20 ms·

Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Epidemic

302 points by dpflan 11y ago

mschuster91 11y ago
I miss "Job-caused sleep deprivation" aka "what happens when you have to work 2 jobs+care for a child" to pay rent.
- tomaskafka 11y ago
  This. Sleep deprivation is a symptom, 'curing' it without solving underlying problems is just supressing a sign of real problem.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    So, you're suggesting that Basic Income could be one of the solutions to the Sleep Epidemic?
- zelos 11y ago
  I thought that too. I'd love to get more sleep: being woken once or twice a night and then having to get up before 6am to look after the kids or go to work makes that a bit tricky.
- shaftoe 11y ago
  Yeah, I get a kick out of suggestions around getting more sleep. Between work and kids, the uninterrupted time required to get sufficient sleep is a luxury. It just doesn't happen regularly.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Exactly this. We slave away most of our lives in day jobs (and yes, I know we work less than 100 years ago), and try to cram actual living into whatever is left. No surprise sleep often gets sacrificed first. I'm constantly guilty of this myself - if I were to sleep the ideal 8hrs a day, that with a day job and commute and eating will leave me something of 4-5 hours of (low-quality) time for doing other things, which is unbearable when you have any kind of passion or self-driven projects going on, and I don't even have kids yet. I know that sleeping more would let me use those 4-5 hours more efficiently, but it's a hard habit to have - sometimes you really need more time, not better time. And that's a comfortably-living first worlder's perspective. I'm not trying to compare myself to people who do need to work 2 jobs just to get by.
- orthecreedence 11y ago
  It's like you people have never heard of bootstraps. When I was down on my luck, I worked hard and created my own opportunities. Now I sleep 10 hours a night. I never got help from anyone but myself and my huge trust fund.
  - Matumio 11y ago
    Not everyone can do that. Some people also have to actually plant the corn for your food, fix the plumbing, etc. Imagine them all creating their own opportunities instead. Thanks to industrialization and automation it surely would be possible for them to work half their current hours and get more sleep (with more people required to work in those kind of jobs), but somehow this isn't what's happening.
Domenic_S 11y ago
Having just been officially diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea today, let me tell you why that part of insufficient sleep is an epidemic: the system is a racket. Here are the steps to get your sleep apnea solved: 1. Go to your GP and have them refer you to a sleep specialist. 2. Make an appointment with the sleep specialist (one major clinic here in the Bay Area is booked out weeks in advance). Do that office visit where you get the prescription for an overnight sleep study. 3. Wait 2-3 more weeks for your sleep study date, where you get wired up like you're joining the Matrix, and then told to go to sleep at 9:30pm. Riiight. 4. Have a follow up visit at the office in step 2. Go over results. Possibly get prescribed a CPAP machine. 5. Find an in-network provider to buy the CPAP from, and make an appointment with them. This is not an off the shelf thing, expect to spend 2-3 hours in the office/store. Wait time: a couple days to a couple weeks. 6. (optional, if the study from step 3 wasn't split-phase) Return for another sleep study with your new machine so they can calibrate it. 7. Make another follow up appointment to have the doc look at the report from step 6 and actually perform the calibration. Dude, WHO HAS TIME FOR THIS? Ironically, this whole process is a bit of a nightmare.
- WalterSear 11y ago
  I don't have apnea. I was prescribed an apnea machine anyway. They seemed very generous in handing out prescriptions for them.
- pcarmichael 11y ago
  I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. Using a CPAP was life changing for me. I won't sleep without it now if I can help it, though it did take me a bit of iterating through different mask arrangements. The first few weeks were hard - I slept strangely because I dreamt intensely (and I was told that's normal). Before I couldn't remember the last time I really had a dream. After years of slowly acclimating to not getting real sleep, actually getting good sleep and rest was amazing. It was like emerging from a fog of years that I never realized I was in. Once you get too far in, you don't really realize how tired you were. True, the process to get there wasn't fun. But hopefully you find the end result as beneficial as I did.
  - 11y ago
bitJericho 11y ago
Very important to get your sleep. I recommend no caffeine 4 hours before bed. It seems like everytime I can't fall asleep its because I accidentally drank caffeine. I sleep 6 to 10 hours weirdly enough. It seems to depend largely on the previous nights sleep and the physical exertion I've done in the day.
- rimantas 11y ago
  Not everybody is the same. Caffeine has zero effect on my sleep: I often drink a cup of coffee before going to bed. Or have a can of Red Bull (I drink it for the taste, not for some energising properties which have no effect on me).
  - rbinv 11y ago
    Just because you're not aware of it doesn't mean that it's not affecting you.
    - chrisan 11y ago
