Good sleep, good learning, good life (2012)

The thing you might not be realizing is that sleep directly impacts your metabolic health. Yes, focus on diet, but sleep also drives diet desires. It's a vicious cycle.

Your comment about "not enough REM" sleep shows how little people truly understand about sleep. It's not REM (or even the amount of REM) that is the issue. REM is dreaming sleep and emotional processing. N3 and to a lesser extent N2, often referred to as deep sleep is the stage where the restorative activity and hormonal balance occurs.

Fine, fine, I get it. I am sort of chagrined that sibling comments are missing the whole point, and that is about quality of sleep and rest.

Having C-PTSD incipient since my childhood, I've really never, ever known what it's like to have a good night's restful sleep, or a regular schedule of days awake and nights asleep. It's been completely elusive to me. Obviously it is one of the most important things I could do, but how?

I haven't had a chance to read the entire article, but I can already tell that much of how the author viewed sleep in 2012 is not inline with current understandings in sleep science, though much of the wearable and sleep industry still promote this outdated view.

Disclosure: I am the co-founder & CEO of neurotech/sleeptech company https://affectablesleep.com

The post talks about "sleep deprivation" which most people, and most studies, view as reduced sleep time.

The latest research shows that sleep regularity is a better predictor of health (via morbidity) than sleep duration, even when sleep duration is taken into account. This is on our blog with links to research [1]

I have a few issues with the "sleep more" concept, and I often say that you wouldn't measure your diet based on how much time you spend chewing, so why do we think this is a good measure for sleep. The methodology for measuring sleep, particularly deep sleep, was defined in 1968 by the sleeping pattern 28 college aged men and 5 college aged women [2].

We are able to show that decreasing the Neural Function of Sleep, the vital processes of the brain that make sleep restorative, and specifically slow-wave activity, reduces the effectiveness of sleep without altering sleep time. We can also enhance the Neural Function of Sleep to improve health outcomes measured by memory, HRV, cortisol, immune function, and more [3] links to research.

This isn't just limited to a bunch of lab studies. As we age, the Neural Function of Sleep naturally declines, and this decline is linked to age related metabolic health, cardiac health, and of course neurological diseases and particularly dementia and Alzhiemer's. Overly focusing on "just get more sleep time" doesn't solve the problem.

To further the problem, people often blame sleep for their tiredness, when they have poor diet, don't exercise, and/or poor mental health (stress, burnout, depression, etc). You can complain all you want about the gas mileage on your car and try tuning your engine, etc, but if you've got flat tires, you're not going anywhere.

Our work in neurotech and specifically sleep is focused on some of these issues, though I think the more important thing is for people to

1) Understand what sleep schedule works for YOU and focus on consistency and regularity. 2) If you're "tired" ask yourself if you are "tired" or "lethargic" is sleep really to blame? Or could there be other things that are impacting how you feel, or impacting how well you are sleeping.

I equate what we know about sleep and the brain today as similar to what we knew about diet and exercise in the 70s. We knew it was important but we really didn't understand how it worked. What we will learn in the next decade will upend our current understanding and have a significant impact on health and longevity.

[1] https://blog.affectablesleep.com/p/the-hidden-work-of-sleep-...

[2] https://blog.affectablesleep.com/p/sleep-sciences-blind-spot...

[3] https://affectablesleep.com/how-it-works#research

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It could be a bit like that elusive thing called motivation. "Just do it" seems so annoying when people say it but in my case sometimes its the only way to start building momentum. What im saying is dont wait for mood, perhaps the mood will develop once you obtain momentum on a goal or task.