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Impacts of lack of sleep

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221–230 of 254 posts

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US military, new recruits are put on a very early schedule (think: 5:00am wakeup) and an appropriately early bedtime. Within a matter of weeks, they become habituated to it such that everyone's body automatically starts operating on that schedule, even if no one wakes them up in the morning. I am skeptical that there is a biological reason 20-50% of the population can't get up early because it doesn't seem to…

I think people can train themselves to get up at any time, even in the middle of the night, but I have doubts that they'd all be fully alert at that hour even if they did it for months or years. I can train myself to wake up early, but my brain doesn't fully "wake up" until much later in the day. It might be genetic ( https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150514085748.h... ) and there are groups looking at dr…

I think is a combination of physical activity waking the recruits up and keeping them alert, as well as physical exhaustion helping them fall asleep. I suppose anyone who is chronically unable to stick to that schedule would get weeded out quickly.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US military, new recruits are put on a very early schedule (think: 5:00am wakeup) and an appropriately early bedtime. Within a matter of weeks, they become habituated to it such that everyone's body automatically starts operating on that schedule, even if no one wakes them up in the morning. I am skeptical that there is a biological reason 20-50% of the population can't get up early because it doesn't seem to…

Night owl here. I've had points in life where school or work demanded I wake up early. After a few weeks I could go to bed and sleep at something approximating the time required for an appropriate night of rest and would automatically wake up at the time required - true. This sounds like success, but is significantly less so than it sounds: - It didn't change the time my body wants to do those things. - Waking up: I'…

I have the same feeling regarding much of what you said, with the slight difference that even though my body didn't feel the need to go to bed, strangely enough, after lying in bed for 20 minutes or so, I often fall asleep without noticing any sleepiness before that, just wide awake, and the next thing I know I am waking up in the morning.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#223

As the father of a 3 week old, I feel this! I've been very interested in getting more data about just how much and what kind of sleep I'm getting. I know smart watches these days claim to provide that. Anyone know how accurate it is, and which watches are best for it?

There is a YouTube channel called 'The Quantified Scientist' that scientifically ranks smart watches on various metrics - https://m.youtube.com/c/TheQuantifiedScientist

It was incredibly useful for me when I was in the market for a smart watch.

TL;DR if you want to track sleep, get an Apple Watch. Or if you are in the Android ecosystem go for one of the entry level Fitbits as they have pretty good tracking for their cost.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I don't come across as the "well ackshually" guy, and I'm not definitely telling you to change, but maybe this could be useful to you: the alcohol episode of Huberman Lab podcast mentioned briefly at about 1:02:40 that in a discussion with a UC Berkley sleep researcher, it was said that having any alcohol at all on board interferes with sleep to the point that those in the field call it pseudo-sleep because it…

Are you saying that my favorite fictional Medical Doctor (House) passing out on Bourbon every night due to insomnia is an inadequate prescription?

Alls I'm saying is that House might be distinctly grumpy because he's still not sleeping well..

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#225
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point may have been more that many people have chronotypes [1] that negate the benefits of changing a sleep schedule to something that fits your waking schedule. Doing this may allow for better time allocations, but comes at the cost of the effectiveness of your forced circadian rhythm. [1] https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/chronotypes

Oh no I might have accidentally stepped on a small land mine. Circadian rhythms aren’t permanent. If they were, international travel would be impossible for humans. Circadian rhythms are defined as entrainable, meaning adjustments to the environment must change the rhythm. I might have to walk this back some day, but right now that site you linked gives me vibes of homeopathy. There’s a non-zero amount of irony in as…

> Circadian rhythms aren’t permanent. If they were, international travel would be impossible for humans. Circadian rhythms are defined as entrainable, meaning adjustments to the environment must change the rhythm.

Sure. That's why I'm a night owl in every timezone.

You seem to be assuming that circadian rhythms are driven by some stable 24h/cycle oscillator, with an offset that can be changed with some effort, whether self-directed or in response to environment changes. But if that was the case, international travel would be a chore - you'd probably be back home before you finished adjusting.

The way I see it, circadian rhythms are more like the oscillator with a floating reference point, constantly adapting to environmental cues, and a stable offset that's near-impossible to change (probably genetically fixed). Under this model, international travel is easy - the body will quickly adjust the reference point to the new timezone, based on environmental cues, but the offset remains fixed. And this is what I observe - I'm a night owl in every timezone.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I envy those for whom this is the case. For me, I might be dead tired during the day, but I will spontaneously regain energy in the evening - enough to delay my bedtime a couple hours again. It's absurd and somewhat dangerous - if I ever pull an all-nighter on something, it's really important I force myself to go to sleep early the next day, because I will suddenly become full of energy again come 21:00 - 23:00, go t…

Like jet-lag it can take some time to adjust. But, also like jet-lag, you have to push through.

But unlike jet-lag, it reverts back to baseline as soon as you stop pushing.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#227
I can sleep 6~7 hours most nights and never wake up rested and energized. Usually I attribute this to getting older, but then once every couple months I wake up feeling like a young guy, full of energy... and can't really trace that back to diet or caffeine intake easily. Next thing I plan to try is some kind of optimism... I'm naturally a melancholic, a pessimist, like always thinking about the worst case kind of person and wonder how much all that worry (health, kids, savings, job...) affects the sleep.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also heard that the second is easier, but it is still some drain so we decided not to get a second one. I think it really depends on 1) How much energy one has stored before getting the kid, and 2) How easy/difficult the kid could be. It's definitely not just a few months. It has been 3 years for me and I don't really think it's going to end soon. Again this is just personal, not an average experience.

Difference between parental experience can be wild . Sometimes up to literal survivorship bias talk from other parents; can be mildly annoying but ultimately I always feel happy for them and their kid(s) that they just don’t seem to (want to?) really know better. Again, good for them - and us all - lest we’d have gone extinct long time ago ;)

I’ve also had a few friends who manage to burn out in every situation. They’ve burned out in every job they’ve ever had, they burned out in college, they burned out in high school, etc.

So of course, they’re burning out with parenting now too.

At some point, we have to acknowledge that personality plays a big role in this. Some people create their own stress in any situation.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A life changing thing for me was specifically scheduling time to do fun things in the morning before doing the things I have to do. If I wake up at six, I still don’t start my day until eight, and instead spend those two hours on things I otherwise would have done the night before. This broke the feeling of dreading mornings that lead to a negative spiral. Even if I know most of the day will be awful, if I can look f…

Wish this worked for me, but my brain straight up ignores[0] any kind of alarm clocks, music, light, etc. until it's something like 10:00 in the morning, or until a person wakes me up (and checks 5-10 minutes later if I'm actually up)[1]. So, shifting time to morning turned out to be impossible to maintain when I was living alone - I could hold such schedule for maybe a week at most, gradually oversleeping more and m…

Hey, feel free to disregard this as I obviously don't know you.

Have you considered if you might have ADD[0]?

I know someone with identical experiences and this was the root cause. Having the diagnosis was life changing.

[0] https://add.org/adhd-test/

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I envy those for whom this is the case. For me, I might be dead tired during the day, but I will spontaneously regain energy in the evening - enough to delay my bedtime a couple hours again. It's absurd and somewhat dangerous - if I ever pull an all-nighter on something, it's really important I force myself to go to sleep early the next day, because I will suddenly become full of energy again come 21:00 - 23:00, go t…

Like jet-lag it can take some time to adjust. But, also like jet-lag, you have to push through.

Do you have any reason to believe this applies to people who are not you?
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