5 ms·

What is important is having a fixed bedtime/wake time so your circadian rhythm settles in. How much sleep you can get in a night? Lucky dip, sometimes you jus

by urthor 5y ago

What is important is having a fixed bedtime/wake time so your circadian rhythm settles in. How much sleep you can get in a night? Lucky dip, sometimes you just can't. Matthew Walker's book is the one I'd go to. Always find it weird how blog oriented a lot of information has become. If you want to know something... why not find the best researcher in the field and get their book.

oarsinsync 5y ago
> Always find it weird how blog oriented a lot of information has become. If you want to know something... why not find the best researcher in the field and get their book. Blogs are immediate and "free". Books take time and cost money. Think CliffsNotes (or some other equivalent) study guides. Why read the whole text and learn all the nuance and details, when you can just get straight to a particular hearline narrative
cassianoleal 5y ago
> Matthew Walker's book is the one I'd go to. Personal anecdote here. I've read his book. It's good, it's interesting, and it made me realise how much more I should try to get more and better sleep. I'm a night person. For months I tried each and every technique out there to move my sleep schedule back since I have to wake up in the morning against my natural rhythm. I started panicking and I went from 4-6h sleep per night + 8-10h on weekends to 2-4h during the week and about 6h on weekends. My whole life took a turn for the worst until I made the decision to stop the madness and go back to my previous, insufficient, sleep schedule. This is not ideal by a long shot. I'm permanently sleep deprived, but at least not to the point where I can't even function.
- urthor 5y ago
  I mean isn't half of it that everyone has a chronotype? Shouldn't you just have a fixed, later bedtime. To maximize REM sleep etc?
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    Yep, that's what I do now. I still need to wake up early (for me) in the morning though. There's no winning.
  - Ntrails 5y ago
    > I mean isn't half of it that everyone has a chronotype? I still don't buy this as an idea, an unchangeable genetic (?) marker that defines "night person" or "morning person". I think we make choices and habits, and these are really just a part of personality.
    - hderms 5y ago
      I'm almost positive that's bullshit because I spent half of my life as a "night owl", convinced it was just something inherent to me. After my wife took a job that had her waking up at 4am, and the requisite adjustments to her bedtime, I found myself totally fine with going to sleep at 10am or earlier everyday. In a lot of ways an early bedtime, or an average bedtime, is preferable to staying up to the wee hours, but given the context I couldn't see the benefits until I had experienced it myself for a few months. So in my opinion, if there is some kind of genetic marker for chronatype, it's either not very influential, only expressed in a subset of the populace or largely BS.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - brimble 5y ago
      I buy that it might be A Thing but have a strong suspicion that 90+% of modern "night people" are just addicted to the 24/7 casino-bright circus that is modern home entertainment and nighttime lighting (as most of us are) and would stop being "night people" if you took that away.
najra 5y ago
Just a heads up there's been some controversy around some of the claims he makes in the book: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
- criddell 5y ago
  Walker has addressed some of that here: https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-responses-to-questions-from-readers/ https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-... On Peter Attia's podcast, he address a bunch of the criticism as well. The second edition of the book has been updated to correct errors.
deleted 5y ago
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by urthor 5y ago

oarsinsync 5y ago

> Always find it weird how blog oriented a lot of information has become. If you want to know something... why not find the best researcher in the field and get their book. Blogs are immediate and "free". Books take time and cost money. Think CliffsNotes (or some other equivalent) study guides. Why read the whole text and learn all the nuance and details, when you can just get straight to a particular hearline narrative

cassianoleal 5y ago

> Matthew Walker's book is the one I'd go to. Personal anecdote here. I've read his book. It's good, it's interesting, and it made me realise how much more I should try to get more and better sleep. I'm a night person. For months I tried each and every technique out there to move my sleep schedule back since I have to wake up in the morning against my natural rhythm. I started panicking and I went from 4-6h sleep per night + 8-10h on weekends to 2-4h during the week and about 6h on weekends. My whole life took a turn for the worst until I made the decision to stop the madness and go back to my previous, insufficient, sleep schedule. This is not ideal by a long shot. I'm permanently sleep deprived, but at least not to the point where I can't even function.

urthor 5y ago
I mean isn't half of it that everyone has a chronotype? Shouldn't you just have a fixed, later bedtime. To maximize REM sleep etc?
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  Yep, that's what I do now. I still need to wake up early (for me) in the morning though. There's no winning.
- Ntrails 5y ago
  > I mean isn't half of it that everyone has a chronotype? I still don't buy this as an idea, an unchangeable genetic (?) marker that defines "night person" or "morning person". I think we make choices and habits, and these are really just a part of personality.
  - hderms 5y ago
    I'm almost positive that's bullshit because I spent half of my life as a "night owl", convinced it was just something inherent to me. After my wife took a job that had her waking up at 4am, and the requisite adjustments to her bedtime, I found myself totally fine with going to sleep at 10am or earlier everyday. In a lot of ways an early bedtime, or an average bedtime, is preferable to staying up to the wee hours, but given the context I couldn't see the benefits until I had experienced it myself for a few months. So in my opinion, if there is some kind of genetic marker for chronatype, it's either not very influential, only expressed in a subset of the populace or largely BS.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - brimble 5y ago
    I buy that it might be A Thing but have a strong suspicion that 90+% of modern "night people" are just addicted to the 24/7 casino-bright circus that is modern home entertainment and nighttime lighting (as most of us are) and would stop being "night people" if you took that away.

najra 5y ago

Just a heads up there's been some controversy around some of the claims he makes in the book: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

criddell 5y ago
Walker has addressed some of that here: https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-responses-to-questions-from-readers/ https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-... On Peter Attia's podcast, he address a bunch of the criticism as well. The second edition of the book has been updated to correct errors.

deleted 5y ago

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