16 ms·

The antidepressant effect of sleep deprivation

441 points by onuralp 9y ago

vwbl8s6fgeo 9y ago
sleep deprivation is bad for one's health
romwell 9y ago
I've definitely noticed that this works for me on occasion - staying up all night to see the sunrise and then going about as usual seems to be a cleansing experience of sorts. In such a state, it feels that the mind is too exhausted to lend itself to worry or anxiety. The troubles seem far less consequential through the haze. I didn't keep track of what happens the day after catching up on sleep, but in general, being lifted even for a single day out of the quagmire is very helpful: one can make plans for the future (in a depressed state, people tend to not make any plans because they don't want anything, and what they want, they think they can't do), and one can feel contrast between their good and bad states of mind (depression tricks people into thinking that their depressed state is actually their normal state). That said, sometimes staying up all night just meant sleeping all day -- and I don't know to which extent my experience even compares with the one of the people in the article. Still, it's something everyone suffering from the symptoms can try for free. Beats a night of restlessness and bad sleep hands down, and there's little to lose if you experiment on a weekend.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  exhaustion is often a nice way to cleanse; but I've been ill to the point of not being asleep for 5 days, and the confusion was nearing madness to the point I'd avoid feeling that way as much as possible :)
B-Con 9y ago
It sounds like the theory behind this is kicking the circadian rhythm to see if it improves. > Depression is also associated with altered daily rhythms of hormone secretion and body temperature, and the more severe the illness, the greater the degree of disruption. Like the sleep signals, these rhythms are also driven by the body’s circadian system, which itself is driven by a set of interacting proteins, encoded by ‘clock genes’ that are expressed in a rhythmic pattern throughout the day. A classic, almost cliche, way to address "common depression" is to normalize the person's sleep schedule. Many people keep erratic schedules and participate in activities (eg, playing video games) at end of day that make going to sleep hard. They get poorer quality sleep and have no consistency, which messes up the circadian rhythm and contributes to depression. Such people are advised to at least try keeping a consistent sleep schedule for a couple weeks to see if it helps them. The technique in the article seems to be the figurative opposite, possibly because regular sleep cycles are either inadequate or infeasible to achieve. They force a short-term horrible sleep cycle to see if they can jolt the circadian rhythm into working better.
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  Bright light in the morning, vitamin D supplementation (5k units) seems to show promise for some.
- lloeki 9y ago
  I can attest that for me a regular sleep schedule works, but only so far. At first it works kinda well as I feel increasingly settled as days go by, but at some point it seems being too restful kicks my mind into overdrive mode. From experience I can now detect such events, as it starts with a general feeling of everything being awesome, incredible energy, and fantastic happiness as I just am there (as with mindfulness and meditation), do many things† for a day or two, then everything inevitably crashes down†† as I start feeling increasingly but subtly anxious about minute details, followed by an increasing inability to focus and then comes listlessness. If a (even remotely) bad event happens right after the peak happiness state it can send me spiralling down even faster. The only thing that can curb that is: - an occasional short night (like getting 3 to 4 hours of sleep) once a week or so, after which I feel surprisingly refreshed. Sometimes it happens naturally as I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep, or go to bed late. But it better not last two or three days in a row or then the crashing down thing happens and it's even harder to climb up as the added sleep deficit combined with listlessness makes me very sleepy during the day. Note: I am largely unable to voluntarily control my sleep schedule. - regular strenuous physical exercise, like daily, and for hours, and preferably outside. It seems I need to shoot my body through a satiated state of physical sensations in order to saturate my nervous system and keep my mind in check. I can skip a day or two but exercising, say, every other day doesn't check out as though the slope, while less steep, is still trending downwards. Outdoors is incredibly important to me as there are so much more physical stimuli (light, wind, sounds) and with greater variations than indoors. - food and water. Regular hydration is capital for me, and some kind of mineral water is best. Tap water is out of question for some reason (strangely seems to upset my bowel/urinary system after a few days). A balanced diet can do wonders but it seems I can be derailed easily on that front. I sort of picture my mood swings as f(t+phi) = mood, with f basically resembling a sine wave, and physical exertion seems to help me in adjusting phi. My general strategy to combat that is to try to hit that sweet spot where I'm right before the super-happiness point and attempt to ride the wave using exercise, caffeine and nicotine†† (sadly, using tobacco). Honestly though I try not to put too much thought into it as I managed to turn anxiety about the situation into more like curiosity. Anyway on a larger scale the general mood trend is sensibly upwards as looked at retrospectively I'm climbing inch by inch out of that hole. † I tried not being so hyperactive, pacing myself and not doing so many things but it doesn't change a thing to the process. †† I found out that one of the dead giveaways of when I'm trending towards the downward slope is that I start skipping on automatically hydrating myself. ††† caffeine seems to act as a baseline offset but too much outright prevents sleep, while nicotine seems to act as a dampener, both for high and low swings of mood.
adamnemecek 9y ago
I’ve experienced this first hand. However the line is very thin as sleep deprivation tends to ricochet in the other direction.
tda 9y ago
> “Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression,” says Benedetti. If you’re healthy and you don’t sleep, you’ll feel in a bad mood. But if you’re depressed, it can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities. But, Benedetti adds, there’s a catch: once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed hours of sleep, you’ll have a 95 per cent chance of relapse. This is really counter intuitive to me. The article goes on explaining that using a combination of skipping sleep, lithium and light treatment the results are much better.
tombrm 9y ago
"if you’re depressed, [sleep deprivation] can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities. But, Benedetti adds, there’s a catch: once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed hours of sleep, you’ll have a 95 per cent chance of relapse." Sounds like there's a high risk for turning depression into insomnia. Not sure if it's an improvement.
- hihungryimdad 9y ago
  Yep, once I caught up on my sleep the next day would be the same anxiety, depression cycle all over. Crazy to read about this today after having this exact phenomenon happen to me years ago.
mjfl 9y ago
So the cure for depression is to take hallucinogens like ketamine or deliberately deprive yourself of sleep? It's like making yourself happier by making yourself less sharp. Perhaps, then, one is depressed because one is rational - because there are real, serious problems with life that need to be dealt with, not escaped. The recent "cures" sound almost Huxley-an.
- godzillabrennus 9y ago
  I’ve known depression through a relationship with a significant other. Their worries were not solely based on rational issues. They would be depressed at a mall because it wasn’t in a city. Then depressed in a city because they felt removed from their comfort zone. Depression is a mental illness and it sucks. Much of the medicine for depression causes depression to worsen. I hope we unlock a cure in our lifetime.
- ehnto 9y ago
  You can have everything you want in life and still be depressed. I find even people who have been there and overcome can forget this about depression. Depression is a thing that happens to you, an ailment that occurs. Sadness about a sad thing is not depression, apathy because things aren't going okay is not depression. They can lead to depression if they go on long enough, but they aren't themselves a mental disorder. They're just emotions. Depression is a mental disorder. An incorrectly operating subroutine in your brain that's flooding you with emotions that make no sense and shutting down others that you would normally feel given the circumstances. You stop smiling at puppies, you stop crying for movies, but then you cry because you dropped your fork, and get annoyed that people you love are talking (okay, sometimes that's normal!). Granted, your line of thinking is why I think some people stay at jobs they hate, stress themselves out with it, and then fall into depression through years of stress and apathy toward their health. But you could also suffer from depression while working a job you love and sleeping on stacks of cash every night.
  - psyc 9y ago
    This isn't wrong, but it is a simplistic model of one layer of depression, which can be a pragmatic way to look at it for some people during some periods, typically the most severe periods. I've suffered from severe depression for my whole adult life, and I am thankful that I haven't had a psychiatrist who subscribed to the medical model as an absolute, in many years. The big picture of depression can indeed be about your life, and no psychiatrist I've seen in the past 15 years has failed to acknowledge that. It's well known that major depression often follows major life stresses such as divorce, breakups, deaths, trauma, other illnesses, and so on. I've never found it fruitful to make it either all about the brain, or all about your life. It's rather a feedback loop between the two. The very nature of subjectivity makes it almost nonsensical to try to distinguish between your mind and your life, from your own perspective. And there's a reason treatment almost always includes talk therapy. I've always been able to articulate what my depression is about. Some people can't. It's just not so clear cut.
savanaly 9y ago
Whenever I read about this sleep-cures-depression topic on HN (and it seems to come up relatively often) I think about and often go back and read this post. [0] Definitely doesn't have all the answers but it really changed how I thought about the issue. [0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/14/ssc-journal-club-mental-disorders-as-networks/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/14/ssc-journal-club-mental...
yedpodtrzitko 9y ago
