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Impacts of lack of sleep

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Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#91

Post by dathinab »

jugg1es wrote: post #31
dvh wrote: post #3

Is 8h sleep from 22:00 to 6:00 qualitatively equivalent to 8h sleep from 00:00 to 8:00?

There are multiple studies that show that the time that you sleep does matter. There is a higher risk of diabetes and obesity for people who sleep during the day and are awake at night. I'm not saying this to be a buzz kill, I really wish it wasn't true. Anecdotally, I used to keep very, very late hours and sleep a lot of the day - and I did this for years. I thought I was fine. Once I established a normal day/night…

It's less the time, and more how it interacts with the rest of your live.

Like the bodies instinct related to light amount and how you allow your body to sleep getting out of sync.

Or how day time tends to be more noisy and as such is more likely to disrupt your sleep.

Or how meeting people fits less into your sleep cycle.

Or how most people are not night active all the time, but switch between periods of night shifts and e.g. not being night active on your free days (because you e.g. can't go to the SPA at 2am).

Or how bright lights, even such advertised as daylight lights, often do not replace day light properly.

Etc.

So, while the time doesn't matter directly in practice having a "off" cycle is much much more likely to affect your life implicitly in negative ways then a more day aligned cycle.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#92

Post by uejfiweun »

echelon wrote: post #54

I've had trouble with sleep since I was a kid. - I'm a night owl. The rest of the world runs on mornings, and I hate it. (Working with west coast / remote has made this much easier. Seldom any 10 AM meetings.) - Work / life balance is impossible if you're trying to do anything substantial outside of work. You have to find time to get it done, and losing sleep is the easiest thing to do.

+1, I also work a remote west coast job from the east coast. I haven't set an alarm since 2020 (apart from a few early flights). It's been great.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#93

Post by darwingr »

uoaei wrote: post #17

My sleep problem is not that I can't fall asleep when in bed, it's that I can't tell myself to go to the bed to sleep. I think it's some kind of chronic FOMO / productivity bug, but obviously it results in lowered productivity overall because of my effectiveness when fatigued. Has anyone else addressed this issue in their own lives or know some resources tailored to this problem to learn how to better approach bedtim…

I have this too. Someone had a good list of things to be doing to optimize your environment. They definitely help. I would add: 1. putting on pyjamas at a certain time every day (e.g. 9:30 pm). 2. not eating anything after 8-9 pm, only drinking water. 3. have other activities like reading to do in the 1-2 hours before bed. 4. no stimulants in the afternoon. No chocolate in the evening. (easy to ignore but makes a big difference).

The biggest psychological bad-habit I had to get over was ignoring my body/mind when I felt tired. If that means falling asleep in weird places, slightly earlier than expected or when there was still something I felt I needed to do, then just accept defeat for that day and let sleep take you over. Allowing my ego to accept defeat at the end of every day, to let sleep be the victor, that is the best way I can frame it for myself. In the end we're creatures that need sleep and to deny my own biology in that regard will lead to my own undoing.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#94

Post by mikenew »

mettamage wrote: post #33
mikenew wrote: post #15

I've struggled with sleep for as long as I can remember. I have improved it considerably in the past year (still not perfect). Out of the dozens upon dozens of things I've tried, here's what I think made the most difference, in order of importance. 1. Very consistent bedtime and wake up time. +/- 30 minutes, but ideally less. Obviously if you struggle with sleep you can't count on falling asleep at the same time, but…

A couple of things worked on there for me as well, but the biggest one for me personally is 0.3mg of melatonin I started with 3mg, way too much, went to 1.5mg, still too much. Then did 0.7mg, that was fine but still some small side effects. Then 0.4mg that was fine. Then 0.2mg, that didn't work. Then I did 0.3mg and it seemed to be the sweet spot. I can just barely perceive it working and it is just enough to make me…

My understanding is that melatonin is a threshold kind of thing, so it makes sense to dial in a specific dose. For me I found that 1mg gave me as much "get to sleep" effect as 10mg, so I would just use 1. I wasn't able to find dosages less than 1mg so I never experimented further.

For me, I took melatonin before bed for a month or two and then stopped, and when I stopped I didn't notice my time-until-sleep being any different. My assumption is that my natural melatonin production eventually started happening at the right time once my circadian rhythm was fixed and the supplemental melatonin wasn't needed.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#95

Post by acuozzo »

fleddr wrote: post #65
Afton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is like "people who are overweight: lose weight". Well gee I never thought of that before, I guess I'll go right out and do it. I certainly won't continue lying awake between 3-5am 2-4 times a week now that I know it's important. /s

There's no need to be cynical. Out of all the health problems one might have, improving sleep is the easiest to fix with the biggest immediate benefits. Further, many issues people claim to have with sleep are self-inflicted, excuses, or solvable. When you improve your sleep, you're not missing out on pleasures in a way a strict diet may rob you of the goodies in life. You don't sacrifice anything with better sleep.

> Out of all the health problems one might have, improving sleep is the easiest to fix

… when the sleep problem is internal. Dependents with their own sleep problems are not often dealt with easily.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#96

Post by a-and »

If there is any meta advice I've learned from developing good sleeping habits it would be "Learn your own nervous system". Anecdotally I've seen varying responses to different lifestyle factors, so experimentation should be part of your plan if you want to optimize your sleep.

