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Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In an Underslept State'
- extralego 8y agoWhat can I do? Should I forward this to my employer?
- coldtea 8y agoNo, unless you live to work, you should demand your right to a balanced life without having to point to scientific literature on the benefits of sleep. Even if it wasn't stolen sleep (say we needed no sleep, and the day had only 16 hours), constantly overworking would still be lost time (with family and friends and me-time) that you would never recover.
- haskellandchill 8y agoWe work to live. It’s not our employer’s fault we are broken people.
- coldtea 8y agoIt is when its imposed upon people. It's not like everybody self-elects to "work to live". Especially when they're just a cog doing a BS job just to pay the rent and feed their family, not full-filling their entrepreneurial or creative or other dreams through it... (And the culture and glorification around working to live has a lot of employer influence in it).
- haskellandchill 8y agoI hope nobody self-elects work to live. It is miserable!
- hadrien01 8y agoWhy would you forward this to your employer?
- coldtea 8y agoNot the parent, but so they'd let them sleep longer.
- afarrell 8y agoMaybe. Depends on your employer. To what degree are they responsible for how you spend your time?
- coaxial 8y agoChances are that if your employer demands you give up your rest time to satisfy some business need they have, they don't care about your well-being at all; and showing them this article won't change their mind. You'd be better off working somewhere else.
- Ancalagon 8y agoDefinitely look for a new job.
- coldtea 8y ago>Sleep is not like the bank, so you can't accumulate a debt and then try and pay it off at a later point in time. And the reason is this: We know that if I were to deprive you of sleep for an entire night — take away eight hours — and then in the subsequent night I give you all of the sleep that you want, however much you wish to consume, you never get back all that you lost. You will sleep longer, but you will never achieve that full eight-hour repayment, as it were. So the brain has no capacity to get back that lost sleep that you've been lumbering it with during the week in terms of a debt. What does "never" here means though? Obviously you could get back to your normal self after a few days of sleeping well, no?
- hello_1234 8y agoIf you lose a piece of an old memory from sleep deprivation, you are not going to magically get it back once you catch up on your sleep. It has happened to me when I pulled all-nighters. I just couldn't remember that friend's name or that old password.
- roryisok 8y agoAnd you still don't remember that friends name?
- alsetmusic 8y ago> And you still don't remember that friends name? Some information can be relearned. Some cannot. It would be relatively easy to discover the name of someone from your past (ask a coworker, check a yearbook). I think the better example in the parent’s comment is a lost password. I changed the pin on my phone while I was in a sleep deprived state and had to erase it to recover from not knowing the pin after I finally slept.
- roryisok 8y agoI don't think you're relearning your friend's name so much as reminding yourself. You haven't lost the memory, you just can't bring it up in that moment. And given time you might remember. But it's a bad example like you said.
- Puer 8y agoI'm currently in my 20s and I've been a type 1 chronic insomniac my whole life. Physically, I'm healthy and fit and I have been my whole life, but mentally my mind feels slower and foggier than my peers and I struggled through high school and college because of it. I know this might sound morbid, but I am fully expecting to die early despite doing everything in my power to live a healthy, balanced lifestyle. I can't see getting 2-3 hours of sleep a night with all-nighters ~once a week being sustainable as I age and I wouldn't be surprised if my brain has already deteriorated in function significantly.
- hugja 8y agoI'm curious have you ever tried working out in the early hours after waking up? This alone determines if I'm getting good sleep or not. I'll end up staying up way later into the night unless I worked out that morning.
- haskellandchill 8y agoPeople with chronic insomnia have generally tried everything and it’s unhelpful and annoying to offer your suggestions, I realize you’re trying to help but yeah.
- hugja 8y agoI wasn't actually trying to help per se. I was just wondering if it was something he's/she's tried is all.
- darkerside 8y agoAlso pretty obnoxious to jump in as a third party and sass someone for trying to be helpful to someone else. Puer can speak for himself if this is bothering him, and since he's posting about it on a public forum, I actually doubt that it does.
- Puer 8y agoThroughout college my routine was to go to the gym every weekday at 6 AM before class. In my case, my insomnia is diagnosed as insomnia in the absence of other external factors. Lifestyle choices like proper light exposure, getting consistent exercise, melatonin, not drinking caffeine, not using electronics before bed, etc. don't affect my quality of sleep.
