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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)

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hoped I’d grow out of wanting to sleep ~3-11am but it’s just never happened. No matter how tired I am during the day, I get a second wind around 8pm and have to force myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour during the work week because I won’t get sleepy, even if I stay away from screens. Unfortunately I really enjoy night time, so I regularly completely fail at that task. I can’t remember the last time I w…

Do you drink any caffeine?

Usually just one cup of coffee on weekday mornings, but in general caffeine does not seem to perk me up, keep me awake, or have any noticeable effect besides jump starting my digestive system. I could (and have done, in the past) have a coffee at 2am and go to sleep around 3 no problem.

In my adult life I have ranged between 5-6 cups a day when I used to go into the office and none at all during periods where I just fell out of the habit of making any.

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

#82
post #79

Sleep is like drinking water. No one says, "I'm gonna get dehydrated right now and then drink a lot more water later so it's OK." But people do this for sleep. You need to sleep right when you're tired, because being tired is a stress that will need more time to heal the longer it goes. Sleep timing is underrated but it is just as important as quality and amount.

[deleted]

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

#83
post #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.

> As far as evolution is concerned, you've already had the kid - you passed on your genes

A second child would help with that too.

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

#84
post #79

Sleep is like drinking water. No one says, "I'm gonna get dehydrated right now and then drink a lot more water later so it's OK." But people do this for sleep. You need to sleep right when you're tired, because being tired is a stress that will need more time to heal the longer it goes. Sleep timing is underrated but it is just as important as quality and amount.

> Sleep regularity was a stronger predictor of all-cause mortality than sleep duration, by comparing equivalent mortality models, and by comparing nested SRI-mortality models with and without sleep duration (p = 0.14–0.20). These findings indicate that sleep regularity is an important predictor of mortality risk and is a stronger predictor than sleep duration.

Not totally disagreeing with you, but this indicates that it is _more_ important than the latter two when concerned with all-cause mortality.

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

#85
when I worked in UK doing shift work work gave me bonuses and pamphlets on the health costs for working through the graveyard shift regularly. The management initially wanted us to do weekly rotations of 3 shifts we tried for a month and it was undeniably sure fire way to die early. So we decided we'd rather do monthly shifts, it worked mostly ok except heading into winter I didn't get to see the sun for a while.

nowadays I still do some kind of on-call hours, and I think being on call should pay a butt load more honestly.

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

#86
post #85

when I worked in UK doing shift work work gave me bonuses and pamphlets on the health costs for working through the graveyard shift regularly. The management initially wanted us to do weekly rotations of 3 shifts we tried for a month and it was undeniably sure fire way to die early. So we decided we'd rather do monthly shifts, it worked mostly ok except heading into winter I didn't get to see the sun for a while. now…

Subtitling: "Graveyard shift is a work shift running through the late hours of the night through the early hours of the morning, typically from midnight until 8 am."

I was wondering if you actually did some job on a graveyard at night or if there was a second meaning there. Good I looked that up...

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

#87
I found the best way to ensure sleep regularity is by having a fixed wake-up time. If you don’t have one and you begin to set your alarm clock to early hours, the first weeks doing so will feel like hell. But eventually all will be worth it. The sleepiness during the day will disappear and, at night, your body will naturally want to get some rest early.

Another strategy is to fill your day with deep work and exercise, so as to ensure maximum tiredness at night.

Nowadays, my sleeping patterns are mostly regular thanks to these protocols. Every day about 9pm, I feel sleepy, and my bed begins to look very enticing. I follow this pattern for my daily well-being, but it’s nice to know it reduces my mortality risk, too.

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

#88
post #87

I found the best way to ensure sleep regularity is by having a fixed wake-up time. If you don’t have one and you begin to set your alarm clock to early hours, the first weeks doing so will feel like hell. But eventually all will be worth it. The sleepiness during the day will disappear and, at night, your body will naturally want to get some rest early. Another strategy is to fill your day with deep work and exercise…

I did that for years with jobs that required it and didn’t find that worked for me.

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone whose natural sleep cycle seems to be closer to 26-28 hours, and whose preferred sleeping hours in a 24-hour cycle are 6am to 2-3pm... I commend you. Sincerely, someone forced into a "normal" schedule by kids school start times and, well, everything else too, I suppose.

I really hoped I’d grow out of wanting to sleep ~3-11am but it’s just never happened. No matter how tired I am during the day, I get a second wind around 8pm and have to force myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour during the work week because I won’t get sleepy, even if I stay away from screens. Unfortunately I really enjoy night time, so I regularly completely fail at that task. I can’t remember the last time I w…

Getting up at 11 sounds workable though. I have a colleague that regularly starts at 11, may be having sleep issues (they mentioned something but I don't know if that's always the reason), nobody seems to mind. My problem is that, during holidays, 13:37 seems to somehow be a very common time for me to get out of bed (suspiciously often around that minute, making me think it's a bias rather than coincidence)... so more like going to bed when the sun and birds would otherwise get annoying to fall asleep with

People speak of teenagers having a different sleep cycle but I'm now suspecting that, rather than that you'd grow out of your body's schedule, it's just that you don't complain to your toddler and expect them to understand and shift your job of entertaining them to later in the day. Same story at work; also a factor most teenagers don't have in the same way. So you suck it up and fall into a new rhythm that kinda works too

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. I've often thought that my actual rhythm is for a 25-26 hour day. I was going to write that but it seemed like too much to explain. As I go to bed later and later, eventually I find myself awake past sunrise, which is usually the day when I'll intentionally have a short sleep and snap back to an early bedtime that night. Kids would definitely screw up this aspect of my lifestyle lol. But kids give you immortalit…

> I've often thought that my actual rhythm is for a 25-26 hour day To be fair, we're all like this. The average length of Circadian Cycle is closer to 25h than 24h when isolated: https://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/info/cycle_length.ph...

I was all ready to agree because I always feel I want >24h, but that link is actually correcting earlier studies finding 25h to say no it is more like 24h on average (once isolated from screens)?
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