inb4 a lot of sources sleep deprivation is hurting your brain in a long term. Not sure what's better.
- te0006 9y ago
  it can have many other nasty side effects too, such as weakening your immune system. Which can in turn cause rising levels of inflammaton which is really undesirable w.r.t. the original objective. So if your physical constitution is not perfect, better don't do this.
- rocqua 9y ago
  It should be noted that anti-depressants also have side effects.
  - yedpodtrzitko 9y ago
    I dont doubt that. The way how I treat depression myself is via acupuncture. Works great so far.
77pt77 9y ago
Another way is travelling and getting hit by a considerable time difference. It seems resetting your circadian rhythm can, in some circumstances, have beneficial effect. I knew someone that referred to doing that as "degaussing".
uhhyeahdude 9y ago
How very odd for me to find this on HN this evening. I'm on "day 2" of my once a week sleep fast, which means things are a bit surreal to begin with. For each of the last seven weeks, I stay awake from Thursday morning until my "regular" bedtime hour Friday evening. I do this because it actually seems to be an effective way to avoid falling into a hole of anhedonia and "stuck-ness." I am hip to many of the cognitive tricks of depression, and can deal, kind of--I am utterly unable to deal with the physical listlessness and absence of drive that comes with it. Skipping sleep on a set schedule seems to work for me. At first I didn't think I could keep it up, and I was concerned by potential safety hazards. My concerns are justified, as I am pretty loopy by Friday afternoon, or around the 32 hour mark. Of all the esoteric treatments for my mood, this is perhaps the only real success except for Yoga (BKS-style Ashtanga). I have a feeling I might receive some benefit from ascetic practices in general; and will experiment with caloric restriction, e.g. in future months. I have no idea if I should expect the effects of this practice to remain pronounced, and my experience seems to differ somewhat from that described in the article. I sure hope I continue to benefit, because I don't respond well to any of the usual methodologies. Also, I don't feel comfortable enough in the onions to do a proper Ketamine trial. // I don't mean to sound breezy. I only include that last note to emphasize how unendurable my world was becoming. If this makes sense to you, I feel for you. One foot in front of the other... The downside: I am totally sober, but I know my executive function is not working very well, and I may very well regret commenting. edit: some glaring issues with words
- pgt 9y ago
  Wow! I awoke early this morning from a bit of a bender last night and have a similar feeling of mania (the positive, productive kind). At first I attributed it to a GABA rebound, but thinking back, a sleep fast has historically injected a sense of urgency and vigour. I have been fasting intermittently after reading Valter Longo's metabolic oxidation research (the term they used for aging research to get it published). I skip breakfast and try to leave 16-18 hours between meals. Have been losing weight but keeping muscle tone almost effortlessly. My skin has also improved. No negative effect so far. Good interview about I.F.: https://youtu.be/d6PyyatqJSE https://youtu.be/d6PyyatqJSE
amelius 9y ago
Ok, so this is one possible thing to try when one has depression. Who is keeping a list of all things to try, and where does this experiment fit in that list?
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  Sounds like a a web app with voting would be a useful thing. In the UK mental health services have almost disappeared, especially for those who are not extreme. Maybe a list of things to try yourself is useful?
  - jimnotgym 9y ago
    Well this got the better of me, there is now a list on Github https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression Please PR if you want to comment. I'll do a ShowHN once there is more on it
    - amelius 9y ago
      This is a great initiative! Some quick ideas. Perhaps you can mention what should determine the order in the list. For example, every experiment has: - A success rate. - An average time to noticeable improvement - An average time to recovery. - Risk and severity of side effects. - Cost. - Difficulty. - More? So for example, checking for nutritional deficiencies (very important) or other tests can be near the top of the list (little side effects, low cost, not difficult, etc). But psychotherapy should be near the bottom (high cost, difficult, long recovery time, etc.) Perhaps split according to cure/prevention/coping strategy. (For example SSRIs are in many cases a coping strategy and not a cure). Again, great work!
      - jimnotgym 9y ago
        If we can get a consensus about what people are doing, rather than just what is getting posted on HN I am happy to write a quick app that applies your very sensible success criteria. Comments Issues and PR are most welcome
cup-of-tea 9y ago
> Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression I used to "play" with my sleeping pattern a lot. I would stay up extremely late sometimes because it's impossible to go to sleep before a bug has been fixed. But being a student I could just sleep in the next day. It had that classic effect which is observed in hackers of drifting "West" and becoming completely out of phase with the Sun's cycle. I did suffer from depression. It's always difficult to say this, though. How do I know that I really had depression and I wasn't just unhappy? I don't know. But maybe it suffices to say that I had near constant suicidal thoughts at times. I've since turned my life around and I am no longer depressed. I attribute it to having a much more regimented life which includes regular and sufficient sleep, regular, healthy meals and regular exercise. So the above quotation suggests that I am "healthy". Presumably as opposed to those that are "unhealthy" and really have depression. But what is the difference really? I have to do this particular thing to avoid depression, and they have to do that particular thing to avoid it? Is it just that my "cure" happens to be the same as everyone else's cure? Or am I missing something here?
perlgeek 9y ago
Somehow my quackery detectors go off on this one, but I'm not quite sure. The article talks about "recent studies" without linking to them. The "references" section at the end links to a single peer-reviewed article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5447205/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5447205/) in a journal with an impact factor of less then one (compare https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0379-5284_Saudi_medical_journal https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0379-5284_Saudi_medical... for example). If it works, why not give some citations in more reputable journals, for example? Most articles, when searching for depression + sleep deprivation, talk about the correlation between the two, which seems to be pretty well-established. There's little on the possible treatment of depression through sleep deprivation. I found a meta-analysis on the subject: http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/28937707 http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/28937707 "The overall response rate to sleep deprivation was 45% among studies that utilized a randomized control group and 50% among studies that did not. The response to sleep deprivation was not affected significantly by the type of sleep deprivation performed, the nature of the clinical sample, medication status, the definition of response used, or age and gender of the sample.These findings support a significant effect of sleep deprivation and suggest the need for future studies [...]" I don't have the qualifications to assess this meta analysis; at least it's published in a more popular/reputable journal.
- mtgx 9y ago
  There are a bunch of them on PudMed, and not all are that recent. This is what I found on a quick search. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7893848 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7893848 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14522011 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14522011 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16408408 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16408408
- dahart 9y ago
  I felt a little bit like this last time the subject was on HN, and after similarly looking into the research further, I feel like the treatment is valid and works, but only for specific people with specific problems. It's very important that the article qualifies this as working only for severe depression and/or possibly bipolar disorder. Treatments having the opposite effect on someone with an uncommon symptom as they do on the general population aren't unheard of. Like how some people with real ADHD are calmed by caffeine. I attribute my disbelief about sleep deprivation to not having heard about this before and to the mountain of social narrative around good regular sleep being so critically important to your health, which also has evidence but isn't trivial to pin down specifically by reading research journals.
ClassyJacket 9y ago
I can anecdotally confirm that for me, sleep deprivation appeared to significantly alleviate symptoms of severe anxiety. Around a year ago I was having what I think you'd call panic attacks every day and general anxiety all day. I had a breakdown of I think about six weeks, mostly focused on my insecurity about not having a better job, masters degree, etc. Etc. I was non functional. I read about the sleep deprivation studies then. One day I had stayed up very late anyway, so I decided I would just wrap it around and stay up all night. I had no job to go to anyway. That day I had no strong attacks and generally felt far more relaxed. It was a great respite. However, it's very temporary. For me it felt like respite, not a cure. A break from attacks and nerves. It came back over the next few days. I wish I'd kept a more detailed diary. Why I'm okay now I can't say for sure, however I sleep too little and quite badly now, being busy with work, clubbing, parties, and coding in my spare time, so there's possibly a correlation there - causation, who knows. I don't think eight hours of sleep is bad, I think it's beneficial, but I do think over sleeping is harmful to mental health and easy to do - my theory is that like high calorie foods, we didn't evolve with unlimited sleep available to us, so getting too much just wasn't a thing. Of course, it's one data point and could be the placebo effect for coincidence, but, much like my experience using MDMA to improve a depressive attitude (careful: may make it worse for some people), the effect was real enough to me that I personally believe in it and think it can be valuable to at least a subset of people if used carefully.
kevingrahl 9y ago