- boomskats 8y agoBook sales aside, the point about the brain being an associative device, and the advice to avoid lying in bed awake & instead going to another room until you're sleepier, is really valuable imho. Entrainment is very real and happens rapidly, and this advice is not given often enough.
- baxtr 8y agoAt least, it seems as if you could recover sleep on weekends https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jsr.12712 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jsr.12712
- guiambros 8y agoI've read a lot about sleep over the years (and wrote a bit [2]), but I just finished reading the book mentioned in the article ("Why We Sleep" [1]) and found it fascinating. The author presents a vast amount of scientific evidence amount pretty much every corner of why we sleep, from its evolutionary roots thousands of years ago, to the importance of dreams and REM sleep for your memory, reasons and impact of insomnia, to what happens in the neurochemistry in your brain when you drink coffee, alcohol or sleep pills, and much, much more. If read only one book this year, let me strongly recommend you consider this one. ps: if you prefer audio, the narrated version from Audible is also very good. There are just a few non-essential graphs, that you can download from their side in PDF. [1] Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker - https://smile.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams-ebook/dp/B06ZZ1YGJ5/ https://smile.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams-ebook... [non affiliate link] [2] Quora - How do CEOs who sleep for only 4-5 hours daily manage to function and run multi-million dollar companies for years? http://qr.ae/TUpOrd http://qr.ae/TUpOrd
- jcims 8y agoMatthew Walker, the author of Why We Sleep, was on the Joe Rogan Experience recently. I've been in material cognitive decline over the past year or so and I'm nearly certain it's due to my abhorrent sleep patterns. This episode really helped me prioritize a fix over other things that would normally result in a night of 3-5 hrs in bed or on the floor (who knows how much actual sleep). It's a great episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig
- hobolord 8y agothat was the last podcast I listened to, and it was so informative. As I've grown older I've definitely been prioritising my sleep more. While in school I was getting maybe 6h on average for 4y, but now I aim for 8 or 9h of sleep.
- shiny 8y agoI preferred his interview on the Kevin Rose podcast: https://www.kevinrose.com/single-post/matthew-walker https://www.kevinrose.com/single-post/matthew-walker Incidentally a previous podcast covered a lot of the same ground, plus much more: https://www.kevinrose.com/single-post/Serge-Faguet https://www.kevinrose.com/single-post/Serge-Faguet
- andor 8y agoApart from quantity, quality of sleep is also important. I just realized how much a little light can disturb sleep. My blinds are opaque but hung 1-2 cm from the window frame, letting in just a few unwanted photons. I temporarily taped the blinds to the frame, leaving the room in almost complete darkness. I haven't felt this rested in years. Do try this at home!
- newacct500 8y agoI've never understood how this could be the case, evolutionarily speaking. Even in the absence of electrical light, there is rarely complete darkness. Did our remote ancestors just sleep extremely poorly whenever there was a lot of moonlight?
- jcims 8y agoSleeping in cover, if just a rock outcropping or under some brush, is much safer than sleeping out in the open. Maybe that’s what happens, your mind maintains extra readiness at some cost.
- carapace 8y agoBingo. If there's light predators can see you. If it's pitch black you're in a cave or burrow.
- wierd0 8y agoOur ancestor's sleep might not have been optimal due to the fact we had other things to care about, like shelter. But that does not imply there is nothing to gain from feeling perfectly rested.
- freehunter 8y agoYeah it's sometimes hard to understand that evolution is not a perfection machine, it's not survival of the fittest, and it does not select the "best" outcome and discard the second best. It's survival of the least unfit, and it selects any option that doesn't cause the individual to die before reproducing. Just because our ancestors did something and nature didn't punish them with death because of it does not mean it's the optimal way to go about life. It merely means that doing that thing didn't cause our ancestor to die before their kids were born. Evolution doesn't select for perfection, just reproduction. Same argument when someone says "when I was a kid we did X and we lived". Doesn't mean sleeping on the back dashboard of the car on the freeway is a good idea, just that you in particular did not die from doing so.
