7 ms·

I wonder how the protein collects in people like myself, who will routinely stay up 24-30 hours, but then sleep 12-14 hours after.

• gdvarya 9y ago
  What do you routinely stay up 24-30 hours for? Curious. I do this occasionally, but it seems that for you its more of a work habit.
  • fnayr 9y ago
    I make mobile apps with my brother. We’ve found that we’re much more efficient when we can work in long uninterrupted periods of time. It takes a while to get reloaded into the program, so if we do an 8 hour work day we may have 5 hours of productive work, but on a 16 work day we will have ~12. We only do this when we make new apps which we aren’t always doing. But the latest we’ve been working on for 3 years. It makes planning social activities hard cause we never know our schedule much more than 48 hours in advance. My body has adjusted but I am legimately concerned if there’s long term health impacts to doing this (but I guess not concerned enough to see a doctor). But if anyone has more knowledge on the risks Id love a response.
    • fragsworth 9y ago
      I'm not a doctor, but I would really stop doing that if I were you. There's little to no research on the long term effects of doing that.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • gt_ 9y ago
      I do this too, for similar reasons. I just like to keep working when I'm on a roll. I'm always looking for research on it and never really find anything.
    • manmal 9y ago
      Do you work non-stop, or do you have 1h pauses or stgh?
• pishpash 9y ago
  It says in the article, clearing away happens at the same rate, but production happens at a higher rate when awake. Your peak concentration of this protein will be higher, thus causing more damage. This seems to indicate that frequent naps and polyphasic sleep may be good.
  • fnayr 9y ago
    But if the rate of clearage is the same then because I’m sleeping longer it should clear more of the protein?
    • joveian 9y ago
      I'm guessing there isn't enough research yet to say what effect your sleep pattern might have. It could be that concentration is important above some particular point and as long as you are getting sufficient regular sleep you keep it below that point. It sounds like there is also genetic variation in production, so if you have a generally lower production then a higher level due to your sleep pattern might still not be that high relative to others (or if you have higher than usual production then long days could be more likely to cause trouble). As someone with a circadian disorder, the thing I would worry about most from your sleep pattern is triggering a circadian disorder. At least Non-24 seems likely to have both a genetic predisposition and require triggering in many people (some have it from birth). This would be most likely if your normal rhythm seems to normally be longer than usual, although even there it isn't necessarily a problem since cave studes show people slip naturally into the type of sleep pattern that you describe. It might depend on how you do the transition (and how close you get to a two day cycle on your long days). But I would suggest at least being very observant of your circadian rhythm. Things like when you get hungry, feel tired, and have to pee can indicate how your circadian rhythm is doing and if those things change when you aren't staying up late then that could cause serious trouble eventually.
    • yorwba 9y ago
      The amount of harmful protein cleared is likely proportional to the product of concentrations of the harmful protein and the clearing protein, because the two need to interact. That means that clearing becomes slower as less harmful protein is left. Prolonging the clearing process would mean that you spend a longer time at very low concentration, but not that the minimum concentration would be much lower. If the harm of high concentrations is disproportionally higher, the longer time at lower concentration would be unable to balance that out. However, this is only based on my rough intuition and I didn't even do any napkin math. If you want to really get a quantifiable comparison, you'd better find out about the concrete interactions in question and calculate it yourself. Or you could ask a physician who specializes in sleep (I forget what they are called), but if it isn't already published science somewhere, it's unlikely they could tell you anything other than that what you're doing is highly unusual and you should probably stop.
• gumby 9y ago
  Are you doing this for some exogenous reason, like work shifts, or are you lucky enough to be able to sleep in a “normal” (for you) phase? In the latter case I think the best guess is it’s just fine; those hours are at the edge of normal but don’t sound extraordinary (ISTR 28-hour cycle is apparently quite common though I can’t find a ref this instant)
  • fnayr 9y ago
    I responded about why I do it in a sibling comment. If you ever find a link to other sleep cycles I’d appreciate it. I’ve heard of people taking many shorter naps before but not staying up longer and sleeping longer.
    • perl4ever 9y ago
      I know I've told people not that long ago that I wished the day was a bit longer - 28 hours seems about right, so I could stay up a long time and sleep for more than 8 hours. But I started logging my sleep times after an appointment with a sleep disorder clinic and found maybe I am not sleeping for as long as I assumed - it's just that when my sleep is interrupted, I don't complete my 8 hours until 12 or so has passed.
    • gumby 9y ago
      There’s quite a bit in a google the 28 hour cycle specifically. A friend of mine did this for six months and was quite happy, except he missed his wife and child who I didn’t join him, so didn’t extend his experiment. I don’t remember why he chose 28 hours but iirc it was what he felt was his natural cycle. I don’t know if he reads HN but I just pinged him.