      People often refer to having a cup of coffee to "wake up" or stay awake/alert. I'm sure physiologically caffeine is doing _something_ but I am in the same boat as him, I can drink caffeine and it never keeps me awake. Back in Lan Party days pounding red bull after red bull I was still easily the first one to bed by far (which is never a good thing to be asleep around a bunch of wired up young immature males late at night...)
      - david-given 11y ago
        I don't feel like I've woken up properly in the morning until I've had a cup of coffee. ...of course, sometimes I will get up early, do some stuff around the house, drive to the shops, drive back to the house, put everything away, cycle to work, and I still won't feel like I've woken up properly until I've drunk my coffee and read my email. For me, it's all about the ritual of drinking the coffee rather than the caffeine content. I'm quite sure that if someone were to replace it with decaf and not tell me, it'd work just as well. Everyone's different.
jensen123 11y ago
I'm shocked that they don't mention sitting in front of the computer or TV before bedtime. Computer monitors and TVs have a bluish light. Blue light down-regulates melatonin, which is the hormone that makes you sleepy. I used to have a serious acne problem. Cutting down on meat and dairy really helped, but I was still getting a few small pimples now and then after that. It was only when I stopped using my computer or TV late in the evening that I got 100% clear skin.
- option_greek 11y ago
  Does blue light affect the skin ?
  - pennaMan 11y ago
    Yes, via melatonin http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317110/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317110/
    - jensen123 11y ago
      I didn't know about that one. What made me suspect sleep was a few studies showing that a lack of sleep has a negative effect on various hormones: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22844441 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22844441 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22787499 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22787499 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19955752 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19955752 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10543671 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10543671 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23078578 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23078578 I found a couple studies on acne that mentions lack of sleep: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18348416 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18348416 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21595660 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21595660
    - rogeryu 11y ago
      Artificial blue light does not contain UV light, and does not influence melatonin.
joshsharp 11y ago
It's not a huge sample set to draw from but the average amount of sleep across all of our Exist[1] users is 6:56 (as tracked by a device like a Fitbit, Jawbone UP, etc). So not quite as bad as in the article, but not quite enough either. [1]: https://exist.io https://exist.io
- jay-saint 11y ago
  Do you think think that your user base is a little more health aware than the average population? I would expect that someone using your site is going to be more self aware, affluent and health conscious than the average that the CDC is polling. For example, how many single hispanic mothers or black senior citizens use exist.io?
  - joshsharp 11y ago
    Though I can't back it up with data, I'm sure you're correct! Plus I suspect most of our small user base is early adopters who of course tend to be younger, affluent, etc.
- Cameron_D 11y ago
  Sleep Cycle also report 6:50-7:15 hours sleep on average http://www.sleepcycle.com/sleep-cycle-6-month-us-sleep-report/ http://www.sleepcycle.com/sleep-cycle-6-month-us-sleep-repor..., though technically that is time in bed, not necessarily actually asleep.
doczoidberg 11y ago
sometimes I feel like an alien when I say that I need 8-9 hours sleep to feel awake the whole day. 6h seems to be normal nowadays. Can I train to sleep (a little bit) less?
- rwallace 11y ago
  No, but you can train to remember that eight hours is normal; it's the people who think six hours is normal - or rather, the ideology they've bought into - that's alien.
- kqr 11y ago
  Me too. I normally need around 8–9 hours to function normally throughout the whole day – an hour more if I've been exercising regularly. It's highly impractical sometimes, but I've started to accept that I just need more sleep. I can usually get by with less sleep (7 hours) and function somewhat normally if I go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, but I feel much better if I get a couple of hours more.
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
I would be interested in hearing the opinion of startup employees who were not a part of the early team (yardstick: <1% equity/options) and what their company's attitudes are about proper sleep and work-life balance.
chatmasta 11y ago
