When I take a supplement with sulforaphane, I feel like I need less sleep.
I feel refreshed in the morning. Strange.
Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
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Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife needs 8-9 hours, whereas I can get by just fine with 5-6. She is a very light sleeper who will wake up 3-4 times every night; I can sleep through almost any noise, and never get up in the middle of the night. My son takes after me -- he seems to need significantly less sleep than other kids his age, but he's an extraordinarily deep sleeper. Anecdotal, but I think that sleep depth might have something to do wi…
I used to get by fine with 5-6 hours, too, until I started getting 7-8 and realized how much better I feel.
I have spent months at a time getting 7-8 (amid years of 5-6). I never notice any difference and am actually surprised my body can do 7-8 to no purpose.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#73We have no understanding of medicine.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#74So you can concentrate your energy on maintenance tasks, like memory consolidation and physical restoration, during the down time during which it is cold and dark -- when you can't effectively hunt and stay warm. If you did not do that, you would have to constantly allocate some energy towards these tasks, at the expense of more urgent ones. And the higher up you are in the food chain, the less risky it is to rest.
Which maintenance tasks, why does it require us to be unconscious, why can't we apply constant energy towards them? Lots of interesting questions to answer
Quiet, so as not to attract predators.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#75Whatever sleep does, it's something nature has had a tough time optimizing out despite the extreme vulnerability it creates and the sacrifice of a little under half an organism's waking time. That should tell us it's something incredibly important that's hard to do any other way. Edit: on the other hand... if Earth had two suns and rarely had periods of darkness, you wonder if maybe there would have been more evoluti…
Alternately, sleep is the optimal ultra-high-efficiency survival state and wakefulness only exists to give creatures enough time to get their affairs in order so that they can safely return to dormancy. It's easy to think of sleep as a compromise to be defeated because we're culturally preoccupied with the achievements and pleasures of wakefulness, but that's really just us claiming personal preference for one narrow…
I enjoy this flipped perspective.
The default and optimal state of a life form is waiting and efficiently using resources.
Moving around, socializing and reproducing, killing and eating, are all energy expenditures or necessary to be able to prolong the sleep-life. Annoyances, from the POV of the sleep-being.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternately, sleep is the optimal ultra-high-efficiency survival state and wakefulness only exists to give creatures enough time to get their affairs in order so that they can safely return to dormancy. It's easy to think of sleep as a compromise to be defeated because we're culturally preoccupied with the achievements and pleasures of wakefulness, but that's really just us claiming personal preference for one narrow…
I think one of our goals is to reduce entropy in the Universe, and being awake lets us do 100x more of that than if we were in low power mode
What kind of sleep are you having that is more entropic than your waking?
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#77The generations in my family are full of people who had dementia/Alzheimer's/auto-immune disorders. They all had anxiety, and they all had sleep disorders - I'm certain there is a connection among it all. I joined a Stanford study and had a spinal tap sample submitted for testing - in theory I am "unlikely" to develop anything for the next 20 years - but that only gets me to my late 60's :(
From what I've found, being overweight negatively affects sleep. As far as I can tell, the extra weight simply makes it hard to breathe at night, leading to apnea. This can then cause depression and anxiety, depression because you wake up tired and feeling awful every single day and anxiety because you may wake up with night terrors after suffocating in your sleep.
At least it's easy to get a home sleep apnea test and an APAP/CPAP these days.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I'm one of the people that needs a solid 7-8 of sleep or else I easily become agitated, and anxiety and OCD kick in quickly ... Would love for this to not be the case, if there was a way for me to need less sleep I would be very interested
Really? I thought I was the only one. Everyone around me seem to do fine with a good 3-5 hours of sleep. Before I lost weight, even if I had a good 7 hours of sleep, I'd still fall asleep at work. Now, even if I do get sleepy, a little moving around fixes things.
One thing to note, I have ADHD and have similar issues getting sleepy when understimulated no matter how much sleep I get at night. Getting up and moving around for stimulation helps.
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#79Running improved my sleep quality dramatically. Now the problem is, that if I take a day off running, my sleeping suffers. Curious if people that do weight lifting (which I'm considering) get great sleeps? Maybe I can alternate between cardio and weight lifting each day?
Re: Sleep is essential – researchers are trying to work out why
#80Running improved my sleep quality dramatically. Now the problem is, that if I take a day off running, my sleeping suffers. Curious if people that do weight lifting (which I'm considering) get great sleeps? Maybe I can alternate between cardio and weight lifting each day?
For me it really depends on when - if i go run after 8PM i definitely sleep worse.