> “We can think of it not as sleep-depriving people, but as modifying or enlarging the period of the sleep–wake cycle from 24 to 48 hours,” says Benedetti. “People go to bed every two nights, but when they go to bed, they can sleep for as long as they want.” That reminds me of the sleep experiments performed by Michel Siffre [1] in the 60‘s & 70‘s who studied the experience of time underground without time cues. He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre [2] www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer.php
Kenji 9y ago
You will kill people with this advice. I'm not even kidding or exaggerating. I wish these quackery articles were banned on HN. Sleep deprivation is incredibly debilitating, it can be worse than being drunk. If you operate heavy machinery in this condition, you put yourself and others at risk. Its impact on mental health can be equally dangerous.
jokoon 9y ago
I have a history of depression and anti depressants. I stopped them some years ago, and I went to a 2 weeks military training 3 years after I stopped those meds. Not only did I love it, but it really gave a big energy boost. Awesome sleep. Maybe depression comes from boredom.
tabs_masterrace 9y ago
This is good news, but also shows how little we actually understand the complexity of our bodies and our brain in particular. We have good antidepressants, but besides observing the positive effects, there doesn't seem much of a consensus on what exactly these psychoactive molecules are doing to help. So no surprise that something seemly simple like sleep deprivation can have a massive effect on the issue. It's not like we understand all the mysteries of sleep either. The involved mechanism and chemistry are so complex, and we barley scrap the surface, even with all the advances in medicine. So many people arguing about what depression is, what it's causes are, but it would be foolish to assume we have this even remotely figured out, and I would be very open-minded to anything on this issue.
ebbv 9y ago
Huh well whatever works for people. If I don’t get enough sleep I am more prone to depression, not less.
ada1981 9y ago
The most useful model of depression I've found is that it's anger directed inward. Essentially, a restriction of emotional freedom and a suppression of feeling all our emotions. This is typically due to trauma or neglect or some other developmental adaptation not to feel fully. This is reinforced by a culture in which people try to fix or cheer you up when sad or angry. In a culture where actually feeling basic human emotions are taboo, feeling said emotions can be extremely isolating. If you've never felt safe fully feeling your emotions, it will be unlikely you will ever learn unless you conciously work on it and build relationships with people who can hold space for your entire range of experience. Psychedelics can help because they loosen the pathways of suppression and can help us reintegrate the parts of ourself that we've been suppressing. Main stream treatments like SSRIs end up making things worse long term because they just reinforce suppressing symptoms. I spent a decade of my life dealing with depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts, bipolar, anxiety and panic attacks. The things that helped me were a mindset that feeling all of my emotions was fully was required to be healthy, seeking out people and processes to help me get more embodied and to feel, Psychedelic therapy (specifically to be able to go deeper into emotion), NARM therapy to help me do relationship in a way that was connected; telling the 100% truth in relationship and holding space for the emotions that emerge; falling and staying in love; Gratitude. I've mapped out these states of consciousness enough in myself and in people I've worked with combined with finding enough accounts of others as well as emerging research to believe that we are on the cusp of a fundamental shift in how people deal with mental health. I'm now in love and enaged, working on a number of creative projects, my relationships are antifragile and honest, I have a practice helping others with relationships & mental health; don't take psychiatric medication (occasionally a tune up with psychedelics); and if I encounter a context which triggers something like depression, psychosis, mania, anxiety, etc. I understand how to work with those states to emerge from them even more integrated and connected to myself. The biggest developmental edge now is that once you start healing old traumas, you need to finish the work. Meaning, things will continue to come to the surface for your attention. It's not always easy, but the end result is always worth the time and work to release and heal. This last month I've really gotten aware of how being sexually assaulted at 25 really left an imprint. I had remembered what happened intellectually, but realized I never released the somatic memory of it. Residual anger, shame and fear kept coming up during sex with my fiancé and it wasn't until I made space to fully go into those emotions that I was able to see the connection with the assault (in grad school a male student got me drunk under the pretext of going to pick up girls and then tried to have sex with me while I was too drunk to move.) So, the work is not done, but man, my life is unrecognizable to where it was when I began this work and my creative life has really opened up to more possibility (we just signed a contract to buy a tropical island in Panama and build a village for visionaries! Please come visit!). Anyhow, I feel its my dharma to share my story and experiences and the personal research I've done, so thanks for giving me a space to do that.
peterburkimsher 9y ago
My experience is that sleep deprivation amplifies emotion. That can be good or bad feelings. It's like an op-amp. Prayer is like a diode. It manages the low emotions. Together, sleeping less and praying more works like an AC-DC rectifier. My average emotion moves above zero, so things are better.
sevenfive 9y ago
In retrospect, I've been leveraging this effect constantly since early high school. I suspect this explains many people's poor sleep habits. Anyone else?
dorfsmay 9y ago
I've successfully managed allergies with sleep deprivation. The issue is that it is obviously not sustainable.
- rjdlee 9y ago
  Care to explain how?
  - dorfsmay 9y ago
    How: By keeping myself busy and not sleeping! But I suspect that's not the question you were asking. Does it really work: It works for me, yes. But we are all different and I suspect it'd have different effect on different people. Why does it work (for me)? I don't know for sure, it could be placebo effect or... I have read that lack of sleep affect the production of cortisol and histamine, interestingly enough some studies say increase, some say decrease (could it be a different effect based on individual?). The fact is, both histamine and cortisol affect the immune response, and allergies are basically your immune system reacting too much or reacting to the wrong thing. Definitely not sustainable for more than 2 or 3 days, but it's a nice way to take a break from drugs.
yani 9y ago
My personal experience is exactly the opposite. Lack of sleep induces depression. This is also supported by many studies. I recommend this read http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/conseque...
- serpix 9y ago
  exactly the same. Just one nights poor sleep and the overcompensation of the mind makes life a living hell. Anxiety, depression and feeling like in a haze is absolute torture.
  - hihungryimdad 9y ago
    Poor sleep I would think is different than no sleep. The nights I get poor sleep, approximately 2~3 hours or less, the following day would be nothing but intrusive thoughts, depression about those thoughts and exhaustion. The nights I had NO sleep the following day all of those symptoms would virtually be gone.
- wbh1 9y ago
  Exact same experiences here. As soon as I start to develop a sleep deficit, all those negative feelings come racing back.
- Synaesthesia 9y ago
  In the article it says: “Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression,” says Benedetti. If you’re healthy and you don’t sleep, you’ll feel in a bad mood. But if you’re depressed, it can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities.”
  - exodust 9y ago
    Sounds like the theory relies on distraction to provoke attention away from depression. "Look at that shiny thing over there". Unfortunately the shiny thing is the effect of unhealthy sleep deprivation.
igtztorrero 9y ago
Reading on a Saturday at 4am shows that we programmers share deep sleep dissorders and depression issues, at a higher rate than any other carrer. Good to know it.
hihungryimdad 9y ago
Roughly 2 years ago I fell into a depression because of debilitating anxiety. The anxiety would keep me awake through the night. Low and behold the whole next day the depression and anxiety would be gone. I wouldn't be overly tired either, so the trade off was fine. This would happen roughly once or twice a week. Always, the next day following a sleepless night I pretty much felt 'normal'. Eventually I swallowed my pride and went to the doctor and was prescribed an SSRI & NDRI. I was too afraid to take the SSRI(with anxiety can some OCD, I was obsessed for awhile I was becoming schizophrenic) so only took the NDRI(Wellbutrin, generic). Eventually it pulled me out of my depression and I was began sleeping normally again. I weened off the NDRI about 6 months later. Luckily the depression hasn't came back, in full force. I go through cycles of what I would say "mini-depression" every once awhile, but I am able to push through and conquer. The medicine was a must for me to get through my depression and get back on a normal sleep cycle. I don't miss the sleepless nights at all, but they sure helped me stay somewhat sane during those rough times.
- zhte415 9y ago
  Good job. That's all I can say. Good job.
- KurtMueller 9y ago
  The symptoms you described in your first paragraph describe what I'm currently going through to a tee. Theses symptoms only started about a week ago for me. Day 1: Debilitating anxiety, can't concentrate. Night 1: Can't sleep, overwhelmed by anxious rumination. Day 2: Anxiety eventually subsides because I'm so exhausted. By the evening, I'm feeling like my old self again - I might have anxious thoughts but they don't become obsessive ruminations. Night 2: Sleep well. Repeat cycle. --- I'm glad you got better. Hopefully the same will happen for me as well.
lkrubner 9y ago
For me, the big shock has always been the extent to which sleep can kill a fantastic streak of productivity. I sometimes have weeks of incredible energy, where I work 12 or even 14 hours every day, and I do my best work, and I have deep insights, and invent new products and new kinds of software. And generally, over the course of a week or two, I become more productive each day. And finally I have a day when I am on fire and I'm writing incredible code and I'm writing some of my most popular essays, the stuff that continues to be read years later. And I go to sleep thinking that tomorrow will be just as good. And I sleep 9 hours. And I wake up and I am a completely different person. My thoughts don't make sense. I'm a bit disoriented. I drink 3 cups of coffee but I still feel groggy. I have no energy. The magic is gone. I'm lucky if I get 4 hours of good work done. And the next day is terrible, and the next day is terrible, and the so on. And it is always a shock what a sudden start there is to this prolonged grogginess, and it always seems to start with one night where I sleep a bit too long.
