4 ms·

Hmm, had no idea long sleep is also linked to developing more diseases. Also makes one wonder in what way the causal effect (if any?) works, i.e. do those peopl

by stinos 9y ago

Hmm, had no idea long sleep is also linked to developing more diseases. Also makes one wonder in what way the causal effect (if any?) works, i.e. do those people tend to sleep more because of the diseases or is it the other way around?

KenanSulayman 9y ago
That’s because the chart is simply misleading: they collected information on how long the participants slept, and then put the „probability of developing diseases“ next to it. That’s a fallacy, because most people are in the 7 to 9 hour range, thus the overall probability is lower. The other ranges are usually people with non-nominal lifestyles, which can also very likely impact disease probability. You can’t just turn around a graph like a mathematical equation... unless it’s sensationalism.
- mjevans 9y ago
  There's also the issue of longer sleepers likely //needing// it for some reason (I hypothesize to fight off a disease). The sound of the study is retrospective (looking back) instead of controlled; so they probably didn't do anything to account for if someone was already healthy or sick before enforcing a sleep duration.
vanderZwan 9y ago
I can give one concrete example of where it definitely is causal. There was a short BBC documentary series about sleep a few years ago, and one of the episodes focused on a man who slept for ten hours a day and still felt drowsy and without energy. After going through a sleep clinic with all kinds of tests, the conclusion was that he should try to sleep only six hours. The basic issue was that because he spent ten hours a day in bed, trying to catch up on what he thought was a lack of sleeping causing his tiredness, his body never got tired enough to enter deep sleep. Because he missed his deep sleep cycles, his sleep did not recover his energy properly. So this was a vicious cycle. After a few weeks of forcing himself to wake up after six hours of sleep his problems were basically solved. So the thing to remember is that duration of sleep tells you nothing about the quality of sleep. EDIT: While we're here, I've had a lot of sleeping problems in the past, so here some other tips that I remember from this series, and from my sister who studied chronobiology (the science of internal clocks in biological systems, including sleep cycles): - Note emphasized enough by this article: the deep sleep cycle is necessary for cleaning your brain from neurodegenerating toxins[0]. Getting that stage three deep sleep is essential for your mental health! - Don't use alcohol to induce sleepiness: yes, it makes you fall asleep faster, but it also prevents you from the deep sleep. You end up not being refreshed afterwards. - Train your brain to associate your bed with sleeping. If you can't sleep, leave the bed, do something that's not so stimulating that it keeps you awake like reading a book (avoid that mobile phone at all cost) until you feel sleepy enough to go back. This article singles out teenagers here, which is ridiculous: adults are just as guilty of doing this to themselves. - Because of the previous point, make sure you don't use your laptop/phone in bed, nor have a TV in the bedroom. - The reason warm baths can help with falling sleep: a fast drop from a high core temperature to a low temperature triggers drowsiness. So what the bath does is heath you up until you are warm. If you then leave that bath and enter a cold bed that needs to be warmed up this triggers a sleep response. Hot milk probably gives a similar trigger, but I'm sure about that one. - Fasting can help with jet lag. Specifically: don't eat for at least sixteen hours (drinking water is fine), then eat your first meal at breakfast (tangent: "break fast"). This resets the body clock. [0] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flush-out-toxins-during-sleep https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flus...
- taneq 9y ago
  This fits in well with my general rule of "if you feel listless, get some bloody exercise."
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    Also good advice for improving quality of sleep, but it is a different kind of tiredness (or lack thereof). The fact that there are multiple kinds of exhaustion, and that we might not distinguish them, can in itself be part of the problem, since you can end up trying to fix the wrong thing. Although exercising is never a bad idea anyway.
- johnnycarcin 9y ago
  This is very interesting as the story sounds a lot like what I deal with. I have done the sleep apnea testing but that didn't show anything. It might be time to find a sleep clinic :)
- fredley 9y ago
  This, so much. I went through a very similar experience - having tried spending longer and longer in bed in frustration at my insomnia, I did a course[1] that measured how much of that time I was actually asleep, then restricted my time in bed to that amount and no more. Having trained my body to sleep when in bed, I could then extend it slightly week by week, until I found the optimum I need (7.5 hours). [1]: https://www.sleepio.com/ https://www.sleepio.com/
  - matwood 9y ago
    This is why it's common advice that if you cannot sleep, get out of bed. Go clean the house or do some light exercise until you feel tired, and then try again. I can usually fall asleep fine, but will often wake up early and can't get back to sleep. If it's anytime after 5am, I just get up and start my day.
- dorfsmay 9y ago
  Fasting for jet lag: if you fast, then eat, digestion makes you tired. I read the exact same advice but with eating at dinner time of the destination. Doing so has helped me to get over jet large jet lag in a few days.
drdeadringer 9y ago
I can offer only the anecdotal, though I'm sure an internet search should produce for you more scientific backing. I've experienced this myself and have witnessed it in coworkers and in my father, all of us having worked the different shifts at one point or another. For me, whenever I was on 2nd or 3rd shift my health, state of mind, and life in general suffered. I also never felt rested or clear-headed no matter how much or how little sleep I got. Should you live near a school with an 8am marching band out in practice, or maybe you live in or near an apartment complex with a yard service peaceably armed with a lawnmower and leaf blower at 9am, then good luck to you. Setting up the equivalent of a photographic dark room gets me only so far. Nowadays I avoid shift work as much as possible. The money isn't worth it for me.
_0ffh 9y ago
I'm afraid you didn't quite catch that. The article says "both short sleepers and long sleepers are more likely to have a range of diseases", and that's also how I read that elsewhere. There is no claim that long sleep was a cause of disease. The opposite seems, to me at least, more likely.
sn9 9y ago
There was a recent book about sleep by a leading sleep researcher that ought to be quite good (if his NPR interview is anything to go by): http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-Walker/9781501144318 http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-W...

