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Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

nytimes.com

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Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#71

Post by pharrington »

hive_mind wrote: post #66
pharrington wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your anecdotal experience is far from uncommon. For the article to even imply this as any sort of cure for depression, though, massively misinterprets the small amount of research on this. edit: And as a sibling comment mentioned, we do know that cognition suffers immensely when sleep-deprived.

I was thinking maybe the poorer cognition actually helps relieve the depression. Because a lot of depressives overthink (some past event, etc).

While you are certainly less able to overthink in that state, the euphoria is a discrete phenomenon. The euphoria and poorer high-level cognition seem not to be caused by each other (obviously discounting any cyclical feedback effects once they're both in play), but instead caused by the same process.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#72

Post by anigbrowl »

I'm sure it works great for some people and very poorly for others. I am disappointed by this headline though. While the story is interesting, 'can X CURE depression?!'is basically clickbaity bullshit, and if the NYT is serious about the value of journalism it should abandon clickbaiting as a strategy, for two reasons. One, it's because of shullshit headlines like this that people in general distrust the media in general. Two, people who suffer from depression are really suffering, and exploiting that (and the suffering of their caregivers) for an eye-grabbing headline that's basically bullshit is an unethical exploitation of their medical condition for profit.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#73

Post by krrrh »

emersonrsantos wrote: post #32

This is very interesting. I hope to see treatments that not only uses melatonin and environmental light, but one that also modifies artificial light (indoor/computer/phone/TV/etc...) to optimize wellness. Kind of a F.lux of Things.

One option is wearing blue-blocking sunglasses in the evening. It's cheap, and I know a couple of people who do it and believe it has helped with sleep.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#74

Post by krrrh »

surfmike wrote: post #41
nlh wrote: post #38

The section in the article on jet lag mitigation was extremely confusing -- the author wrote of evening light and morning light but was unclear which time zone he was referring to. Can someone explain a bit more clearly? If someone is traveling from SF to Europe or SF to Asia, when should melatonin and light be used optimally?

Not sure what is optimal, but I find melatonin 30min before the normal bedtime in a new country helps a lot (3mg day one, 1-2mg days two and three; 3 days total).

Interesting point here, if you search old HN discussions you can find a reference, but 200-250ug is the effective dose for melatonin, and larger amounts have a slightly decreased effect. I know it's never sold this way, but it's something you might want to experiment with (quartering 1mg pills or taking a few drops of a 10mg/ml liquid works well here).

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#75

Post by forgottenpass »

outside1234 wrote: post #48
bnjms wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand this argument. Noon should be when the sun is roughly directly overhead. And there will be no increase in daylight compared to businesses adjusting working hours to open an hour earlier.

I never understand why people care what number it is on a wall when the sun is anywhere. I go even further with this and say the whole world should be on the same clock. Who cares if it says 03:00 when you eat dinner or 17:00 when you eat breakfast - and think how much easier it will be to plan anything that spans timezones!

think how much easier it will be to plan anything that spans timezones

Unless you expect all the Auzzies to move to the night shift, it just becomes more of a pain in the ass. You still have to line the phase of the day and timezones help simplify that by doing the work upfront.

You could switch to only using UTC outright for all your planning today. But even if you do, you'll find there is still a translation step of figuring out that business hours at location X are Y-Z UTC. Timezones make juggling the offsets easier, and also give you a stronger ability to roughly predict someone's schedule (like what time the business day starts, or not planning something during their lunch) just based on geography.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#77

Post by Kluny »

stretchwithme wrote: post #37

I don't know about sleep and depression. My Mom was bipolar and the topic never came up, other than her being up to all hours when she was manic. But I recently read an interesting article about vitamin D and that lead me to supplement magnesium and vitamins D, A and K. I only do it once every three days to be conservative. http://www.precisionnutrition.com/stop-vitamin-d And I've found I'm much more decisive and lik…

I also did some reading about vitamins last year and ended up taking vitamin d for a while, then magnesium for a while. My method wasn't any more scientific than that, but the vitamin D had no noticeable effect, while the effect of magnesium was dramatic. I was suffering from mood swings, poor concentration and low energy serious enough that I was considering seeing a psychologist about depression. Magnesium seems to eliminate the problem completely.

I just wish there was a better way to figure out your deficiency than just popping some pills and wait to see what happens. A weekly blood test for vitamin levels combined with mood and health journaling would probably give me the kind of data I'm looking for, but that only seems to be available in science fiction so far.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#78

Post by krrrh »

benevol wrote: post #58

If you suffer from depression, you should thoroughly research LSD and then make your fully informed personal decision. On the negative side, this substance may become one of the reasons the pharmaceutical industry will lose recurrent revenues from disappearing dependency on expensive anti-depressants.

The research on Ketamine as a one-shot cure is very promising too. Microdosing of LSD or psilocybin also has some interesting anecdsta behind it. There is definitely a lot of research to be done on these and other psychotropics like Ayahuasca/DMT, and MDMA. Organizations like MAPS are starting to get this work done.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#79

Post by manyxcxi »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #65
stretchwithme wrote: post #37

I don't know about sleep and depression. My Mom was bipolar and the topic never came up, other than her being up to all hours when she was manic. But I recently read an interesting article about vitamin D and that lead me to supplement magnesium and vitamins D, A and K. I only do it once every three days to be conservative. http://www.precisionnutrition.com/stop-vitamin-d And I've found I'm much more decisive and lik…

Do you mind me asking what age you are? >last December I became a morning person using early morning light and exercise // Where do you live that gets light on December mornings?

>>last December I became a morning person using early morning light and exercise // >Where do you live that gets light on December mornings?

It could just be that stretchwithme just turns on all the lights, etc. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I know all about waking up and leaving in the dark and coming home to the dark in the winter time.

I do a similar thing in the mornings, though I didn't ever consciously decide to be a morning person. I go to bed at pretty normal times between 9 and 10PM most nights. If I wake up any time before 1:30 or 2AM and keep all the nights off and fumble through the dark I'll be able to get back to sleep no problem. If I have to flip on a light it will take me much longer to get back to sleep.

If it's after about 2:30 or 3:00AM, there's no way I'm going back to bed- and I'm going to be supplementing with copious amounts of coffee to keep my face from dragging on the floor all day.

After about 4:00, I'm fine. Without an alarm I usually start waking up a little after 4:00 and my routine usually has me out of the house about 30 minutes from deciding to get out of bed.

The first thing I do is review my To Do list for the day on my phone. 2 reasons: 1) I start crunching on it in my head as I'm going about the morning routine, and 2) the blast of light (even w/ night mode still on) is like a jolt to get me moving when it's otherwise pitch black.

Re: Can sleep deprivation cure depression?

#80

Post by weaksauce »

bnjms wrote: post #23
weaksauce wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we would all go on DST and be done with it forever. The extra hour of usable daylight after work is a net win for societies mental health. We have farming machines that do the heavy lifting and are mostly automated now anyway. Unlike when it was enacted, there simply are much fewer farmers.

I will never understand this argument. Noon should be when the sun is roughly directly overhead. And there will be no increase in daylight compared to businesses adjusting working hours to open an hour earlier.

> And there will be no increase in daylight compared to businesses adjusting working hours to open an hour earlier.

That's just not how it works. it's much easier to have one entity say this is the time. having every business open up an hour earlier without some decree is not tenable because of tradition and change inertia.

the noon argument is not very compelling to me.

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