41–50 of 102 posts
The whole “natural” thing is maybe a good source of ideas to try, but that’s it. A list of things that are totally unnatural: brushing teeth, antibiotics, painkillers, surgery, hip replacements, antidepressants, infant mortality below 10%, not dying of an ear infection, clean chlorinated water...
The Mother Nature's goodness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the readers, here's my actual argument ( https://guzey.com/theses-on-sleep/#comfortable-modern-sleep-... ): >1. Experiencing hunger is normal and does not necessarily imply that you are not eating enough. Never being hungry means you are probably eating too much. >2. Experiencing sleepiness is normal and does not necessarily imply that you are undersleeping. Never being sleepy means you are probably sleeping too…
Is there any way to not experience sleepiness or hunger? Do overweight people never experience hunger?
> This means that I’m gaining 33 days of life every year. 1 more year of life every 11 years. 5 more years of life every 55 years.
> Why are people not all over this?
Because that's not how humans work. You're gaining 33 days of being not-asleep in sum per year. More accurately, you're getting however many more minutes per wakeful period. And gaining minutes of being not-asleep per day is very different from "gaining days of life every year". Life != being awake. Things are happening during sleep. Useful things.
Personally, I spent many years doing what you're recommending when I was younger. Felt low-level sleepy all the time. Used caffeine off-and-on to blunt the effect. Now I've gotten into a good enough homeostasis that I don't need alarms and I don't oversleep. I never feel sleepy except for the moments before falling asleep at night or on the rare occasions where I have to wake up early. I love sleep now. I protect it and it protects me.
The quality of a day depends on how it was spent. The quality of a life is the summation of all those days. Adding 30 minutes to each day's wakeful period is not some huge gain in efficiency like you're making it out to be. And for me, gaining thirty more minutes actually makes the quality of the rest of the minutes in that day worse. I low-key despise society for making me think I needed to do more such that sacrificing my sleep and normal alertness for more time spent awake was a good trade.
I recommend looking into the concept of healthspan. Optimize for area under the curve, not time spent awake.
Does this simply not bother other people that much?
Irrelevant to the post, but relevant to sleeping--I fixed my trouble sleeping with candles. Right before I want to go to sleep, I darken the whole house, light one or two candles, and read a slow-paced book. 15 minutes to drowsiness, 5 minutes to sleep, every time. I'll even look at a blue-light screen right up until candle-time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the readers, here's my actual argument ( https://guzey.com/theses-on-sleep/#comfortable-modern-sleep-... ): >1. Experiencing hunger is normal and does not necessarily imply that you are not eating enough. Never being hungry means you are probably eating too much. >2. Experiencing sleepiness is normal and does not necessarily imply that you are undersleeping. Never being sleepy means you are probably sleeping too…
And here's an excerpt where you repeatedly say that modern sleep is unnatural. > Modern sleep, in its infinite comfort, is an unnatural superstimulus that overwhelms our brains with pleasure and comfort (note: I’m not saying that it’s bad, simply that being in bed today is much more pleasurable than being in “bed” in the past.) > Think about sleep 10,000 years ago. You sleep in a cave, in a hut, or under the sky, wit…
> My sleep statistics tells me that I slept an average of 5:25 hours over the last 7 days, 5:49 hours over the last 30 days, and 5:57 over the last 180 days hours, meaning that I’m awake for 18 hours per day instead of 16.5 hours. I usually sleep 5.5-6 hours during the night and take a nap a few times a week when sleepy during the day. > This means that I’m gaining 33 days of life every year. 1 more year of life ever…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, and here's conclusion of this argument: >Now, what if the only sleep available to you was modern sleep? > 1. If you don’t sleep at all, you go crazy, because some amount of sleep is necessary. > 2. If you sleep just enough to be awake during the day, you’ll be dreaming of getting a nap at the sight of a bed and will be distracted and sleepy all the time. Importantly, I claim, in this situation, the feeling of sl…
You may attempt to apply the same analogy to drinking water, and see that it doesn't work. If you drink as much as you want, then you'll probably drink too much (with whatever negative consequences arising as a result). But, except for some extreme circumstances, I don't think people drink much more than is necessary to quench their thirst. That is your conclusion might still be correct, but it doesn't follow from th…
Irrelevant to the post, but relevant to sleeping--I fixed my trouble sleeping with candles. Right before I want to go to sleep, I darken the whole house, light one or two candles, and read a slow-paced book. 15 minutes to drowsiness, 5 minutes to sleep, every time. I'll even look at a blue-light screen right up until candle-time.
A friend of mine did that. Burned her house down, killed her pets (fish), and barely survived herself. She now recommends not leaving candles burning unattended. There might be a battery-powered candle-like LED thing that gets the same results.