I've always thought of sleep from a libertarian perspective. For the most part, it's your choice how much you sleep. Yeah, some people have trouble sleeping... but that's largely a result of individual choices. Factors like lack of exercise, too much caffeine, and poor diet all collude to reduce quality of sleep. In that sense, insufficient sleep is a public health epidemic in the same way as obesity. Lots of people are affected by it, but it's still avoidable with proper preparation and habits. Everybody knows you should get 8-9 hours of sleep per night, and most people are at least vaguely familiar with studies that say lack of sleep can reduce life expectancy. Yet people still choose to sleep less than the optimal amount. That's a choice. There is a tradeoff of time now, vs time at age 70+. If time now is more valuable, then it could be rational to sacrifice time at 70+ by sleeping less now. People make this choice every day, subconsciously or not. Of course, the choice of how much sleep to get is often not an easy one. We have to go to school or work. We have obligations. Perhaps the easiest win from a public health perspective would be changing the start time of public high schools. Why are we forcing kids to wake up at 6am to go to school? That's just stupid, and flies in the face of all sorts of research.
- buckbova 11y ago
  > Everybody knows you should get 8-9 hours of sleep per night I'm with you on health choices and quality of sleep, but I've never needed more than 6-7 hours in the rack. > The National Institutes of Health suggests that school-age children need at least 10 hours of sleep daily, teens need 9-105 hours, and adults need 7-8 hours. According to the article 7-8 for adults is normal.
  - tertius 11y ago
    8 hours is at the top of the bell curve for general feeling of well being (low depression and high energy).
  - 0xffff2 11y ago
    >teens need 9-105 hours Sounds about right...
gavreh 11y ago
ep·i·dem·ic ˌepəˈdemik/ noun 1. a widespread occurrence of an INFECTIOUS DISEASE in a community at a particular time.
- tertius 11y ago
  Did you just Google this and forget to click down arrow for "more definitions"? That should lead you to something like this: "a sudden, widespread occurrence of a particular undesirable phenomenon." Also look up Epidemiology, which studies all manner of health based topics, sleep being one of them.
christiangenco 11y ago
If anyone here has trouble falling asleep, I have two hacks I've recently implemented that have reduced my TTFA (time to fall asleep) from over two hours to about 15 minutes: 1. Don't look at a screen for an hour before going to bed. 2. Wear a sleep mask. If you can open your eyes and see any sliver of light or a distinguishable shape, you need something different. The effect is complete lack of visual stimulus making it really easy to start hallucinating (an overly strong word) which is an easy ramp into deeper sleep. The lack of bright blue light beforehand does something something melatonin, and you'll feel significantly more tired before bed (the lack of stimulus will also help).
- methyl 11y ago
  Do you think something like f-lux would help for reducing blue light and can be replacement for not seing screen at all?
  - odonnellryan 11y ago
    Flux definitely helps me, but it is always better to just read a book an hour before bed :)
    - atom-morgan 11y ago
      Same. It helps but there's no replacement for no screen time before bed.
      - odonnellryan 11y ago
        But...so...hard..!
  - obstacle1 11y ago
    Use F.lux any time > 7PM-ish. But still make sure you turn off any screens 1-2hrs before bed. It makes a huge difference.
  - flihp 11y ago
Gnarl 11y ago
When disease - like sleep disruption - spreads rapidly across a large area with no apparent vector, look for a common change in environment. For example, ambient RF has increased to 1000000000000000000 times natural background levels over short period. Who is John Snow?
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Social organization and interaction are an obvious vector that has changed over time.
  - Gnarl 11y ago
    to anywhere near the power of 10^18?
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      I was disputing your claim that there is "no apparent vector". Which is why I labeled changes to society an obvious vector. If your proposed RF interference model has a factor of ~10^-19 in it, then a competing social interaction model that has a factor of 1 in it would have a much stronger effect, even if social interaction has only changed to the power of 10^0.1. So the point there is that the magnitude of the change in the environment is not sufficient information to do a comparison, you also need some sort of explanatory model.
      - Gnarl 11y ago
        so how do you propose to measure this "social interaction" model? And are you really, seriously, running the "no mechanism" claim about RF induced bioeffects?
        maxerickson 11y ago
        I don't propose to measure it, I don't really have a lot of interest in the issue. I'm also not making a no mechanism claim. I'm pointing out that the magnitude you stated is insufficient information to draw any sort of conclusion. You (apparently) want people to be alarmed at a large number. A large number is not a good reason to be alarmed. A large number coupled with an explanatory model as to the effects that the large number can have might be a reason to be alarmed, but the number itself just has a lot of zeros.
afarrell 11y ago
As someone who went to a university where "sleep is for the weak" was a slogan among undergrads, I want to go back in time and throw chalk at anyone who says that.
- weavie 11y ago
  "I'll sleep when I'm dead."
- cheepin 11y ago
  I never sleep, cause Sleep is the cousin of Death http://genius.com/3012 http://genius.com/3012
znt 11y ago
There is this IndieGogo project for a mini sleep apnea mask, if anyone is interested: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/airing-the-first-hoseless-maskless-micro-cpap https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/airing-the-first-hoseless...

