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Were you averaging around 7.5 hours of sleep a night, even with your long vigils? If so, I doubt it's a harmful pattern. Based on some studies I've seen recentl

Were you averaging around 7.5 hours of sleep a night, even with your long vigils? If so, I doubt it's a harmful pattern. Based on some studies I've seen recently, oversleeping is a larger health risk for many than undersleeping.

pengaru 7y ago
No, I would stay up for 2-3 days straight and it'd end with just a longish ~12 hour sleep, often leaving me with a sleep cycle randomly out of phase with the rest of the world to boot. The stuff I've read about sleep being when your brain bathes itself in spinal fluid convinced me this was probably not a good long-term strategy for preserving cognitive health.
- nefitty 7y ago
  I’m stuck in a loop like this right now. I’ve been getting an average of less than 3 hours of sleep per night on weekdays for a few months now. On the weekends, when I don’t have strict external obligations, I sleep 8-10 hrs. I’m really scared that I’m going to cause myself to develop early onset Alzheimer’s or something. Even then, that fear looms nowhere as large as the anxiety of going to bed before 1am. Maybe it’s an existential thing. When the world’s light goes out I start thinking about death, and then the idea of sleep being the “little death” overwhelms me. Next thing I know I’m passing out just as my wife is getting up for work, but I feel so much safer laying down to sleep when I hear the world stirring and birds chirping. It’s almost like my body stays awake to make sure everyone else is safe while they sleep...
  - pengaru 7y ago
    If it's an existential thing, and, judging from your description, perhaps a hint of paranoia, then I'd be a bit optimistic about overcoming it with either some regular meditation/mindful introspection or maybe therapy. It'd be nice if we understood the actual causes of things like dementia and alzheimers so we could make better informed decisions regarding behaviors like sleep deprivation. Even if we couldn't cure those conditions, just understanding something like "it's 50% more likely you'll lose your mind if you don't sleep 8 hours most nights" would be super useful.

pengaru 7y ago

No, I would stay up for 2-3 days straight and it'd end with just a longish ~12 hour sleep, often leaving me with a sleep cycle randomly out of phase with the rest of the world to boot. The stuff I've read about sleep being when your brain bathes itself in spinal fluid convinced me this was probably not a good long-term strategy for preserving cognitive health.

nefitty 7y ago
I’m stuck in a loop like this right now. I’ve been getting an average of less than 3 hours of sleep per night on weekdays for a few months now. On the weekends, when I don’t have strict external obligations, I sleep 8-10 hrs. I’m really scared that I’m going to cause myself to develop early onset Alzheimer’s or something. Even then, that fear looms nowhere as large as the anxiety of going to bed before 1am. Maybe it’s an existential thing. When the world’s light goes out I start thinking about death, and then the idea of sleep being the “little death” overwhelms me. Next thing I know I’m passing out just as my wife is getting up for work, but I feel so much safer laying down to sleep when I hear the world stirring and birds chirping. It’s almost like my body stays awake to make sure everyone else is safe while they sleep...
- pengaru 7y ago
  If it's an existential thing, and, judging from your description, perhaps a hint of paranoia, then I'd be a bit optimistic about overcoming it with either some regular meditation/mindful introspection or maybe therapy. It'd be nice if we understood the actual causes of things like dementia and alzheimers so we could make better informed decisions regarding behaviors like sleep deprivation. Even if we couldn't cure those conditions, just understanding something like "it's 50% more likely you'll lose your mind if you don't sleep 8 hours most nights" would be super useful.