- jmartrican 8y agoI'm no expert but I thought that the whole 8 hour a night thing was not true, at least not for everyone. If I force myself to get 8 hours of sleep, by forcing myself to stay in bed after I wake up, I get a headache. If I let myself wake up on its own without an alarm, it averages around 6.5 hours. If I get below that, then at some point I will sleep more than the 6.5 hours, and maybe even 8 hours. So from personal experience it seems like some of the things in this article do not mesh well with personal experience. I'm just confused at this point as to what to do. Am I suppose to stay sleeping for 8 hours even though I am awake? If for some reason I can't sleep at night and get less hours of sleep than expected, am I suppose to call in late to work and miss my morning meetings? You want to do the right thing here but getting 8 hours of sleep for some people just seems unpractical and there must be countless people who never get 8 hours and live long fruitful lives (I have no evidence for this but it seems like it would be true due to me not remembering anyone who told me they get 8 hours of sleep). I guess I require more evidence that 8 hours is what everyone should be getting. If maybe some people need 8 and others do not, then maybe they need to word it that way.
- dyadic 8y agoHis book (Why We Sleep) is full of studies and evidence backing up what he claims. It's quite an enjoyable read and I'd recommend reading it if you have doubts or want to know more.
- FreeFull 8y agoThe best thing to do is probably to sleep as much as your body tells you to, which in your case happens to be 6.5 hours (It can depend on genetics), and in my case ends up being more than 8 hours. Forcing yourself to sleep longer probably isn't a good idea.
- narag 8y agoYou're asking different questions and mixing different reasons. Is it a problem of what's better for your health or what's more practical for work? The article anyway talks about 6.5 hours average and defines deprivation as less than six. If 6.5 is enough for you, good. As for you need to wake up at certain time... you still can go to sleep earlier. Yes, I know. That's difficult and you miss other things instead of work, but you should know what you're trading sleep for.
- benlorenzetti 8y agoWe have had industrial shift hours for nearly two centuries, and before that in the Army and Navy. Yet large organizations are still implementing new shift/watch schedules to (or sometimes purportedly to) improve health and alertness based on scientific results. https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2016/10/28/this-life-changing-shift-has-made-submariners-much-happier/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2016/10/28/this-lif... What is the problem with science here? Without being an expert it seems like there are three possibilities: 1) Sleep studies are too difficult to discern results and control. 2) We have culturally been focused on the wrong results, organizational efficiencies rather than individual health. 3) Humans actually adapt to new conditions faster than expected. Everyone is at least mildly interested in this topic and mildly an expert. Its easier to see problems than remedies and there are conspiracy theories too: http://rotateshift.blogspot.com/ http://rotateshift.blogspot.com/
- barry-cotter 8y ago4) No one gives a shit about the long term health effects. There are lots of pieces of knowledge that have obvious practical implications that aren’t acted upon because it’s inconvenient and the function of a system is different from what people say it’s for. School is more childcare than education and using the same buses for elementary and high school is cheaper so all high school students are sleep deprived and learn less than they would if they could get up at a natural hour. Psychological research on learning like the forgetting curve that works is ignored while crap like learning styles comes and goes in fads. Direct instruction works wonderfully but is boring to teach so it isn’t adopted anywhere. School isn’t about learning. Politics isn’t about policy. Healthcare isn’t about health. The purpose of a thing is what it does, not what someone says it’s for.
- benlorenzetti 8y agoJust because organizations have...organization and heirarchy doesn't mean they don't have a goal, or government and politics dont have policies. I agree though about school being at least half to keep the kids locked up and out of the way for most of the day. People care about long term health impacts.
- Lio 8y agoThis is unrelated to the article but I love that npr.org allows opting out of tracking and in exchange for a plain text version of the site. I’ll happily give up eye candy for privacy and I’m sure it’s much cheaper for them to serve bandwidth wise.
- Tomte 8y agoDo you get to the article you were linked to? Because I‘m always redirected to their front page, with no way to get to the article that was linked.
- Lio 8y agoHmm, no I spoke too soon! Sorry, I can’t reach it either. Even tried editing the article URL to no avail. :(
- pocak 8y agoThere's a nine digit number in the middle of the normal URL. You can take a text-only URL and replace the identifier at the end. Shame on them for not making all articles reachable from the text home page, and for not redirecting to the article from the choice page. https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=558058812 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=558058812
- loup-vaillant 8y agoTried that, and the "text only" version had no relevant text. It's not just eye candy we give up for privacy, it's the entire content. GDPR might have a say about that.