302 points by dpflan 11y ago

mschuster91 11y ago

I miss "Job-caused sleep deprivation" aka "what happens when you have to work 2 jobs+care for a child" to pay rent.

tomaskafka 11y ago
This. Sleep deprivation is a symptom, 'curing' it without solving underlying problems is just supressing a sign of real problem.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  So, you're suggesting that Basic Income could be one of the solutions to the Sleep Epidemic?
zelos 11y ago
I thought that too. I'd love to get more sleep: being woken once or twice a night and then having to get up before 6am to look after the kids or go to work makes that a bit tricky.
shaftoe 11y ago
Yeah, I get a kick out of suggestions around getting more sleep. Between work and kids, the uninterrupted time required to get sufficient sleep is a luxury. It just doesn't happen regularly.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Exactly this. We slave away most of our lives in day jobs (and yes, I know we work less than 100 years ago), and try to cram actual living into whatever is left. No surprise sleep often gets sacrificed first. I'm constantly guilty of this myself - if I were to sleep the ideal 8hrs a day, that with a day job and commute and eating will leave me something of 4-5 hours of (low-quality) time for doing other things, which is unbearable when you have any kind of passion or self-driven projects going on, and I don't even have kids yet. I know that sleeping more would let me use those 4-5 hours more efficiently, but it's a hard habit to have - sometimes you really need more time, not better time. And that's a comfortably-living first worlder's perspective. I'm not trying to compare myself to people who do need to work 2 jobs just to get by.
orthecreedence 11y ago
It's like you people have never heard of bootstraps. When I was down on my luck, I worked hard and created my own opportunities. Now I sleep 10 hours a night. I never got help from anyone but myself and my huge trust fund.
- Matumio 11y ago
  Not everyone can do that. Some people also have to actually plant the corn for your food, fix the plumbing, etc. Imagine them all creating their own opportunities instead. Thanks to industrialization and automation it surely would be possible for them to work half their current hours and get more sleep (with more people required to work in those kind of jobs), but somehow this isn't what's happening.

Domenic_S 11y ago

Having just been officially diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea today, let me tell you why that part of insufficient sleep is an epidemic: the system is a racket. Here are the steps to get your sleep apnea solved: 1. Go to your GP and have them refer you to a sleep specialist. 2. Make an appointment with the sleep specialist (one major clinic here in the Bay Area is booked out weeks in advance). Do that office visit where you get the prescription for an overnight sleep study. 3. Wait 2-3 more weeks for your sleep study date, where you get wired up like you're joining the Matrix, and then told to go to sleep at 9:30pm. Riiight. 4. Have a follow up visit at the office in step 2. Go over results. Possibly get prescribed a CPAP machine. 5. Find an in-network provider to buy the CPAP from, and make an appointment with them. This is not an off the shelf thing, expect to spend 2-3 hours in the office/store. Wait time: a couple days to a couple weeks. 6. (optional, if the study from step 3 wasn't split-phase) Return for another sleep study with your new machine so they can calibrate it. 7. Make another follow up appointment to have the doc look at the report from step 6 and actually perform the calibration. Dude, WHO HAS TIME FOR THIS? Ironically, this whole process is a bit of a nightmare.

WalterSear 11y ago
I don't have apnea. I was prescribed an apnea machine anyway. They seemed very generous in handing out prescriptions for them.
pcarmichael 11y ago
I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. Using a CPAP was life changing for me. I won't sleep without it now if I can help it, though it did take me a bit of iterating through different mask arrangements. The first few weeks were hard - I slept strangely because I dreamt intensely (and I was told that's normal). Before I couldn't remember the last time I really had a dream. After years of slowly acclimating to not getting real sleep, actually getting good sleep and rest was amazing. It was like emerging from a fog of years that I never realized I was in. Once you get too far in, you don't really realize how tired you were. True, the process to get there wasn't fun. But hopefully you find the end result as beneficial as I did.
- 11y ago

bitJericho 11y ago

Very important to get your sleep. I recommend no caffeine 4 hours before bed. It seems like everytime I can't fall asleep its because I accidentally drank caffeine. I sleep 6 to 10 hours weirdly enough. It seems to depend largely on the previous nights sleep and the physical exertion I've done in the day.