- projectramo 9y ago
  Maybe you’re mixing up cause and effect. Maybe your “sleep” was collapsing with exhaustion when it all caught up?
  - Demiurge 9y ago
    That sounds right, sleep is just the beginning of recovery from burnout. I can get pretty productive for some deadlines, working nonstop, but if there is too much to do, it can become painful to work or think, and the productivity can even come to a complete halt. Only after a week or more can I do anything. So, lessons learned a few years ago, it's best to keep overworking to short bursts, and there are no miracles.
  - gameswithgo 9y ago
    yeah that sounds about right
  - lkrubner 9y ago
    That theory would only work if sleep caused me to feel refreshed. But I don't think any of us have ever had the experience that more sleep lead to more awakeness. It's not as if we are well rested after 8 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 9 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 10 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 11 hours of sleep, etc. I think most of us have had the experience of over-sleeping, and then being strangely groggy all day. Certainly, most of my friends have had that experience.
caseymarquis 9y ago
This article confuses depression and bipolar disorder quite a bit. They're inducing mania through sleep deprivation in patients with bipolar disorder going through a period of depression. This is somewhat dangerous, as mania can have severe consequences. The article even states that there's a 95% relapse into depression for those not taking lithium. Only people with BPD take lithium. It's not about the lithium, it's about that population having BPD. DO NOT TRY THIS IF YOU HAVE BIPOLAR DISORDER WITHOUT MEDICAL SUPERVISION. Inducing mania could ruin your life. If you don't have BPD, then this likely won't work anyway. I have several family members with BPD. Irregular sleep schedule is a major warning sign that mania is coming on, and interrupted sleep schedule can induce mania. I can see why you might try this in a controlled setting, and I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying that this is very dangerous, and should not be done without qualified medical supervision.
- Shikadi 9y ago
  It's probably worth noting that bipolar disorder and manic depression are the same condition. In other words, bipolar disorder is a form of depression, though they could have been more clear and said "other forms of depression" in certain places.
  - _delirium 9y ago
    In recent writing it's usually seen as more clear to treat them as distinct (though related) disorders rather than bipolar being a subset of depression, although that usage is still common. The ICD, for example, classifies "Bipolar affective disorder" (F31) and "Recurrent depressive disorder" (F33) as two distinct disorders under the parent category "Mood [affective] disorders".
- notjosh 9y ago
  Just to clarify: when you say BPD here, do you mean bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder? I've only known it as the latter (and a quick Google search agrees), but from context I assume you mean the former?
  - 9y ago
krzyk 9y ago
Strange, in my case (tested on myself and my wife) sleep deprivation (e.g. sleeping and hour or two less than optimal sleep time) causes depression.
master-litty 9y ago
I'm in the middle of a sleepless night now and am already feeling that familiar high. I've never met anyone beyond family who could relate -- especially about the cognitive improvements, this is when I do my best work! This is an exceptionally interesting post for me. Much of my mother's side is bipolar and it continues in me. As long as I can remember noticing, I run through 3 very definitive emotional states: * I am feeling productive and withdraw from society. I get frustrated when I'm unable to work and often go without sleep to make up lost time * I am feeling social and withdraw from the extreme productivity. I simply don't want to sleep when I can have late night company * I am feeling depressed and withdraw from everything and everyone. I am inconsolable and confused by my mood. I eventually and magically get sick of it, often after a sleepless night The sleep deprivation is a critical part of my natural rhythm now that I really think about it. The article rings deeply true.
juanmirocks 9y ago
Besides experimenting with polyphasic sleep and such, I could never think that sleep deprivation could become a therapy. Regardless of the validity of these claims, I welcome this new idea into my brain.
m3kw9 9y ago
If you are tired maybe you don’t think too much, thinking too much is part of depression
geoka9 9y ago
Haven't read the article yet, but it sounds grim, I don't think it can be good for me. Instead of forced sleep deprivation, try this for a week: intermittent fasting and calorie restriction, good nutrition (veggies, nuts, olive oil, eggs, etc.), no drinking (at all), going to bed early (like 10 pm), waking up early (at dawn in the summer at 4 am would be perfect), but naturally, without an alarm clock. Doing this, you may find out that you only need 5-6 hours of sleep, especially in the summer. And moderate (outdoors) exercise - this is important. Since a lot of you guys are in the bay area, you have a lot of sun during the year; that makes this routine a lot easier and more rewarding (sunshine increases the feeling of "high" for most people). After doing this for a while, you might find out you're naturally high all the time, without going through crashes.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  > good nutrition (veggies, nuts, olive oil, eggs, etc.) I'd highly recommend reducing carb intake; cut out your bread, sugar, starch, pasta and try to stick with meat and greens. Low carb diets (Keto, Adkins, etc.) made a huge difference for me health wise.
  - obmelvin 9y ago
    Ugh. Carbs are fuel. Cutting out the specifics you mentioned are good, but generally cutting out carbs is not good for most people.
    - grzm 9y ago
      Carbs are one source of fuel/calories. Fats are another, and protein as well (albeit to a much lesser extent).
      - obmelvin 9y ago
        Yes, but if you look at studies for the vast majority of people the common denominator across diets like the GP mentioned is improved diet quality and eating less. Most people don't need to remove carbs themselves. Sure, pasta is refined grain etc, but if you are well and not overeating then there's nothing wrong with it. A (if not the) primary problem is that people tend to overeat things that contain lots of carbs and/or fats that fail to satiete.
shams93 9y ago
Personally I find it's the opposite if I'm not well rested I feeling death and feel super depressed. I had a job that believed this and limited us sometimes to only 90 minutes sleep. I never worked with a more angry group of people. I'm 46 years old, working like that at 45 almost killed me. Oversleeping can also be a factor in depression but there is a golden sweet spot of just enough sleep and not too much that can vary greatly between individuals you have to find out for yourself what that sweet spot is. Certainly 90 minutes is not enough to sustain health
- jlarocco 9y ago
  > I had a job that believed this and limited us sometimes to only 90 minutes sleep. Can you elaborate on that? How could your employer possibly control something like how long you sleep?
haywardgb 9y ago
I disagree with that study. Myself and a colleague used to go for days on what were called "micro naps". After a certain amount of practice you can train your mind to hit REM within the first few seconds of shutting your eyes for sleep. Over time it really messes with your head. You become very irritable. Lookup "Peter Tripp, radio DJ". A very famous story with a very sad ending. Long-term sleep deprivation is very bad for you. I know, I've tried it.
b0rsuk 9y ago
I noticed this myself a long time ago. I have major anxiety, stress and depression problems(the last one I mostly fixed). When I stay up very late, or lose most of a night's sleep, I no longer care. I'm very resistant to stress. The downside, aside from numerous all other long term negatives of sleep deprivation, is that I can't focus on anything moderately complicated and take loong to get anything done. It's like time passes faster. And it's really hard to make decisions.
cl0ne 9y ago
Interesting, this has worked for me on occasion during times of suffering from depression and anxiety and I was wondering about it recently. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping and have noticed positive effects in my mood and energy level the next day after staying up all night.
WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
Careful with this, sleep deprivation is known to cause health issues. https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/important-sleep-habits#1 https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/important-sle...
m3kw9 9y ago
And then there is just a new article posted up there in HN that talks about how bad sleep increases risk of depression
- m3kw9 9y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16562599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16562599
ninjakeyboard 9y ago
Ya I used to pull an all nighter once a week. It has a lot of long term deleterious effects but it does the trick for a day break from depression.
GirlsCodeToo 9y ago
There's so many claims for sleep being very beneficial, that I'd approach sleep deprivation very carefully. I wonder if there are different types of depression that are amenable to different treatments.
alexozer 9y ago
Saw this article and decided to try to roll over my half-phase-out-of-sync horrific sleep schedule by staying awake through the next day. My mind was nowhere near fully functional from the period of 6pm the first day through 11:30pm the next, but I somehow managed to experience a sense of urgency and elatedness I may have forgotten how to feel over the last few years, and got some work done to boot. Unfortunately I'm back as hopeless as ever today, but I would be willing to bet with a little more discipline it'd be a pretty great way to at the very least quickly restore a sleep-early wake-early sleep schedule.
LeighoBeigho 9y ago
On the herbals: Fishoil gel tablets work very well for depression, if you don't mind some occasional fish smell. They keep me very clear when I take them. Caveat: If you have MAOI inhibitor issues you gotta make sure you can take certain supplements safely. This is a great discussion and the 2nd time I have heard of the positive impacts of sleep deprivation on depression (SD/D). 1st time I didn't buy it because lack of sleep, unless I am working on a project, makes me amped up and close to rowdy. I use the rowdiness to workout, walk, skateboard or bike; all of the above manages depression and absorbs high energy. Hearing so many intellectual viewpoints on YC makes the SD/D argument more believable.I thought I was the only one with this issue.