- ben0x539 8y agoYeah it's great Plain text link: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=558058812 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=558058812
- Tomte 8y agoIf you‘re feeling tired over the day, maybe in the afternoon or early evening when you get home from work, go to a doctor and have your sleep monitored. You get a portable machine that reads your breathing, your oxygen level in the bloodstream and your sleeping position. There is a chance you have sleep apnoea, and you stop breathing a few times over the course of your sleep at night, lowering your oxygen levels until your body has a suffocation reaction, over and over again. That can happen dozens of times every night and you won‘t remember any of it.
- Bradenski 8y agoI've tried the take home mask, and it was very uncomfortable to sleep with. I did wake up once in a way I normally don't, so I felt the study was invalid at that point. Surely the technology has changed in 5 years, but for light sleepers like myself, sleep studies with equipment attached to your body don't feel like fair trials. MRI sleep studies can be an option, and if I had to do it again I think that would be optimal for me.
- Tomte 8y agoPatient compliance is the bane of doctors‘ lives. You don‘t decide that the recording is invalid. You tell your doctor what happened and he decides which conclusions can be drawn from the data.
- stretchwithme 8y agoThis guy was the Joe Rogan Experience. Very interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig
- frankzander 8y agoInteresting would be the view of "How we sleep after consuming marihuana".
- flowless 8y agoIt really depends on the strain.
- cerberusss 8y agoIn his podcast, he talks about that with Seth Rogen. Turns out that marihuana as well as alcohol induces sedation rather than sleep. This causes the brain to withhold REM sleep until the sedative has worn off, then suddenly catches up. So lots of people report very vivid dreams at the end of the night. Since the amount of REM sleep was less, the quality of the sleep is also lower (he said only half or so).
- frankzinger 8y agoThat would be Joe Rogan. Link to the podcast is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig.
- Reason077 8y agoIn the UK we have a fantastic service called Radio 4 which has remarkable sleep-inducing powers. Much better than any narcotic sleep aid, in my experience. Podcasts also work well, in my experience.
- praveer13 8y agoI've found podcasts to be incredible tools to induce sleep. It's very difficult to stay awake for me while listening to any podcast or audiobook. I really don't know how people do it.
- henriquemaia 8y agoI have to be engaged in something physical* to listen to podcasts/audiobooks. If I just try to listen, I inevitably fall asleep. *I usually listen to audiobooks while I ride my bicycle to college.
- hanley 8y agoThe Sleep With Me podcast has been incredibly helpful for falling asleep during times when I'm stressed or otherwise can't sleep. It's the right amount of goofy and rambling that just lulls me to sleep. https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/ https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/
- kokey 8y agoI'm not sure about that, it tends to be more interesting than anything else around. Well, except for The Archers, Thought of the Day or when they have a bunch of people talking about an artist or poet from over a century ago.
- gms7777 8y agoI like podcasts a lot for this purpose. My mind tends to race a lot when I get in bed and it would take me at least an hour to fall asleep usually. Podcasts my brain just that little bit of focus and engagement that I need to drift off. I usually set a sleep timer and drift off. The thing that I haven't found a solution for yet though with it is needing to use my phone right before I fall asleep. I inevitably fall into the trap of checking email or looking up something.
- Tharkun 8y agoYou can be in an "underslept state" even if you get 8 hrs a night. I usually am. I snore. Most of the time and very loudly. So do maybe a billion other people. It negatively impacts the quality and quantity of your sleep (and that of the people around you). It can greatly increase the risk of a whole slew of nasty diseases. And yet there is no cure and no effective treatment. As near as I can tell, no one is working on magic potion to fix it either. There are tons of gimmicks and gadgets which promise to help, but none of them do, not really. There's surgery which is invasive and has poor long term outcomes. There's CPAP (and variants) which many people don't tolerate well, and many more people stop using as time goes on. There are sleep studies in hospital, which are an expensive hassle and only a snapshot. There are apps which track your snoring, but they can't diagnose the cause or tell you what to do to fix it. With such a huge potential user base, why isn't anyone working on an effective solution (not that I know what that would look like)? I would glady give up my Netflix subscription and gym membership and pay the equivalent amount to get better quality sleep.
