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Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration (2023)

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Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration (2023)

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to argue a causative effect between one week of bad sleep and death potentially 10+ years out. Statistically—absolutely, I agree with you, but controls and sample sizes can always be improved. Narratively—it's also not difficult to see: "gunk builds up in brain; gunk requires regular removal; sleep removes gunk; stable sleep removes gunk better than unstable sleep" It's difficult to blame people for emoti…

It seems easier to see: "some people have lots of difficulties in their lives that makes them have an irregular sleep schedule; some people have lots of difficulties in their lives that makes them die early"

I would presume that they somehow controlled for this most obvious confounding factor. almost every experiment I find that they are naysayers (as important as they are) that assume someone just simply plotted a chi-squared distribution.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration (2023)

#57
post #7

Does anyone else consistently get 6 to 7 hours of sleep no matter what? It doesn't feel optimal and I feel great on the rare days I get 8 hours, but I can function just fine on less. Also cannot easily fall back asleep if woken up which is really frustrating.

This used to be a problem for me until I stopped drinking alcohol.

I used to think it was related to caffeine or work stress but cutting out drinking seems to have fixed all my sleep issues.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration (2023)

#58
post #2

Interesting, I have a DEC2 mutation and don't need much sleep, but I do sleep very consistently. When I was first working through this discovery, I asked the dr how it was that people who have this have no adverse effects when folks always say not sleeping long enough is bad for your health and he said "well, we don't really know that's true" and kinda shrugged it off.

I recall watching a documentary on Discovery way back, where they followed some multiday ultramaraton competitors. They'd draw blood samples, measure vitals and have them answer mental acuity questionnaires each time they stopped for food or sleep. The competitors limited themselves to power naps, max 30 minutes though often just ten minutes. The scientist found that all the physical adverse effects of sleep deprivat…

> The scientist found that all the physical adverse effects of sleep deprivation were negated by the short power naps. Though IIRC the mental acuity did drop some as the event progressed.

I assume you mixed these up?

There's two well-known extreme sleep schedules (Uberman 6x20m or Dymaxion 4x30m) that let you subsist on two hours of sleep a day, because you drop into REM sleep immediately. This however only clears up "brain fog". If you would do exercise on these sleep schedules, you would make little progress because muscle repair happens outside of REM sleep.

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration (2023)

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems easier to see: "some people have lots of difficulties in their lives that makes them have an irregular sleep schedule; some people have lots of difficulties in their lives that makes them die early"

I would presume that they somehow controlled for this most obvious confounding factor. almost every experiment I find that they are naysayers (as important as they are) that assume someone just simply plotted a chi-squared distribution.

> presume

Okay

Re: Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality than sleep duration (2023)

#60
post #49

After having a kid Ive wondered how all these sleep disruption means you'll die studies could actually be true. You'd think evolution would have taken care of it at some point

As far as evolution is concerned, you've already had the kid - you passed on your genes. If you survive long enough to make sure your kid reaches maturity, that's all that matters there.

Evolution can't select for anything that happens significantly past the birth of your progeny.

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