441 points by onuralp 9y ago

sleep deprivation is bad for one's health

I've definitely noticed that this works for me on occasion - staying up all night to see the sunrise and then going about as usual seems to be a cleansing experience of sorts. In such a state, it feels that the mind is too exhausted to lend itself to worry or anxiety. The troubles seem far less consequential through the haze. I didn't keep track of what happens the day after catching up on sleep, but in general, being lifted even for a single day out of the quagmire is very helpful: one can make plans for the future (in a depressed state, people tend to not make any plans because they don't want anything, and what they want, they think they can't do), and one can feel contrast between their good and bad states of mind (depression tricks people into thinking that their depressed state is actually their normal state). That said, sometimes staying up all night just meant sleeping all day -- and I don't know to which extent my experience even compares with the one of the people in the article. Still, it's something everyone suffering from the symptoms can try for free. Beats a night of restlessness and bad sleep hands down, and there's little to lose if you experiment on a weekend.

agumonkey 9y ago
exhaustion is often a nice way to cleanse; but I've been ill to the point of not being asleep for 5 days, and the confusion was nearing madness to the point I'd avoid feeling that way as much as possible :)

B-Con 9y ago

It sounds like the theory behind this is kicking the circadian rhythm to see if it improves. > Depression is also associated with altered daily rhythms of hormone secretion and body temperature, and the more severe the illness, the greater the degree of disruption. Like the sleep signals, these rhythms are also driven by the body’s circadian system, which itself is driven by a set of interacting proteins, encoded by ‘clock genes’ that are expressed in a rhythmic pattern throughout the day. A classic, almost cliche, way to address "common depression" is to normalize the person's sleep schedule. Many people keep erratic schedules and participate in activities (eg, playing video games) at end of day that make going to sleep hard. They get poorer quality sleep and have no consistency, which messes up the circadian rhythm and contributes to depression. Such people are advised to at least try keeping a consistent sleep schedule for a couple weeks to see if it helps them. The technique in the article seems to be the figurative opposite, possibly because regular sleep cycles are either inadequate or infeasible to achieve. They force a short-term horrible sleep cycle to see if they can jolt the circadian rhythm into working better.

SubiculumCode 9y ago
Bright light in the morning, vitamin D supplementation (5k units) seems to show promise for some.
lloeki 9y ago
I can attest that for me a regular sleep schedule works, but only so far. At first it works kinda well as I feel increasingly settled as days go by, but at some point it seems being too restful kicks my mind into overdrive mode. From experience I can now detect such events, as it starts with a general feeling of everything being awesome, incredible energy, and fantastic happiness as I just am there (as with mindfulness and meditation), do many things† for a day or two, then everything inevitably crashes down†† as I start feeling increasingly but subtly anxious about minute details, followed by an increasing inability to focus and then comes listlessness. If a (even remotely) bad event happens right after the peak happiness state it can send me spiralling down even faster. The only thing that can curb that is: - an occasional short night (like getting 3 to 4 hours of sleep) once a week or so, after which I feel surprisingly refreshed. Sometimes it happens naturally as I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep, or go to bed late. But it better not last two or three days in a row or then the crashing down thing happens and it's even harder to climb up as the added sleep deficit combined with listlessness makes me very sleepy during the day. Note: I am largely unable to voluntarily control my sleep schedule. - regular strenuous physical exercise, like daily, and for hours, and preferably outside. It seems I need to shoot my body through a satiated state of physical sensations in order to saturate my nervous system and keep my mind in check. I can skip a day or two but exercising, say, every other day doesn't check out as though the slope, while less steep, is still trending downwards. Outdoors is incredibly important to me as there are so much more physical stimuli (light, wind, sounds) and with greater variations than indoors. - food and water. Regular hydration is capital for me, and some kind of mineral water is best. Tap water is out of question for some reason (strangely seems to upset my bowel/urinary system after a few days). A balanced diet can do wonders but it seems I can be derailed easily on that front. I sort of picture my mood swings as f(t+phi) = mood, with f basically resembling a sine wave, and physical exertion seems to help me in adjusting phi. My general strategy to combat that is to try to hit that sweet spot where I'm right before the super-happiness point and attempt to ride the wave using exercise, caffeine and nicotine†† (sadly, using tobacco). Honestly though I try not to put too much thought into it as I managed to turn anxiety about the situation into more like curiosity. Anyway on a larger scale the general mood trend is sensibly upwards as looked at retrospectively I'm climbing inch by inch out of that hole. † I tried not being so hyperactive, pacing myself and not doing so many things but it doesn't change a thing to the process. †† I found out that one of the dead giveaways of when I'm trending towards the downward slope is that I start skipping on automatically hydrating myself. ††† caffeine seems to act as a baseline offset but too much outright prevents sleep, while nicotine seems to act as a dampener, both for high and low swings of mood.

adamnemecek 9y ago

I’ve experienced this first hand. However the line is very thin as sleep deprivation tends to ricochet in the other direction.

tda 9y ago

> “Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression,” says Benedetti. If you’re healthy and you don’t sleep, you’ll feel in a bad mood. But if you’re depressed, it can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities. But, Benedetti adds, there’s a catch: once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed hours of sleep, you’ll have a 95 per cent chance of relapse. This is really counter intuitive to me. The article goes on explaining that using a combination of skipping sleep, lithium and light treatment the results are much better.

tombrm 9y ago

"if you’re depressed, [sleep deprivation] can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities. But, Benedetti adds, there’s a catch: once you go to sleep and catch up on those missed hours of sleep, you’ll have a 95 per cent chance of relapse." Sounds like there's a high risk for turning depression into insomnia. Not sure if it's an improvement.

hihungryimdad 9y ago
Yep, once I caught up on my sleep the next day would be the same anxiety, depression cycle all over. Crazy to read about this today after having this exact phenomenon happen to me years ago.

mjfl 9y ago

So the cure for depression is to take hallucinogens like ketamine or deliberately deprive yourself of sleep? It's like making yourself happier by making yourself less sharp. Perhaps, then, one is depressed because one is rational - because there are real, serious problems with life that need to be dealt with, not escaped. The recent "cures" sound almost Huxley-an.

godzillabrennus 9y ago
I’ve known depression through a relationship with a significant other. Their worries were not solely based on rational issues. They would be depressed at a mall because it wasn’t in a city. Then depressed in a city because they felt removed from their comfort zone. Depression is a mental illness and it sucks. Much of the medicine for depression causes depression to worsen. I hope we unlock a cure in our lifetime.
ehnto 9y ago
You can have everything you want in life and still be depressed. I find even people who have been there and overcome can forget this about depression. Depression is a thing that happens to you, an ailment that occurs. Sadness about a sad thing is not depression, apathy because things aren't going okay is not depression. They can lead to depression if they go on long enough, but they aren't themselves a mental disorder. They're just emotions. Depression is a mental disorder. An incorrectly operating subroutine in your brain that's flooding you with emotions that make no sense and shutting down others that you would normally feel given the circumstances. You stop smiling at puppies, you stop crying for movies, but then you cry because you dropped your fork, and get annoyed that people you love are talking (okay, sometimes that's normal!). Granted, your line of thinking is why I think some people stay at jobs they hate, stress themselves out with it, and then fall into depression through years of stress and apathy toward their health. But you could also suffer from depression while working a job you love and sleeping on stacks of cash every night.
- psyc 9y ago
  This isn't wrong, but it is a simplistic model of one layer of depression, which can be a pragmatic way to look at it for some people during some periods, typically the most severe periods. I've suffered from severe depression for my whole adult life, and I am thankful that I haven't had a psychiatrist who subscribed to the medical model as an absolute, in many years. The big picture of depression can indeed be about your life, and no psychiatrist I've seen in the past 15 years has failed to acknowledge that. It's well known that major depression often follows major life stresses such as divorce, breakups, deaths, trauma, other illnesses, and so on. I've never found it fruitful to make it either all about the brain, or all about your life. It's rather a feedback loop between the two. The very nature of subjectivity makes it almost nonsensical to try to distinguish between your mind and your life, from your own perspective. And there's a reason treatment almost always includes talk therapy. I've always been able to articulate what my depression is about. Some people can't. It's just not so clear cut.

savanaly 9y ago

Whenever I read about this sleep-cures-depression topic on HN (and it seems to come up relatively often) I think about and often go back and read this post. [0] Definitely doesn't have all the answers but it really changed how I thought about the issue. [0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/14/ssc-journal-club-mental-disorders-as-networks/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/14/ssc-journal-club-mental...

yedpodtrzitko 9y ago

inb4 a lot of sources sleep deprivation is hurting your brain in a long term. Not sure what's better.

te0006 9y ago
it can have many other nasty side effects too, such as weakening your immune system. Which can in turn cause rising levels of inflammaton which is really undesirable w.r.t. the original objective. So if your physical constitution is not perfect, better don't do this.
rocqua 9y ago
It should be noted that anti-depressants also have side effects.
- yedpodtrzitko 9y ago
  I dont doubt that. The way how I treat depression myself is via acupuncture. Works great so far.