rimantas 11y ago
Not everybody is the same. Caffeine has zero effect on my sleep: I often drink a cup of coffee before going to bed. Or have a can of Red Bull (I drink it for the taste, not for some energising properties which have no effect on me).
- rbinv 11y ago
  Just because you're not aware of it doesn't mean that it's not affecting you.
  - chrisan 11y ago
    People often refer to having a cup of coffee to "wake up" or stay awake/alert. I'm sure physiologically caffeine is doing _something_ but I am in the same boat as him, I can drink caffeine and it never keeps me awake. Back in Lan Party days pounding red bull after red bull I was still easily the first one to bed by far (which is never a good thing to be asleep around a bunch of wired up young immature males late at night...)
    - david-given 11y ago
      I don't feel like I've woken up properly in the morning until I've had a cup of coffee. ...of course, sometimes I will get up early, do some stuff around the house, drive to the shops, drive back to the house, put everything away, cycle to work, and I still won't feel like I've woken up properly until I've drunk my coffee and read my email. For me, it's all about the ritual of drinking the coffee rather than the caffeine content. I'm quite sure that if someone were to replace it with decaf and not tell me, it'd work just as well. Everyone's different.

jensen123 11y ago

I'm shocked that they don't mention sitting in front of the computer or TV before bedtime. Computer monitors and TVs have a bluish light. Blue light down-regulates melatonin, which is the hormone that makes you sleepy. I used to have a serious acne problem. Cutting down on meat and dairy really helped, but I was still getting a few small pimples now and then after that. It was only when I stopped using my computer or TV late in the evening that I got 100% clear skin.

option_greek 11y ago
Does blue light affect the skin ?
- pennaMan 11y ago
  Yes, via melatonin http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317110/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317110/
  - jensen123 11y ago
    I didn't know about that one. What made me suspect sleep was a few studies showing that a lack of sleep has a negative effect on various hormones: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22844441 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22844441 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22787499 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22787499 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19955752 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19955752 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10543671 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10543671 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23078578 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23078578 I found a couple studies on acne that mentions lack of sleep: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18348416 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18348416 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21595660 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21595660
  - rogeryu 11y ago
    Artificial blue light does not contain UV light, and does not influence melatonin.

joshsharp 11y ago

It's not a huge sample set to draw from but the average amount of sleep across all of our Exist[1] users is 6:56 (as tracked by a device like a Fitbit, Jawbone UP, etc). So not quite as bad as in the article, but not quite enough either. [1]: https://exist.io https://exist.io

jay-saint 11y ago
Do you think think that your user base is a little more health aware than the average population? I would expect that someone using your site is going to be more self aware, affluent and health conscious than the average that the CDC is polling. For example, how many single hispanic mothers or black senior citizens use exist.io?
- joshsharp 11y ago
  Though I can't back it up with data, I'm sure you're correct! Plus I suspect most of our small user base is early adopters who of course tend to be younger, affluent, etc.
Cameron_D 11y ago
Sleep Cycle also report 6:50-7:15 hours sleep on average http://www.sleepcycle.com/sleep-cycle-6-month-us-sleep-report/ http://www.sleepcycle.com/sleep-cycle-6-month-us-sleep-repor..., though technically that is time in bed, not necessarily actually asleep.

doczoidberg 11y ago

sometimes I feel like an alien when I say that I need 8-9 hours sleep to feel awake the whole day. 6h seems to be normal nowadays. Can I train to sleep (a little bit) less?

rwallace 11y ago
No, but you can train to remember that eight hours is normal; it's the people who think six hours is normal - or rather, the ideology they've bought into - that's alien.
kqr 11y ago
Me too. I normally need around 8–9 hours to function normally throughout the whole day – an hour more if I've been exercising regularly. It's highly impractical sometimes, but I've started to accept that I just need more sleep. I can usually get by with less sleep (7 hours) and function somewhat normally if I go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, but I feel much better if I get a couple of hours more.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

I would be interested in hearing the opinion of startup employees who were not a part of the early team (yardstick: <1% equity/options) and what their company's attitudes are about proper sleep and work-life balance.

chatmasta 11y ago

I've always thought of sleep from a libertarian perspective. For the most part, it's your choice how much you sleep. Yeah, some people have trouble sleeping... but that's largely a result of individual choices. Factors like lack of exercise, too much caffeine, and poor diet all collude to reduce quality of sleep. In that sense, insufficient sleep is a public health epidemic in the same way as obesity. Lots of people are affected by it, but it's still avoidable with proper preparation and habits. Everybody knows you should get 8-9 hours of sleep per night, and most people are at least vaguely familiar with studies that say lack of sleep can reduce life expectancy. Yet people still choose to sleep less than the optimal amount. That's a choice. There is a tradeoff of time now, vs time at age 70+. If time now is more valuable, then it could be rational to sacrifice time at 70+ by sleeping less now. People make this choice every day, subconsciously or not. Of course, the choice of how much sleep to get is often not an easy one. We have to go to school or work. We have obligations. Perhaps the easiest win from a public health perspective would be changing the start time of public high schools. Why are we forcing kids to wake up at 6am to go to school? That's just stupid, and flies in the face of all sorts of research.