- wenc 8y agoI suffered from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and snoring, and the two things that helped were sleeping on my side and weight loss. The latter was difficult to achieve but was the most high-leverage thing I ever did. I had no idea at the time, but my OSA was contributing to a slew of health problems like hypertension etc., and when I removed the cause, my overall health got better.
- coldseattle 8y agoExactly. The need for a CPAP is almost always mitigated by weight loss.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoAs far as I've read, weight loss almost always helps (assuming a person is obese, which is common with OSA because it's also a symptom), but it's unusual for it to totally eliminate the need for CPAP.
- aantix 8y agoStrangely whenever I have a great nights sleep it always makes it hard to go to sleep at a descent hour the next night. My children are up at 6am, so that’s when I have to be up.
- greenhatman 8y agoI'm the same. I suspect if I actually got decent sunlight exposure during the day I wouldn't have this problem.
- tasty_freeze 8y ago> You're trying to sleep off a debt that you've lumbered your brain and body with during the week, and wouldn't it be lovely if sleep worked like that? Sadly it doesn't. But it does somewhat, just not fully. Thought experiment for the author. Say he slept 6 hours every day during the week, and come the weekend, is he going to say that there is no benefit to sleeping more than 8 hours, or will that 10+ hour sleep do any good over 8 hours? I strongly suspect that, yes, "catch up sleep" is useful, but just not 100% restorative. But the original claim sounds more like the former, "catch up sleep isn't useful".
- ta1234567890 8y agoFor a few years I was sleeping about 4 hours a day on weekdays. I thought I was fine until I started sleeping 8 hours a day and realized I had been almost in a permanent bad mood for years due to bad sleep. My life completely changed. Now even though I can still get through the exceptional sleepless night/day, the difference is so evident that my daily life is planned/scheduled to make sure I get plenty of sleep. Life feels a lot happier and fulfilling now.
- aeriklawson 8y agoAbsolutely. I get irritated, anxious, and easily-stressed when I'm sleep deprived - a full night's sleep makes me feel so much better.
- jaequery 8y agoArticles like this scares me greatly. About 2 years ago, I went about 3 weeks with maybe less than 3 hours of sleep. I am sure it is hard to believe, even I can't believe it myself, it was a crazy experience, where my mind was just passed the point of exhaustion that I could not feel tiredness at all. After that my sleeping have never been the same, went through almost a 2 years of waking up every 3 hours or so. It's just about a month ago where I was able to finally sleep without waking up every couple hours. I am so grateful these days but I still fear the day where I may just start waking up again in middle of the night, it was a living hell, no other way to describe it.
- graeme 8y agoWhat caused the initial deprivation?
- jaequery 8y agoI don't know. Just one day, it started it. I had some client work that was overdue and some stress at work place. But it was nothing major.
