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Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

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Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#41

Post by scotch_drinker »

miri wrote: post #35

The sleep bits are (probably - don't know very much about the topic) ok, but once it gets to diet, it goes right into la-la-land. It is riddled with misinformation and the belief that a "raw food diet" fixes all. A raw food diet might make you lose weight, and it might get you food poisoning, but that's about it. For more information, I recommend C0nc0rdance's youtube videos on raw food. For other clearly wrong, or w…

Gluten sensitivity ranges from the coeliac disease on the extreme end of the continuum down to mild inflammation of the small intestine. Gluten sensitivity is NOT just about coeliac disease. There is a growing body of evidence that gluten is in fact a problem in our diets and it's not as clear cut as you present that if you don't have coeliac, you can eat all the wheat you want. I'm not sure there's any "should" to eating wheat/gluten. There are other more nutritional ways to get protein.

Since this is an article on hacking sleep, I think it's worth mentioning. Try dropping gluten/wheat/bread from your diet for 30 days and see if your sleep improves. I know that mine has. If it doesn't, great, you are golden. If it does, you've learned something.

Facts or not, the article is about improving your sleep. Some people are sensitive to dairy and wheat. Try going without them for 30 days and see what happens. It's all a big experiment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_sensitivity

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#42

Post by infinite8s »

miri wrote: post #38
DanielStraight wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.S. at least, a normal, healthy diet is something of a contradiction. Michael Pollan wouldn't need to promote "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" if people were doing it already. I agree with you completely on your other points, but telling some people to eat a "normal" diet will be interpreted as, "eat out of fast food restaurants and freezer cases," because for many in the U.S., that is a normal diet.

Oh, a "normal" diet varies a lot depending where you are. Myself, I'm in Norway, and the diet here is fairly healthy if somewhat short on vegetables (especially during the winter). I'm sure most other "normal" diets in the world are quite ok, as well. Might need some added vegetables, depending on where you are (the Dutch probably don't need any extra), but mostly, people who are able to afford normal amounts of food…

Is kale available in Norway? According to most sources (for example, this simple comparison chart: www.wholefoodsmarket.com/pdfs/superfoods.pdf), kale is a super food, and in the US at least, grows well during the winter months.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#43

Post by semerda »

Problem today is we spend a lot of time in front of back lit devices like smart phones, laptops/pcs & tv's before bed time. Therefore our melatonin levels stay low. I've been supplementing with melatonin tables to help with sleep before bed and I get an awesome night sleep.

Also things already covered like regular exercise (w/ weights), sleeping in a pitch dark room and consistent sleep & wake time work wonders.

I blogged about some of this last year here: http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2009/09/24/sleep-less-and-have...

Enjoy. ~ Ernest

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#44

Post by fauigerzigerk »

JoelSutherland wrote: post #39
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great to hear you have an opinion on the way I express my opinion. Do you also have an opinion on the matter itself?

The matter itself is a list of sleep hacks. The worst thing about Scribd is the way it obligates people to ruin perfectly good HN threads with meta-commentary.

You do have a point and I was aware of that unfortunate side-effect of my comment. I'm doing it rarely. But this is also a site for people who make decisions on how stuff is published on the web and how to monetize it, etc. So I think it's not completely useless to have that kind of meta debate sometimes.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#45

Post by jules »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #13
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #8

It would be interesting to read but I have to say it's just too infuriating what that Scribd crap does to the web. They ruin a perfectly good way of displaying documents just so they can "solve" the problem they created themselves. That's just ridiculous and I will never ever again click on or upvote anything that has a scribd URL. Scribd truely shows the ugliest face of the ad funded web. It's innovation turned on i…

The trouble with Scribd is it tries to legitimize PDF for browsing. We'd be better served by a tool that rescues the text and images from the boneheaded universal print-derived layout that assumes a very high resolution portrait display and pointlessly huge margins. Google has a lot of trouble with this, but bless them for trying.

I find PDFs a pleasure to read. They are better typeset, the lines aren't ridiculously long, the fonts look beautiful and the pages give me a feel of how much I've read.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#46

Post by jules »

achompas wrote: post #25
rtra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried running, but it didn't help at all. the only thing that has worked, so far, has been a strict meal/sleep schedule and melatonin.

Have you tried lifting weights? That could be the physical exertion you need.

Running is way more exhausting than weight lifting. If you're not exhausted, run faster and longer. You can't do the same with weight lifting. You can get your arms tired, but your arms will give up long before you run out of energy.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#47

Post by patrickk »

jules wrote: post #46
achompas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried lifting weights? That could be the physical exertion you need.

Running is way more exhausting than weight lifting. If you're not exhausted, run faster and longer. You can't do the same with weight lifting. You can get your arms tired, but your arms will give up long before you run out of energy.

Also, running on a track or anywhere that is not a treadmill is much more exhausting than using a treadmill. The treadmill does some of the work for you. It also makes you more prone to injuring yourself, as happened to me. In short, the are much better places to run than on a treadmill.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#48

Post by kareemm »

jules wrote: post #46
achompas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried lifting weights? That could be the physical exertion you need.

Running is way more exhausting than weight lifting. If you're not exhausted, run faster and longer. You can't do the same with weight lifting. You can get your arms tired, but your arms will give up long before you run out of energy.

If you're lifting weights with your arms, you're probably doing it wrong.

Try the olympics lifts: power cleans and snatches and squat cleans and snatches. Or their components: deadlifts, front squats, presses. Or back squats and thrusters. Do a bunch of those in rapid succession and your whole body will be much more tired than doing a 5k run, guaranteed.

Re: Sleep Hacks: The Geek's Guide to Optimizing Sleep

#49

Post by jules »

kareemm wrote: post #48
jules wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running is way more exhausting than weight lifting. If you're not exhausted, run faster and longer. You can't do the same with weight lifting. You can get your arms tired, but your arms will give up long before you run out of energy.

If you're lifting weights with your arms, you're probably doing it wrong. Try the olympics lifts: power cleans and snatches and squat cleans and snatches. Or their components: deadlifts, front squats, presses. Or back squats and thrusters. Do a bunch of those in rapid succession and your whole body will be much more tired than doing a 5k run, guaranteed.

This is not my experience. After a couple you won't be able to lift anymore, but you won't really be exhausted either. At least I can't lift any more just because my muscles fail. I don't regularly lift weights though, so perhaps if you're more experienced you can. That said, you don't need experience to get exhausted running (but the tendency of many people is to stop long before that point).
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