by stinos 9y ago

KenanSulayman 9y ago

That’s because the chart is simply misleading: they collected information on how long the participants slept, and then put the „probability of developing diseases“ next to it. That’s a fallacy, because most people are in the 7 to 9 hour range, thus the overall probability is lower. The other ranges are usually people with non-nominal lifestyles, which can also very likely impact disease probability. You can’t just turn around a graph like a mathematical equation... unless it’s sensationalism.

mjevans 9y ago
There's also the issue of longer sleepers likely //needing// it for some reason (I hypothesize to fight off a disease). The sound of the study is retrospective (looking back) instead of controlled; so they probably didn't do anything to account for if someone was already healthy or sick before enforcing a sleep duration.

vanderZwan 9y ago

I can give one concrete example of where it definitely is causal. There was a short BBC documentary series about sleep a few years ago, and one of the episodes focused on a man who slept for ten hours a day and still felt drowsy and without energy. After going through a sleep clinic with all kinds of tests, the conclusion was that he should try to sleep only six hours. The basic issue was that because he spent ten hours a day in bed, trying to catch up on what he thought was a lack of sleeping causing his tiredness, his body never got tired enough to enter deep sleep. Because he missed his deep sleep cycles, his sleep did not recover his energy properly. So this was a vicious cycle. After a few weeks of forcing himself to wake up after six hours of sleep his problems were basically solved. So the thing to remember is that duration of sleep tells you nothing about the quality of sleep. EDIT: While we're here, I've had a lot of sleeping problems in the past, so here some other tips that I remember from this series, and from my sister who studied chronobiology (the science of internal clocks in biological systems, including sleep cycles): - Note emphasized enough by this article: the deep sleep cycle is necessary for cleaning your brain from neurodegenerating toxins[0]. Getting that stage three deep sleep is essential for your mental health! - Don't use alcohol to induce sleepiness: yes, it makes you fall asleep faster, but it also prevents you from the deep sleep. You end up not being refreshed afterwards. - Train your brain to associate your bed with sleeping. If you can't sleep, leave the bed, do something that's not so stimulating that it keeps you awake like reading a book (avoid that mobile phone at all cost) until you feel sleepy enough to go back. This article singles out teenagers here, which is ridiculous: adults are just as guilty of doing this to themselves. - Because of the previous point, make sure you don't use your laptop/phone in bed, nor have a TV in the bedroom. - The reason warm baths can help with falling sleep: a fast drop from a high core temperature to a low temperature triggers drowsiness. So what the bath does is heath you up until you are warm. If you then leave that bath and enter a cold bed that needs to be warmed up this triggers a sleep response. Hot milk probably gives a similar trigger, but I'm sure about that one. - Fasting can help with jet lag. Specifically: don't eat for at least sixteen hours (drinking water is fine), then eat your first meal at breakfast (tangent: "break fast"). This resets the body clock. [0] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flush-out-toxins-during-sleep https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flus...

taneq 9y ago
This fits in well with my general rule of "if you feel listless, get some bloody exercise."
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  Also good advice for improving quality of sleep, but it is a different kind of tiredness (or lack thereof). The fact that there are multiple kinds of exhaustion, and that we might not distinguish them, can in itself be part of the problem, since you can end up trying to fix the wrong thing. Although exercising is never a bad idea anyway.
johnnycarcin 9y ago
This is very interesting as the story sounds a lot like what I deal with. I have done the sleep apnea testing but that didn't show anything. It might be time to find a sleep clinic :)
fredley 9y ago
This, so much. I went through a very similar experience - having tried spending longer and longer in bed in frustration at my insomnia, I did a course[1] that measured how much of that time I was actually asleep, then restricted my time in bed to that amount and no more. Having trained my body to sleep when in bed, I could then extend it slightly week by week, until I found the optimum I need (7.5 hours). [1]: https://www.sleepio.com/ https://www.sleepio.com/
- matwood 9y ago
  This is why it's common advice that if you cannot sleep, get out of bed. Go clean the house or do some light exercise until you feel tired, and then try again. I can usually fall asleep fine, but will often wake up early and can't get back to sleep. If it's anytime after 5am, I just get up and start my day.
dorfsmay 9y ago
Fasting for jet lag: if you fast, then eat, digestion makes you tired. I read the exact same advice but with eating at dinner time of the destination. Doing so has helped me to get over jet large jet lag in a few days.

drdeadringer 9y ago

I can offer only the anecdotal, though I'm sure an internet search should produce for you more scientific backing. I've experienced this myself and have witnessed it in coworkers and in my father, all of us having worked the different shifts at one point or another. For me, whenever I was on 2nd or 3rd shift my health, state of mind, and life in general suffered. I also never felt rested or clear-headed no matter how much or how little sleep I got. Should you live near a school with an 8am marching band out in practice, or maybe you live in or near an apartment complex with a yard service peaceably armed with a lawnmower and leaf blower at 9am, then good luck to you. Setting up the equivalent of a photographic dark room gets me only so far. Nowadays I avoid shift work as much as possible. The money isn't worth it for me.

_0ffh 9y ago

I'm afraid you didn't quite catch that. The article says "both short sleepers and long sleepers are more likely to have a range of diseases", and that's also how I read that elsewhere. There is no claim that long sleep was a cause of disease. The opposite seems, to me at least, more likely.

sn9 9y ago

There was a recent book about sleep by a leading sleep researcher that ought to be quite good (if his NPR interview is anything to go by): http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-Walker/9781501144318 http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Sleep/Matthew-W...