77pt77 9y ago

Another way is travelling and getting hit by a considerable time difference. It seems resetting your circadian rhythm can, in some circumstances, have beneficial effect. I knew someone that referred to doing that as "degaussing".

uhhyeahdude 9y ago

How very odd for me to find this on HN this evening. I'm on "day 2" of my once a week sleep fast, which means things are a bit surreal to begin with. For each of the last seven weeks, I stay awake from Thursday morning until my "regular" bedtime hour Friday evening. I do this because it actually seems to be an effective way to avoid falling into a hole of anhedonia and "stuck-ness." I am hip to many of the cognitive tricks of depression, and can deal, kind of--I am utterly unable to deal with the physical listlessness and absence of drive that comes with it. Skipping sleep on a set schedule seems to work for me. At first I didn't think I could keep it up, and I was concerned by potential safety hazards. My concerns are justified, as I am pretty loopy by Friday afternoon, or around the 32 hour mark. Of all the esoteric treatments for my mood, this is perhaps the only real success except for Yoga (BKS-style Ashtanga). I have a feeling I might receive some benefit from ascetic practices in general; and will experiment with caloric restriction, e.g. in future months. I have no idea if I should expect the effects of this practice to remain pronounced, and my experience seems to differ somewhat from that described in the article. I sure hope I continue to benefit, because I don't respond well to any of the usual methodologies. Also, I don't feel comfortable enough in the onions to do a proper Ketamine trial. // I don't mean to sound breezy. I only include that last note to emphasize how unendurable my world was becoming. If this makes sense to you, I feel for you. One foot in front of the other... The downside: I am totally sober, but I know my executive function is not working very well, and I may very well regret commenting. edit: some glaring issues with words

pgt 9y ago
Wow! I awoke early this morning from a bit of a bender last night and have a similar feeling of mania (the positive, productive kind). At first I attributed it to a GABA rebound, but thinking back, a sleep fast has historically injected a sense of urgency and vigour. I have been fasting intermittently after reading Valter Longo's metabolic oxidation research (the term they used for aging research to get it published). I skip breakfast and try to leave 16-18 hours between meals. Have been losing weight but keeping muscle tone almost effortlessly. My skin has also improved. No negative effect so far. Good interview about I.F.: https://youtu.be/d6PyyatqJSE https://youtu.be/d6PyyatqJSE

amelius 9y ago

Ok, so this is one possible thing to try when one has depression. Who is keeping a list of all things to try, and where does this experiment fit in that list?

jimnotgym 9y ago
Sounds like a a web app with voting would be a useful thing. In the UK mental health services have almost disappeared, especially for those who are not extreme. Maybe a list of things to try yourself is useful?
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  Well this got the better of me, there is now a list on Github https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression Please PR if you want to comment. I'll do a ShowHN once there is more on it
  - amelius 9y ago
    This is a great initiative! Some quick ideas. Perhaps you can mention what should determine the order in the list. For example, every experiment has: - A success rate. - An average time to noticeable improvement - An average time to recovery. - Risk and severity of side effects. - Cost. - Difficulty. - More? So for example, checking for nutritional deficiencies (very important) or other tests can be near the top of the list (little side effects, low cost, not difficult, etc). But psychotherapy should be near the bottom (high cost, difficult, long recovery time, etc.) Perhaps split according to cure/prevention/coping strategy. (For example SSRIs are in many cases a coping strategy and not a cure). Again, great work!
    - jimnotgym 9y ago
      If we can get a consensus about what people are doing, rather than just what is getting posted on HN I am happy to write a quick app that applies your very sensible success criteria. Comments Issues and PR are most welcome

cup-of-tea 9y ago

> Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression I used to "play" with my sleeping pattern a lot. I would stay up extremely late sometimes because it's impossible to go to sleep before a bug has been fixed. But being a student I could just sleep in the next day. It had that classic effect which is observed in hackers of drifting "West" and becoming completely out of phase with the Sun's cycle. I did suffer from depression. It's always difficult to say this, though. How do I know that I really had depression and I wasn't just unhappy? I don't know. But maybe it suffices to say that I had near constant suicidal thoughts at times. I've since turned my life around and I am no longer depressed. I attribute it to having a much more regimented life which includes regular and sufficient sleep, regular, healthy meals and regular exercise. So the above quotation suggests that I am "healthy". Presumably as opposed to those that are "unhealthy" and really have depression. But what is the difference really? I have to do this particular thing to avoid depression, and they have to do that particular thing to avoid it? Is it just that my "cure" happens to be the same as everyone else's cure? Or am I missing something here?

perlgeek 9y ago

Somehow my quackery detectors go off on this one, but I'm not quite sure. The article talks about "recent studies" without linking to them. The "references" section at the end links to a single peer-reviewed article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5447205/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5447205/) in a journal with an impact factor of less then one (compare https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0379-5284_Saudi_medical_journal https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0379-5284_Saudi_medical... for example). If it works, why not give some citations in more reputable journals, for example? Most articles, when searching for depression + sleep deprivation, talk about the correlation between the two, which seems to be pretty well-established. There's little on the possible treatment of depression through sleep deprivation. I found a meta-analysis on the subject: http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/28937707 http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/28937707 "The overall response rate to sleep deprivation was 45% among studies that utilized a randomized control group and 50% among studies that did not. The response to sleep deprivation was not affected significantly by the type of sleep deprivation performed, the nature of the clinical sample, medication status, the definition of response used, or age and gender of the sample.These findings support a significant effect of sleep deprivation and suggest the need for future studies [...]" I don't have the qualifications to assess this meta analysis; at least it's published in a more popular/reputable journal.

mtgx 9y ago
There are a bunch of them on PudMed, and not all are that recent. This is what I found on a quick search. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7893848 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7893848 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14522011 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14522011 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16408408 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16408408
dahart 9y ago
I felt a little bit like this last time the subject was on HN, and after similarly looking into the research further, I feel like the treatment is valid and works, but only for specific people with specific problems. It's very important that the article qualifies this as working only for severe depression and/or possibly bipolar disorder. Treatments having the opposite effect on someone with an uncommon symptom as they do on the general population aren't unheard of. Like how some people with real ADHD are calmed by caffeine. I attribute my disbelief about sleep deprivation to not having heard about this before and to the mountain of social narrative around good regular sleep being so critically important to your health, which also has evidence but isn't trivial to pin down specifically by reading research journals.

ClassyJacket 9y ago

I can anecdotally confirm that for me, sleep deprivation appeared to significantly alleviate symptoms of severe anxiety. Around a year ago I was having what I think you'd call panic attacks every day and general anxiety all day. I had a breakdown of I think about six weeks, mostly focused on my insecurity about not having a better job, masters degree, etc. Etc. I was non functional. I read about the sleep deprivation studies then. One day I had stayed up very late anyway, so I decided I would just wrap it around and stay up all night. I had no job to go to anyway. That day I had no strong attacks and generally felt far more relaxed. It was a great respite. However, it's very temporary. For me it felt like respite, not a cure. A break from attacks and nerves. It came back over the next few days. I wish I'd kept a more detailed diary. Why I'm okay now I can't say for sure, however I sleep too little and quite badly now, being busy with work, clubbing, parties, and coding in my spare time, so there's possibly a correlation there - causation, who knows. I don't think eight hours of sleep is bad, I think it's beneficial, but I do think over sleeping is harmful to mental health and easy to do - my theory is that like high calorie foods, we didn't evolve with unlimited sleep available to us, so getting too much just wasn't a thing. Of course, it's one data point and could be the placebo effect for coincidence, but, much like my experience using MDMA to improve a depressive attitude (careful: may make it worse for some people), the effect was real enough to me that I personally believe in it and think it can be valuable to at least a subset of people if used carefully.

kevingrahl 9y ago

> “We can think of it not as sleep-depriving people, but as modifying or enlarging the period of the sleep–wake cycle from 24 to 48 hours,” says Benedetti. “People go to bed every two nights, but when they go to bed, they can sleep for as long as they want.” That reminds me of the sleep experiments performed by Michel Siffre [1] in the 60‘s & 70‘s who studied the experience of time underground without time cues. He found that without time cues, several people including himself adjusted to a 48-hour rather than a 24-hour cycle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre [2] www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer.php

Kenji 9y ago

You will kill people with this advice. I'm not even kidding or exaggerating. I wish these quackery articles were banned on HN. Sleep deprivation is incredibly debilitating, it can be worse than being drunk. If you operate heavy machinery in this condition, you put yourself and others at risk. Its impact on mental health can be equally dangerous.