- joveian 8y agoThat does sound horrible :(. I don't think waking up every 3 hours or so is necessarily that bad if you can get back to sleep easily, since that is about the length of a sleep cycle (they get shorter later in the night). Although in your case it might be a symptom of your brain being more active at night and you might not be getting enough deep sleep when it happens. I've found finding stuff to help stay asleep has been easier than finding stuff to help get to sleep. The articles always talk about sleep drugs being more harmful than helpful, but I think that is mostly stuff that helps you get to sleep (and even those might sometimes be better than not taking them, especialy for brief usage). Certainly I've found a few things that help me stay asleep and significantly improve my sleep quality. If you have trouble again here are a few things you could try. Short list in order of longer description below (NR = not recommended for various reasons even though it did help, see longer desciption for details): baclofen, phenibut (NR), l-citrulline, l-theanine, magnesium (NR), rosemary extract (NR) or lemon balm (NR), taurine (NR), uridine monophosphate, melatonin patch. I've found baclofen to be very helpful with staying asleep and getting better quality sleep. I showed some studies I found on pubmed to my primary care doctor who was willing to prescribe it. The downside is that tolerance builds exceptionally quickly and it is generally a good idea to not take it for at least two days a week. I've tried more complicated dosing but 10mg every other day works well (10mg for two days and then a day off works ok too but any longer than that will need two days off to reset in my experience). You can't go up or down by more than 10mg per day (and shouldn't go down by 10mg multiple days in a row) or risk seizures and when I am in a particularly disrupted state it only helps stay asleep for maybe two days at a particular dose. Lately my sleep has been less disrupted even when I don't take it and I've been using for maybe a week or more at 10mg and it still seems to improve my sleep quality. Phenibut is similar, halfway between baclofen and gabapentin (which I've heard can also help sleep, although I have never tried it since the side effects seem worse than with baclofen). Phenibut has an overlaping set of side effects with baclofen, possibly a somewhat lower seizure risk but some people find it highly addictive. I also suspect it may cause retinal taurine depletion (that leads to permanant retinal damage that is not obvious at first) with heavy continuous use (although that wouldn't be very helpful for sleep since it has the same issue as baclofen). It is available without a prescription and I've found it works better for sleep than baclofen but it causes my light therapy visor to hurt my eyes even on the low setting (it normally does some on high but not on low). 10mg baclofen then 600mg phenibut then a day off seems to work well for me. However, phenibut affects brain dopamine (another fragile part of the body) more than baclofen so between that and retinal issues and the potential for addiciton I would highly recommend just using baclofen. L-citrulline is another one that I have found very helpful, although I haven't used it as much. It seems to have conflicted with another medication I am on (that I think was building up to too high levels at the time) to cause easy bleeding and a bright pink rash. After lowering the dose of that medication it hasn't caused trouble, but keep an eye out for such things if you try it. I add 3g l-citrulline powder to almond milk at around 6 or 6:30pm when aiming to be in bed at 11pm. It tastes good so you don't necessarily need much to go with it and taking it with water should be fine too. I haven't tried the more common citrulline mallate, so no idea if that would work. I initially tried it because my circulation is not very good so that could be related to why it helps me (or possibly not, nitric oxide and glutathione are sleep promoting substances). I get the "doctor's best" brand l-citrulline powder from vitacost. It is fairly expensive (you can get baclofen for less even if you pay the full cost). N-acetyl-l-cysteine did not seem to do anything for me taken with or without the citrulline. 100mg L-theanine also helps me stay asleep, although not as much as other things and I haven't used it that much. I had an asthma reaction when using it with phenibut, which is another reason I worry about phenibut (although I haven't used it with baclofen so it is possible the same could happen). It is inexpensive and widely available. 400mg or more magnesium is very effective for me but makes me too tired the next day and less doesn't seem to help my sleep. But I'm not sure how common that is so it might be worth a try. I don't think I've found anything else in typical herbal sleep formulas to be helpful at all except rosmarinic acid (rosmary extract or lemon balm leaves) that helped quite a bit when I first took it but quickly stopped helping and took several months off to have an effect again. It might also potentially cause retinal taurine depletion if you use it for too long, so overall it is not a great option but an occasional lemon balm tea might be helpful (the rosemary extract is also a great flavor with soy or almond milk). Taurine helps me stay asleep but the sulfur makes it not a great choice for extended use if you have digestive issues (and maybe even if you don't). Another thing that has helped me is 150mg sublingual uridine monophosphate. It seemed to have a circadian effect as well when I first used it (I have a non-24 hour circadian rhythm), but less so after using it for a while. I've lately taken it about 7pm when aiming for 11pm bed time and that seems to work well, although right before bed can work too. It isn't that well known but has been studied some and a different form and much higher dose has been FDA approved as a prescription drug for a couple of conditions. There is some chance it may cause or speed the growth of cancer, although this hasn't been noticed in humans taking the much higher dose yet to my knowledge and hopefully is unlikely at 150mg. The only reputable source I know of for uridine monophsphate powder is nootropicsdepot.com. While oral or sublingual melatonin wakes me up at night, the first thing I found that really helped me stay asleep was a melatonin patch. The first place I got it from went out of business and the last time I looked the only place I could find that I was willing to buy from was "Respro Labs" on Amazon, but they are quite expensive (I get the 10mg, cut them in quarters, and use one or two quarters a night; the backing is a bit annoying to cut). Also, they last longer than 8 hours (previous patches did too) and make me really tired the next day if I forget to take them off in the morning, which happens quite a bit. But it is still a decent option and I wish they were more widely available and not so expensive.
