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Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

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Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#61

Post by darkerside »

freehunter wrote: post #46
eigenspace wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is meant is that there are long term health consequences of sleep deprivation and you can’t cancel those effects by oversleeping the next couple days after an all nighter.

I'm not a sleep scientist but it sounds pretty logical to me. If I'm chopping vegetables for dinner and I cut myself with the knife, it takes time to heal. But chances are it's never going to be completely healed. There will be a scar. If I cut myself with a knife then for the next few days I don't cut myself with a knife, the wound will heal but the scar will remain. I can't cut myself one day and then go several da…

We actually do celebrate athletes' physical sacrifices. Think marathon runners pushing across the finish line, or a running back selling out for the touchdown. It's probably something wired into us as human beings. Just a side note. Your analogy is on point and helpful.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#62

Post by gonehome »

coldtea wrote: post #3

> Sleep is not like the bank, so you can't accumulate a debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time. And the reason is this: We know that if I were to deprive you of sleep for an entire night — take away eight hours — and then in the subsequent night I give you all of the sleep that you want, however much you wish to consume, you never get back all that you lost. You will sleep longer, but you will neve…

Yeah this quote sounds like something that someone would say when they don’t actually understand the underlying system.

It doesn’t follow that if you miss eight hours of sleep you’d need 16 to catch up - maybe some processes take a standard amount of time and don’t need to be repeated, it might be more efficient when you’re already asleep to fix things in an extra two hours than an entire extra eight.

Something is fishy with the quote’s assumptions. It strikes me as something probably untrue that we’d understand with more information about what sleep is actually doing.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#63

Post by internetman55 »

afarrell wrote: post #44
andor wrote: post #23

Apart from quantity, quality of sleep is also important. I just realized how much a little light can disturb sleep. My blinds are opaque but hung 1-2 cm from the window frame, letting in just a few unwanted photons. I temporarily taped the blinds to the frame, leaving the room in almost complete darkness. I haven't felt this rested in years. Do try this at home!

An $8 sleeping mask is another good option.

I use these!

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#64

Post by roryisok »

hello_1234 wrote: post #58
coldtea wrote: post #3

> Sleep is not like the bank, so you can't accumulate a debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time. And the reason is this: We know that if I were to deprive you of sleep for an entire night — take away eight hours — and then in the subsequent night I give you all of the sleep that you want, however much you wish to consume, you never get back all that you lost. You will sleep longer, but you will neve…

If you lose a piece of an old memory from sleep deprivation, you are not going to magically get it back once you catch up on your sleep. It has happened to me when I pulled all-nighters. I just couldn't remember that friend's name or that old password.

And you still don't remember that friends name?

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#66

Post by corysama »

giardini wrote: post #60
andor wrote: post #23

Apart from quantity, quality of sleep is also important. I just realized how much a little light can disturb sleep. My blinds are opaque but hung 1-2 cm from the window frame, letting in just a few unwanted photons. I temporarily taped the blinds to the frame, leaving the room in almost complete darkness. I haven't felt this rested in years. Do try this at home!

Easier yet, use any opaque dark cloth (bath towel, handkerchief, etc.) and drape it over your eyes so that all light is extinguished. I take a nap every afternoon preferably at 1:15 p.m.. I waken 20 minutes later, refreshed and ready for the rest of the day.

I’ve started throwing a black t shirt over my eyes at night. Looks stupid, but it works.

1) I thought I had lost my ability to sleep in when needed because of my age. Turns out I’m just more sensitive to light.

2) It even helps in the middle of a dark night. It’s a little darker, a little quieter, a little warmer. There was a paper recently about how maybe REM sleep warms the brain. Maybe there was something to nightcaps as well.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#67

Post by flowless »

bloopernova wrote: post #50
mwwilson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that different wavelengths effect sleep hormones differently. My less than educated guess would be that evolutionarily speaking there are different optimal sleep environment cycles based on wavelength, intensity, and temperature variables depending on location and habits of ancestors.

You're absolutely right, our body most definitely reacts in different ways to different wavelengths of light. A specific green has been shown to help reduce pain. [1] 525 nm seems to be the magic wavelength in this particular case. I'm a chronic acute pain sufferer. I'd love for something as simple as an array of green LEDs to help with my pain. I keep meaning to get a large breadboard, a bunch of LEDs, and make such…

I have an amibilight built around WS2812 LED strip and esp8266. I use it to display a colorful rotating gradient during a day and as a night light with red color.

Small Haskell program using reactive-banana-automation feeds simple nodemcu firmware every second with UDP packets. It's quite easy to build RGB light this way as only one signal wire is required.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#68

Post by zhte415 »

jmartrican wrote: post #29

I'm no expert but I thought that the whole 8 hour a night thing was not true, at least not for everyone. If I force myself to get 8 hours of sleep, by forcing myself to stay in bed after I wake up, I get a headache. If I let myself wake up on its own without an alarm, it averages around 6.5 hours. If I get below that, then at some point I will sleep more than the 6.5 hours, and maybe even 8 hours. So from personal ex…

In all kindness, the stream of thought without any structure in your comment suggests taking some time to lie back, relax, and let the world go by.

Chill out for 30 minutes by doing nothing.

Re: Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'

#69

Post by ben0x539 »

Lio wrote: post #48

This is unrelated to the article but I love that npr.org allows opting out of tracking and in exchange for a plain text version of the site. I’ll happily give up eye candy for privacy and I’m sure it’s much cheaper for them to serve bandwidth wise.

Yeah it's great

Plain text link: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=558058812

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