jokoon 9y ago

I have a history of depression and anti depressants. I stopped them some years ago, and I went to a 2 weeks military training 3 years after I stopped those meds. Not only did I love it, but it really gave a big energy boost. Awesome sleep. Maybe depression comes from boredom.

tabs_masterrace 9y ago

This is good news, but also shows how little we actually understand the complexity of our bodies and our brain in particular. We have good antidepressants, but besides observing the positive effects, there doesn't seem much of a consensus on what exactly these psychoactive molecules are doing to help. So no surprise that something seemly simple like sleep deprivation can have a massive effect on the issue. It's not like we understand all the mysteries of sleep either. The involved mechanism and chemistry are so complex, and we barley scrap the surface, even with all the advances in medicine. So many people arguing about what depression is, what it's causes are, but it would be foolish to assume we have this even remotely figured out, and I would be very open-minded to anything on this issue.

ebbv 9y ago

Huh well whatever works for people. If I don’t get enough sleep I am more prone to depression, not less.

ada1981 9y ago

The most useful model of depression I've found is that it's anger directed inward. Essentially, a restriction of emotional freedom and a suppression of feeling all our emotions. This is typically due to trauma or neglect or some other developmental adaptation not to feel fully. This is reinforced by a culture in which people try to fix or cheer you up when sad or angry. In a culture where actually feeling basic human emotions are taboo, feeling said emotions can be extremely isolating. If you've never felt safe fully feeling your emotions, it will be unlikely you will ever learn unless you conciously work on it and build relationships with people who can hold space for your entire range of experience. Psychedelics can help because they loosen the pathways of suppression and can help us reintegrate the parts of ourself that we've been suppressing. Main stream treatments like SSRIs end up making things worse long term because they just reinforce suppressing symptoms. I spent a decade of my life dealing with depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts, bipolar, anxiety and panic attacks. The things that helped me were a mindset that feeling all of my emotions was fully was required to be healthy, seeking out people and processes to help me get more embodied and to feel, Psychedelic therapy (specifically to be able to go deeper into emotion), NARM therapy to help me do relationship in a way that was connected; telling the 100% truth in relationship and holding space for the emotions that emerge; falling and staying in love; Gratitude. I've mapped out these states of consciousness enough in myself and in people I've worked with combined with finding enough accounts of others as well as emerging research to believe that we are on the cusp of a fundamental shift in how people deal with mental health. I'm now in love and enaged, working on a number of creative projects, my relationships are antifragile and honest, I have a practice helping others with relationships & mental health; don't take psychiatric medication (occasionally a tune up with psychedelics); and if I encounter a context which triggers something like depression, psychosis, mania, anxiety, etc. I understand how to work with those states to emerge from them even more integrated and connected to myself. The biggest developmental edge now is that once you start healing old traumas, you need to finish the work. Meaning, things will continue to come to the surface for your attention. It's not always easy, but the end result is always worth the time and work to release and heal. This last month I've really gotten aware of how being sexually assaulted at 25 really left an imprint. I had remembered what happened intellectually, but realized I never released the somatic memory of it. Residual anger, shame and fear kept coming up during sex with my fiancé and it wasn't until I made space to fully go into those emotions that I was able to see the connection with the assault (in grad school a male student got me drunk under the pretext of going to pick up girls and then tried to have sex with me while I was too drunk to move.) So, the work is not done, but man, my life is unrecognizable to where it was when I began this work and my creative life has really opened up to more possibility (we just signed a contract to buy a tropical island in Panama and build a village for visionaries! Please come visit!). Anyhow, I feel its my dharma to share my story and experiences and the personal research I've done, so thanks for giving me a space to do that.

peterburkimsher 9y ago

My experience is that sleep deprivation amplifies emotion. That can be good or bad feelings. It's like an op-amp. Prayer is like a diode. It manages the low emotions. Together, sleeping less and praying more works like an AC-DC rectifier. My average emotion moves above zero, so things are better.

sevenfive 9y ago

In retrospect, I've been leveraging this effect constantly since early high school. I suspect this explains many people's poor sleep habits. Anyone else?

dorfsmay 9y ago

I've successfully managed allergies with sleep deprivation. The issue is that it is obviously not sustainable.

rjdlee 9y ago
Care to explain how?
- dorfsmay 9y ago
  How: By keeping myself busy and not sleeping! But I suspect that's not the question you were asking. Does it really work: It works for me, yes. But we are all different and I suspect it'd have different effect on different people. Why does it work (for me)? I don't know for sure, it could be placebo effect or... I have read that lack of sleep affect the production of cortisol and histamine, interestingly enough some studies say increase, some say decrease (could it be a different effect based on individual?). The fact is, both histamine and cortisol affect the immune response, and allergies are basically your immune system reacting too much or reacting to the wrong thing. Definitely not sustainable for more than 2 or 3 days, but it's a nice way to take a break from drugs.

yani 9y ago

My personal experience is exactly the opposite. Lack of sleep induces depression. This is also supported by many studies. I recommend this read http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/conseque...

serpix 9y ago
exactly the same. Just one nights poor sleep and the overcompensation of the mind makes life a living hell. Anxiety, depression and feeling like in a haze is absolute torture.
- hihungryimdad 9y ago
  Poor sleep I would think is different than no sleep. The nights I get poor sleep, approximately 2~3 hours or less, the following day would be nothing but intrusive thoughts, depression about those thoughts and exhaustion. The nights I had NO sleep the following day all of those symptoms would virtually be gone.
wbh1 9y ago
Exact same experiences here. As soon as I start to develop a sleep deficit, all those negative feelings come racing back.
Synaesthesia 9y ago
In the article it says: “Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression,” says Benedetti. If you’re healthy and you don’t sleep, you’ll feel in a bad mood. But if you’re depressed, it can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities.”
- exodust 9y ago
  Sounds like the theory relies on distraction to provoke attention away from depression. "Look at that shiny thing over there". Unfortunately the shiny thing is the effect of unhealthy sleep deprivation.

igtztorrero 9y ago

Reading on a Saturday at 4am shows that we programmers share deep sleep dissorders and depression issues, at a higher rate than any other carrer. Good to know it.

hihungryimdad 9y ago

Roughly 2 years ago I fell into a depression because of debilitating anxiety. The anxiety would keep me awake through the night. Low and behold the whole next day the depression and anxiety would be gone. I wouldn't be overly tired either, so the trade off was fine. This would happen roughly once or twice a week. Always, the next day following a sleepless night I pretty much felt 'normal'. Eventually I swallowed my pride and went to the doctor and was prescribed an SSRI & NDRI. I was too afraid to take the SSRI(with anxiety can some OCD, I was obsessed for awhile I was becoming schizophrenic) so only took the NDRI(Wellbutrin, generic). Eventually it pulled me out of my depression and I was began sleeping normally again. I weened off the NDRI about 6 months later. Luckily the depression hasn't came back, in full force. I go through cycles of what I would say "mini-depression" every once awhile, but I am able to push through and conquer. The medicine was a must for me to get through my depression and get back on a normal sleep cycle. I don't miss the sleepless nights at all, but they sure helped me stay somewhat sane during those rough times.

zhte415 9y ago
Good job. That's all I can say. Good job.
KurtMueller 9y ago
The symptoms you described in your first paragraph describe what I'm currently going through to a tee. Theses symptoms only started about a week ago for me. Day 1: Debilitating anxiety, can't concentrate. Night 1: Can't sleep, overwhelmed by anxious rumination. Day 2: Anxiety eventually subsides because I'm so exhausted. By the evening, I'm feeling like my old self again - I might have anxious thoughts but they don't become obsessive ruminations. Night 2: Sleep well. Repeat cycle. --- I'm glad you got better. Hopefully the same will happen for me as well.

lkrubner 9y ago

For me, the big shock has always been the extent to which sleep can kill a fantastic streak of productivity. I sometimes have weeks of incredible energy, where I work 12 or even 14 hours every day, and I do my best work, and I have deep insights, and invent new products and new kinds of software. And generally, over the course of a week or two, I become more productive each day. And finally I have a day when I am on fire and I'm writing incredible code and I'm writing some of my most popular essays, the stuff that continues to be read years later. And I go to sleep thinking that tomorrow will be just as good. And I sleep 9 hours. And I wake up and I am a completely different person. My thoughts don't make sense. I'm a bit disoriented. I drink 3 cups of coffee but I still feel groggy. I have no energy. The magic is gone. I'm lucky if I get 4 hours of good work done. And the next day is terrible, and the next day is terrible, and the so on. And it is always a shock what a sudden start there is to this prolonged grogginess, and it always seems to start with one night where I sleep a bit too long.