- cwe 8y agoHas no one mentioned parenthood forcing sleep deprivation for 1-3+ years?
- abootstrapper 8y agoThis is why kids think their parents are idiots. - We are, but it's our kids fault.
- gls2ro 8y agoOh I wanted to ask this but then I was thinking that it is just my situation (child less than 1 year who wakes up sometimes once per hour). Actually I am almost scared to read the book. I am afraid that I will agree with the book and then be left with the feeling that the only logical conclusion is that there is no solution and my health will just vanish forever.
- coldseattle 8y agoI don’t doubt that hat the people don’t get enough sleep, but the biggest health problem in the western world is Obesity. It has huge health, environmental, and social costs.
- abootstrapper 8y agoMight obesity be related to lack of sleep?
- greenhatman 8y agoLack of sleep can definitely contribute to weight gain. Probably in more than one way, but I know specifically of studies that found lack of sleep makes you crave more unhealthy high calorie foods.
- nikkwong 8y ago> "Unfortunately the current set or classes of sleeping pills that we have do not produce naturalistic sleep. So they are all a broad set of chemicals that we call the sedative hypnotics, and sedation is not sleep, it's very different. It doesn't give you the restorative natural benefits of sleep. ... If you look at the electrical signature of sleep that you have when you're taking those medications, it's not the same as a normal night of sleep." Most of the literature I've read reports otherwise, that Zolpidem actually can increase the quality of your sleep. Of course, it's not without it's disadvantages as well.
- mmt 8y agoI'll likely do my own more in depth looking.. but, in the meantime, do you recall if this was true for the other "Z-drugs" (zaleplon, zopiclone/eszopiclone)? Is there any convenient summary or meta-analysis you could link?
- jm__87 8y agoJust a word of warning to any insomniacs on here thinking of reading Matthew Walkers book, Why We Sleep: it is probably one of the least helpful books I have ever read in terms of helping you sleep well. It mostly explains the many ways you are damaging your health by not sleeping well, and reading it while I had insomnia just made me anxious and made it more difficult to sleep. The one good thing that came out of reading it was a suggestion for CBT for sleep, and I would highly recommend that as that did actually help me sleep.
- aeriklawson 8y agoI've been amazed by how much sunlight affected my sleep quality - a year or two ago I purchased a curtain rod and a pair of black-out curtains to put in front of my bedroom window. I can't emphasize how much better I sleep with it. When I forget to close them some nights, the next day I feel significantly less rested and my sleep quality after sunrise is a lot worse (I often wake up several times as well). Check it out especially if your room gets lots of sunlight in the morning.
- ulisesrmzroche 8y ago"Legalize Siestas" sounds funny but I think it would change all our lives for the better. It's likely never to happen under our current economic system though.
- gnulinux 8y agoI find Siestas the absolute worst thing possible for my sleep schedule. Even 20 minutes of noon naps completely nuke my sleep schedule and it takes days to make it normal again. I actually tried Siestas pretty hard for at least 2 years when my insomnia was worst, but eventually I realized without naps my sleep schedule is much more predictable.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoWhy not though? Countries that have siestas don't necessarily work shorter hours.
- SZJX 8y agoI still think that the optimal amount of sleep really depends on the person and you can't paint everything with a broad stroke or advise everybody to "have 8.5 hours of sleep". I've found myself the most concentrated and productive the next day when I don't sleep too much, e.g. when I just sleep for 6 to 7 hours. When I sleep a lot I usually just feel too relaxed/hyperactive for some reason and can't properly direct my attention at tasks. I think there should be people with similar experiences out there. Those statements might be good for raising more public awareness so that they're not chronically extremely underslept, e.g. consecutively for 4-5 hours a day. But to only advocate sleeping a lot is too partial IMHO.
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- MToD 8y agoSleep is common problem of every people. They can know its causes and get treatments , Here this guide may help. read here https://bestmattressesreviews.com/sleep-disorder/ https://bestmattressesreviews.com/sleep-disorder/