buckbova 11y ago
> Everybody knows you should get 8-9 hours of sleep per night I'm with you on health choices and quality of sleep, but I've never needed more than 6-7 hours in the rack. > The National Institutes of Health suggests that school-age children need at least 10 hours of sleep daily, teens need 9-105 hours, and adults need 7-8 hours. According to the article 7-8 for adults is normal.
- tertius 11y ago
  8 hours is at the top of the bell curve for general feeling of well being (low depression and high energy).
- 0xffff2 11y ago
  >teens need 9-105 hours Sounds about right...

gavreh 11y ago

ep·i·dem·ic ˌepəˈdemik/ noun 1. a widespread occurrence of an INFECTIOUS DISEASE in a community at a particular time.

tertius 11y ago
Did you just Google this and forget to click down arrow for "more definitions"? That should lead you to something like this: "a sudden, widespread occurrence of a particular undesirable phenomenon." Also look up Epidemiology, which studies all manner of health based topics, sleep being one of them.

christiangenco 11y ago

If anyone here has trouble falling asleep, I have two hacks I've recently implemented that have reduced my TTFA (time to fall asleep) from over two hours to about 15 minutes: 1. Don't look at a screen for an hour before going to bed. 2. Wear a sleep mask. If you can open your eyes and see any sliver of light or a distinguishable shape, you need something different. The effect is complete lack of visual stimulus making it really easy to start hallucinating (an overly strong word) which is an easy ramp into deeper sleep. The lack of bright blue light beforehand does something something melatonin, and you'll feel significantly more tired before bed (the lack of stimulus will also help).

methyl 11y ago
Do you think something like f-lux would help for reducing blue light and can be replacement for not seing screen at all?
- odonnellryan 11y ago
  Flux definitely helps me, but it is always better to just read a book an hour before bed :)
  - atom-morgan 11y ago
    Same. It helps but there's no replacement for no screen time before bed.
    - odonnellryan 11y ago
      But...so...hard..!
- obstacle1 11y ago
  Use F.lux any time > 7PM-ish. But still make sure you turn off any screens 1-2hrs before bed. It makes a huge difference.
- flihp 11y ago

Gnarl 11y ago

When disease - like sleep disruption - spreads rapidly across a large area with no apparent vector, look for a common change in environment. For example, ambient RF has increased to 1000000000000000000 times natural background levels over short period. Who is John Snow?

maxerickson 11y ago
Social organization and interaction are an obvious vector that has changed over time.
- Gnarl 11y ago
  to anywhere near the power of 10^18?
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    I was disputing your claim that there is "no apparent vector". Which is why I labeled changes to society an obvious vector. If your proposed RF interference model has a factor of ~10^-19 in it, then a competing social interaction model that has a factor of 1 in it would have a much stronger effect, even if social interaction has only changed to the power of 10^0.1. So the point there is that the magnitude of the change in the environment is not sufficient information to do a comparison, you also need some sort of explanatory model.
    - Gnarl 11y ago
      so how do you propose to measure this "social interaction" model? And are you really, seriously, running the "no mechanism" claim about RF induced bioeffects?
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        I don't propose to measure it, I don't really have a lot of interest in the issue. I'm also not making a no mechanism claim. I'm pointing out that the magnitude you stated is insufficient information to draw any sort of conclusion. You (apparently) want people to be alarmed at a large number. A large number is not a good reason to be alarmed. A large number coupled with an explanatory model as to the effects that the large number can have might be a reason to be alarmed, but the number itself just has a lot of zeros.

afarrell 11y ago

As someone who went to a university where "sleep is for the weak" was a slogan among undergrads, I want to go back in time and throw chalk at anyone who says that.

weavie 11y ago
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
cheepin 11y ago
I never sleep, cause Sleep is the cousin of Death http://genius.com/3012 http://genius.com/3012

znt 11y ago

There is this IndieGogo project for a mini sleep apnea mask, if anyone is interested: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/airing-the-first-hoseless-maskless-micro-cpap https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/airing-the-first-hoseless...