I've personally found a lot of success with:

  - Deliberate relaxation - I found the muscle relaxation technique incredibly valuable ( https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sleep/fall-asleep-fast )
  - Sleep in a cold, dark room 
  - Limited phone time - mindless scrolling is fine if it helps me relax, but not if it amps me up
What I haven't found matters for me:

  - Strenuous exercise - I've found that training late at night (I compete in powerlifting) and going to bed immediately after leads to very deep, restful sleep
  - Caffeine timing - to an extent timing matters, but daily amount is by far the biggest driver for sleep quality
  - Meditation - it affected sleep adversely and even though very calm and level, I felt substantially more awake after meditation

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#97

Post by brimble »

fleddr wrote: post #36
brimble wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a medieval king who decided their castle should be lit up like day at nighttime, hundreds of candles in mirror-walled rooms, 365 days a year, and also that the entire castle save only the bed chamber would host the finest entertainers and all the most interesting friends and strangers in the world, party games and amusements in a hundred palace rooms, and a mage who could show the king any wonder of the world…

You're absolutely right. I'm supposedly a "night owl" and "not a morning person" but it's total nonsense. I've spent considerable time in my travels in tropical nations. Two days there and I'm a completely different person. The day starts at 5:30 AM, as soon as light arrives. And will you look at that, I'm jumping out of bed full of energy. Absolutely unimaginable back home. It's made possible because life slows down…

Yeah, I didn't stick with it (it's really hard to resist the temptation, including temptation to try to be productive at night) but because I tried it I do know now that I'm not a night owl, at all. I'm just a normal person in the West in this century. Which manifests as living like a night owl.

I admit my speculation that this explains at least 50% of modern sleep difficulty in developed countries is not based on hard data, but I'd say it's a pretty damn solid hypothesis. Yet everything's all "take magnesium" or "exercise more" or "use redshift" or whatever. Which is probably helpful, but seems like it's ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that we might have too much and too good always-available entertainment (and our lighting situation... after I got used to using candles, which was much faster than I expected, normal electric room lighting was shockingly bright, like I couldn't understand how I thought it was desirable or even OK before).

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#98

Post by nickjj »

hashimotonomora wrote: post #34
mikenew wrote: post #15

I've struggled with sleep for as long as I can remember. I have improved it considerably in the past year (still not perfect). Out of the dozens upon dozens of things I've tried, here's what I think made the most difference, in order of importance. 1. Very consistent bedtime and wake up time. +/- 30 minutes, but ideally less. Obviously if you struggle with sleep you can't count on falling asleep at the same time, but…

It may seem paradoxical but also not worrying about sleep itself, not writing down lists, not trying to dissect and optimize sleep, may actually improve your sleep much more. Animals have slept and evolved for literally millions of years. Unless there’s an actual clinical condition, having faith in your own body and just relaxing should be enough. At least that’s my case.

> just relaxing should be enough. At least that’s my case.

Yep, this is a very important one.

I've been fortunate enough to have a pretty good ability to fall asleep and generally wake up feeling rested. Most nights I'll wrap up with a movie and often times I'll fall asleep in what feels like about 10 minutes after I decide "ok, I'm going to sleep now".

I believe this is very tied into not feeling like I must wake up at a specific time. It allows me to goto sleep when I'm tired and wake up when I naturally wake up. There's no laying down and thinking "ok it's 11:17pm, I have to be up at 7am". This could easily turn into "it's now 11:58pm, why can't I sleep, crap I have to be up in 7 hours" to "...how the heck is it 1:30am, this is bad, I need to be up in 5.5 hours" and now you're done for, your sleep quality is going to be bad because you'll for sure think if you can't fall asleep in a few minutes you're going to risk sleeping through any alarm.

But without the pressure of having to be up on a schedule, 99.99% of the time if I went to bed at 11pm I'll be up at about 6:30am or 7am without an alarm and feel good about it.

This has happened to me time and time again. Any time where something comes up and I "must" be up at an early hour with alarm it affects my ability to fall asleep the night before. Usually the more important the thing is the harder it will be to fall asleep. Like ensuring I'm up to catch a flight or anything with a hard line on the time.

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#99

Post by wellthisisgreat »

Seeing "caffeine" after substance abuse/addiction is really an eye-rolling moment. Sure sleeping is important. But coffee = substance abuse? Get a life.

On a separate note. 1mg of melatonin does wonders if you help it a bit (don't take it and then stare at the screen). As everyone probably knows by now, the recommended dose is 0.3-1mg so you could get even better results by splitting the 1mg pills, but 1mg works for me.

It's surprisingly difficult to get 1mg melatonin pills, so the life-hack there is to buy the kids version.

Also heavy curtains and total black-out of the bedroom does wonders. Electric light is a pretty effective sleep disruptor

Re: Impacts of lack of sleep

#100

Post by civilized »

alexpotato wrote: post #71
op00to wrote: post #61

I have kids. I am just going to be sleep deprived so my children don’t feel abandoned when they can’t sleep like I did. I’d rather have well adjusted kids than be well rested.

I always love reading the "productivity hacks" of people without kids and there is always an item which is basically: - go to bed and wake up at the same time and try to get 8 straight hours. Or if not, take a nap etc. Good luck with that if you have multiple children under 5

Most advice in techworld begins with an implicit "don't have kids". Children don't and shouldn't exist.
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