiplayer shooters) would also suffer. But what I noticed was that although the sp…

Interesting 2c about observations - because according the article, people who have less sleep may perform worse objectively, but to themselves they report no noticeable difference.

Short term memory variation is very obvious to me when coding. And as the GP mentioned, reflex variation can be obvious when playing FPS games.

Re: How to Sleep

#173

Post by graeme »

hsuresh wrote: post #156
laughfactory wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me, too. My wife complains that it's like I'm trying to have two or three lives instead of just the one. But I know I need the sleep I'm not getting, but I have a really hard time, once the kids are finally asleep, just going to bed myself. When everyone but me is asleep it's so peaceful and quiet, and I can read, slay work dragons, learn stuff, or just veg. Unfortunately this usually results in maybe six low…

I used to be like this. And the problem was, because there was no pattern to my sleep, I found out extremely difficult to sleep, even when I wanted to. A few things helped me. First, I started logging my sleep. It helped me analyze how much sleep I was really getting. Second, this sounds simplistic, but I first fixed the waking time. Irrespective of the time I sleep, I started waking up at the exact same time everyda…

For the fixed wakeup time:

1. What do you do if in a situation where you'll get a low amount of sleep. Nap mid day? 2. What about social stuff? I'd love to get up at 8 am most days, but then any social event in the evening throws that off.

Naps might fix the latter, but I have trouble napping due to onset insomnia. Unless I'm extremelt fatigued.

Re: How to Sleep

#174

Post by smartbit »

William Dement gave a Google Tech talk on September 23, 2008. Dement recalls that Randy Gardner who stayed awake for 11 days in 1964, when asked some 40years later "would you do this again?" he replied "No way would I do this again" [0]

Very interesting from Dement's talk is that equilibrium daily average sleep for completely health young adults is 8:15 ± 50min [1]. Most people I meet contest these results and state that they can work optimal with less than 7h25m daily sleep.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=1310

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8&t=28m29s

Re: How to Sleep

#175

Post by bobjordan »

My experience with Melatonin is that about 1.5 mg per night is a game changer. I travel across the Pacific Ocean several times per year and it got to where I was a stick of dynamite temper wise for a week after each trip, just not able to cope with any irritations, due to Jetlag. On top of that, just the general stress of being an entrepreneur resulted in bad sleep. For some reason, I bought the melatonin, and I'm very glad I did it. Now, I sleep like I did when I was in elementary school. Lots of dreams and even wake up with solutions to problems that I went to bed thinking about.

Re: How to Sleep

#176

Post by jon-wood »

graeme wrote: post #173
hsuresh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be like this. And the problem was, because there was no pattern to my sleep, I found out extremely difficult to sleep, even when I wanted to. A few things helped me. First, I started logging my sleep. It helped me analyze how much sleep I was really getting. Second, this sounds simplistic, but I first fixed the waking time. Irrespective of the time I sleep, I started waking up at the exact same time everyda…

For the fixed wakeup time: 1. What do you do if in a situation where you'll get a low amount of sleep. Nap mid day? 2. What about social stuff? I'd love to get up at 8 am most days, but then any social event in the evening throws that off. Naps might fix the latter, but I have trouble napping due to onset insomnia. Unless I'm extremelt fatigued.

Try having a kid ;)

Ours gets me up between 6 and 7am every day. If I'm up late the night before I just end up going to be super early the next day and things even out.

Re: How to Sleep

#178

Post by unicornporn »

babuskov wrote: post #148
unicornporn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually what we do in some schools of zen when we do zazen. We begin to steady and stabilize the mind by counting the breath. We practice by counting each inhalation and each exhalation, beginning with one and counting up to ten. Inhale — at the end of the inhalation, count one. Exhale — at the end of the exhalation, count two. When you get to ten, come back to one and start all over. The only agreement that…

> It eventually stills the mind and will help you I does still the mind, but I have a problem that it makes me even more awake. A couple of times I tried that I ended up going back to my laptop and working through the night because I felt like I gained so much energy.

> I does still the mind, but I have a problem that it makes me even more awake.

Then skip the counting and just focus on your breathing (shikantaza). If that also is too much to focus on, do it for 20 minutes or so and then just try to sleep the regular way. Hopefully your brain wont be monkey minding as much as it did before the excercise.

I want to stress that this is not zazen — when doing zazen you should not fall asleep — but a method that I think can be useful also when we try to fall asleep.

Re: How to Sleep

#179

Post by sudojudo »

Philomath wrote: post #149
Rotareti wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the worst when I'm working on my computer, due to the blue light (I've started wearing yellow sunglasses to minimize the effect) If you are on Linux you should have a look at Redshift[0]. It allows you to adjust color temperature and brightness via command line. During daytime I put more blue and brightness into the screen, depending on the weather outside (5000K-6500K, 70%-100% brightness). I do this once whe…

If you are on mac, you should check 'f.lux'. It will adjust the colors of the screen automatically to minify the effects of blue light.

There's f.lux for Linux as well, but you'll probably want to add a GUI [1]. f.lux runs on most desktops and phones.

Redshift seems to be the top choice for Linux users though, because f.lux lacks some basic features (like being able to turn it on during daylight hours). The trade-off is that f.lux is easier to install and has a smaller footprint.

Also worth noting is that Redshift is FOSS, and f.lux is not (though there are forks on githib, so I must be missing something).

[1] https://github.com/xflux-gui/xflux-gui

Re: How to Sleep

#180

Post by Rotareti »

castis wrote: post #147
Rotareti wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the worst when I'm working on my computer, due to the blue light (I've started wearing yellow sunglasses to minimize the effect) If you are on Linux you should have a look at Redshift[0]. It allows you to adjust color temperature and brightness via command line. During daytime I put more blue and brightness into the screen, depending on the weather outside (5000K-6500K, 70%-100% brightness). I do this once whe…

Also, if iOS, Night Shift: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207570 Almost everything else, Flux: https://justgetflux.com/

Flux looks interesting, but it doesn't seem to support brightness adjustment. I think it's important to sync the brightness of your monitor with the brightness of its surrounding.
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