projectramo 9y ago
Maybe you’re mixing up cause and effect. Maybe your “sleep” was collapsing with exhaustion when it all caught up?
- Demiurge 9y ago
  That sounds right, sleep is just the beginning of recovery from burnout. I can get pretty productive for some deadlines, working nonstop, but if there is too much to do, it can become painful to work or think, and the productivity can even come to a complete halt. Only after a week or more can I do anything. So, lessons learned a few years ago, it's best to keep overworking to short bursts, and there are no miracles.
- gameswithgo 9y ago
  yeah that sounds about right
- lkrubner 9y ago
  That theory would only work if sleep caused me to feel refreshed. But I don't think any of us have ever had the experience that more sleep lead to more awakeness. It's not as if we are well rested after 8 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 9 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 10 hours of sleep, and even more energized by 11 hours of sleep, etc. I think most of us have had the experience of over-sleeping, and then being strangely groggy all day. Certainly, most of my friends have had that experience.

caseymarquis 9y ago

This article confuses depression and bipolar disorder quite a bit. They're inducing mania through sleep deprivation in patients with bipolar disorder going through a period of depression. This is somewhat dangerous, as mania can have severe consequences. The article even states that there's a 95% relapse into depression for those not taking lithium. Only people with BPD take lithium. It's not about the lithium, it's about that population having BPD. DO NOT TRY THIS IF YOU HAVE BIPOLAR DISORDER WITHOUT MEDICAL SUPERVISION. Inducing mania could ruin your life. If you don't have BPD, then this likely won't work anyway. I have several family members with BPD. Irregular sleep schedule is a major warning sign that mania is coming on, and interrupted sleep schedule can induce mania. I can see why you might try this in a controlled setting, and I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying that this is very dangerous, and should not be done without qualified medical supervision.

Shikadi 9y ago
It's probably worth noting that bipolar disorder and manic depression are the same condition. In other words, bipolar disorder is a form of depression, though they could have been more clear and said "other forms of depression" in certain places.
- _delirium 9y ago
  In recent writing it's usually seen as more clear to treat them as distinct (though related) disorders rather than bipolar being a subset of depression, although that usage is still common. The ICD, for example, classifies "Bipolar affective disorder" (F31) and "Recurrent depressive disorder" (F33) as two distinct disorders under the parent category "Mood [affective] disorders".
notjosh 9y ago
Just to clarify: when you say BPD here, do you mean bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder? I've only known it as the latter (and a quick Google search agrees), but from context I assume you mean the former?
- 9y ago

krzyk 9y ago

Strange, in my case (tested on myself and my wife) sleep deprivation (e.g. sleeping and hour or two less than optimal sleep time) causes depression.

master-litty 9y ago

I'm in the middle of a sleepless night now and am already feeling that familiar high. I've never met anyone beyond family who could relate -- especially about the cognitive improvements, this is when I do my best work! This is an exceptionally interesting post for me. Much of my mother's side is bipolar and it continues in me. As long as I can remember noticing, I run through 3 very definitive emotional states: * I am feeling productive and withdraw from society. I get frustrated when I'm unable to work and often go without sleep to make up lost time * I am feeling social and withdraw from the extreme productivity. I simply don't want to sleep when I can have late night company * I am feeling depressed and withdraw from everything and everyone. I am inconsolable and confused by my mood. I eventually and magically get sick of it, often after a sleepless night The sleep deprivation is a critical part of my natural rhythm now that I really think about it. The article rings deeply true.

juanmirocks 9y ago

Besides experimenting with polyphasic sleep and such, I could never think that sleep deprivation could become a therapy. Regardless of the validity of these claims, I welcome this new idea into my brain.

m3kw9 9y ago

If you are tired maybe you don’t think too much, thinking too much is part of depression

geoka9 9y ago

Haven't read the article yet, but it sounds grim, I don't think it can be good for me. Instead of forced sleep deprivation, try this for a week: intermittent fasting and calorie restriction, good nutrition (veggies, nuts, olive oil, eggs, etc.), no drinking (at all), going to bed early (like 10 pm), waking up early (at dawn in the summer at 4 am would be perfect), but naturally, without an alarm clock. Doing this, you may find out that you only need 5-6 hours of sleep, especially in the summer. And moderate (outdoors) exercise - this is important. Since a lot of you guys are in the bay area, you have a lot of sun during the year; that makes this routine a lot easier and more rewarding (sunshine increases the feeling of "high" for most people). After doing this for a while, you might find out you're naturally high all the time, without going through crashes.

djsumdog 9y ago
> good nutrition (veggies, nuts, olive oil, eggs, etc.) I'd highly recommend reducing carb intake; cut out your bread, sugar, starch, pasta and try to stick with meat and greens. Low carb diets (Keto, Adkins, etc.) made a huge difference for me health wise.
- obmelvin 9y ago
  Ugh. Carbs are fuel. Cutting out the specifics you mentioned are good, but generally cutting out carbs is not good for most people.
  - grzm 9y ago
    Carbs are one source of fuel/calories. Fats are another, and protein as well (albeit to a much lesser extent).
    - obmelvin 9y ago
      Yes, but if you look at studies for the vast majority of people the common denominator across diets like the GP mentioned is improved diet quality and eating less. Most people don't need to remove carbs themselves. Sure, pasta is refined grain etc, but if you are well and not overeating then there's nothing wrong with it. A (if not the) primary problem is that people tend to overeat things that contain lots of carbs and/or fats that fail to satiete.

shams93 9y ago

Personally I find it's the opposite if I'm not well rested I feeling death and feel super depressed. I had a job that believed this and limited us sometimes to only 90 minutes sleep. I never worked with a more angry group of people. I'm 46 years old, working like that at 45 almost killed me. Oversleeping can also be a factor in depression but there is a golden sweet spot of just enough sleep and not too much that can vary greatly between individuals you have to find out for yourself what that sweet spot is. Certainly 90 minutes is not enough to sustain health

jlarocco 9y ago
> I had a job that believed this and limited us sometimes to only 90 minutes sleep. Can you elaborate on that? How could your employer possibly control something like how long you sleep?

haywardgb 9y ago

I disagree with that study. Myself and a colleague used to go for days on what were called "micro naps". After a certain amount of practice you can train your mind to hit REM within the first few seconds of shutting your eyes for sleep. Over time it really messes with your head. You become very irritable. Lookup "Peter Tripp, radio DJ". A very famous story with a very sad ending. Long-term sleep deprivation is very bad for you. I know, I've tried it.

b0rsuk 9y ago

I noticed this myself a long time ago. I have major anxiety, stress and depression problems(the last one I mostly fixed). When I stay up very late, or lose most of a night's sleep, I no longer care. I'm very resistant to stress. The downside, aside from numerous all other long term negatives of sleep deprivation, is that I can't focus on anything moderately complicated and take loong to get anything done. It's like time passes faster. And it's really hard to make decisions.

cl0ne 9y ago

Interesting, this has worked for me on occasion during times of suffering from depression and anxiety and I was wondering about it recently. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping and have noticed positive effects in my mood and energy level the next day after staying up all night.

WheelsAtLarge 9y ago

Careful with this, sleep deprivation is known to cause health issues. https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/important-sleep-habits#1 https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/important-sle...

m3kw9 9y ago

And then there is just a new article posted up there in HN that talks about how bad sleep increases risk of depression

m3kw9 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16562599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16562599

ninjakeyboard 9y ago

Ya I used to pull an all nighter once a week. It has a lot of long term deleterious effects but it does the trick for a day break from depression.

GirlsCodeToo 9y ago

There's so many claims for sleep being very beneficial, that I'd approach sleep deprivation very carefully. I wonder if there are different types of depression that are amenable to different treatments.

alexozer 9y ago

Saw this article and decided to try to roll over my half-phase-out-of-sync horrific sleep schedule by staying awake through the next day. My mind was nowhere near fully functional from the period of 6pm the first day through 11:30pm the next, but I somehow managed to experience a sense of urgency and elatedness I may have forgotten how to feel over the last few years, and got some work done to boot. Unfortunately I'm back as hopeless as ever today, but I would be willing to bet with a little more discipline it'd be a pretty great way to at the very least quickly restore a sleep-early wake-early sleep schedule.

LeighoBeigho 9y ago

On the herbals: Fishoil gel tablets work very well for depression, if you don't mind some occasional fish smell. They keep me very clear when I take them. Caveat: If you have MAOI inhibitor issues you gotta make sure you can take certain supplements safely. This is a great discussion and the 2nd time I have heard of the positive impacts of sleep deprivation on depression (SD/D). 1st time I didn't buy it because lack of sleep, unless I am working on a project, makes me amped up and close to rowdy. I use the rowdiness to workout, walk, skateboard or bike; all of the above manages depression and absorbs high energy. Hearing so many intellectual viewpoints on YC makes the SD/D argument more believable.I thought I was the only one with this issue.