3 ms·

I’m a layperson who read this book and I understand that consistent sleep leads to good health and inconsistent sleep could lead to health issues. How am I bei

I’m a layperson who read this book and I understand that consistent sleep leads to good health and inconsistent sleep could lead to health issues. How am I being misled if cancer is one of those potential issues? It makes sense in many ways. It’s like the old joke of when someone tells you that oxygen is slowly killing you. Most high school science teachers will tell you that fun fact, but you don’t lose sleep over it.

timr 4y ago
> How am I being misled if cancer is one of those potential issues? If there's no evidence, or only very poor evidence, then you're being misled. > It makes sense in many ways. Lots of things make sense, but are not proven (these are called "hypotheses"), or worse, not true at all ("fallacies"). Without proof, you can't tell one from the other.
- joenot443 4y ago
  To pile on, I was also struck by the potential for a sleep-cancer connection so I checked NCBI and found a meta analysis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6249821/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6249821/ “Sixty-five studies from 25 articles were included, involving 1,550,524 participants and 86,201 cancer cases. The categorical meta-analysis revealed that neither short nor long sleep duration was associated with increased cancer risk” I imagine if a similar analysis was done with rates of exercise, smoking, or hydration, we’d see a notable effect. My position now is that sleep is incredibly important, but perhaps not to the extent made out in the book.
  - timr 4y ago
    > My position now is that sleep is incredibly important, but perhaps not to the extent made out in the book. I agree. In general, people take criticism of this particular book, and extrapolate that criticism to mean that lack of sleep is not bad. We can all agree that sleep is good, but still disagree with the specific, wilder claims made in Why We Sleep.
coldtea 4y ago
>How am I being misled if cancer is one of those potential issues? First of all, "consistent sleep" and "health issues" are so vague that can even refer to common sense advice that you don't need a book to tell you, any doctor could. The book doesn't keep at that soundbite level, but gives specific ranges, arguments, and advice. That is what are misleading. "How am I being misled if cancer is one of those potential issues?" Cancer is a potential issue of almost everything. If the chance of something particular causing it is existing but miniscule to the point of being irrelevant and someone overplays it, while pretending to give scientic advice and bogus numbers of what to do to avoid it, then you're mislead. The same way "don't drink over two glasses of water per day, you can die of water toxemia" is misleading, even if drinking too much water (above a gallon in a span of a few hours) can indeed lead to water toxemia. For example, book makes claims about what should be our sleep duration range, which are wrong and misleading. Second, the books makes claims about the effects of stepping out of that range that are also misleading. For learning about how much you should sleep and what you can get if you don't, it's worse than "gym bro science"...
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  I think I have a different definition of misled than people defending the blog author here. The way people defending the blog author use the term is as if the author is deliberately deceiving people for their gain. i.e. cynicism. That is not even remotely the case for anyone who read the book. I also do not agree that it is misleading to provide general guidelines/recommendations and potential consequences. Not a single guideline was surprising or different than common sense. One has to read between the lines of their experiences and the facts presented. (i.e. if you ever worked at a startup or are a parent you'd have experience of lack of sleep and health issues)
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >The way people defending the blog author use the term is as if the author is deliberately deceiving people for their gain. i.e. cynicism. That is not even remotely the case for anyone who read the book. The author is deceiving people through sloppy science, superificial verification and editing, and sensenationalist/alarmist key points, to create a catchy "clickbait" book and sell for his gain.

timr 4y ago

> How am I being misled if cancer is one of those potential issues? If there's no evidence, or only very poor evidence, then you're being misled. > It makes sense in many ways. Lots of things make sense, but are not proven (these are called "hypotheses"), or worse, not true at all ("fallacies"). Without proof, you can't tell one from the other.

joenot443 4y ago
To pile on, I was also struck by the potential for a sleep-cancer connection so I checked NCBI and found a meta analysis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6249821/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6249821/ “Sixty-five studies from 25 articles were included, involving 1,550,524 participants and 86,201 cancer cases. The categorical meta-analysis revealed that neither short nor long sleep duration was associated with increased cancer risk” I imagine if a similar analysis was done with rates of exercise, smoking, or hydration, we’d see a notable effect. My position now is that sleep is incredibly important, but perhaps not to the extent made out in the book.
- timr 4y ago
  > My position now is that sleep is incredibly important, but perhaps not to the extent made out in the book. I agree. In general, people take criticism of this particular book, and extrapolate that criticism to mean that lack of sleep is not bad. We can all agree that sleep is good, but still disagree with the specific, wilder claims made in Why We Sleep.

coldtea 4y ago

>How am I being misled if cancer is one of those potential issues? First of all, "consistent sleep" and "health issues" are so vague that can even refer to common sense advice that you don't need a book to tell you, any doctor could. The book doesn't keep at that soundbite level, but gives specific ranges, arguments, and advice. That is what are misleading. "How am I being misled if cancer is one of those potential issues?" Cancer is a potential issue of almost everything. If the chance of something particular causing it is existing but miniscule to the point of being irrelevant and someone overplays it, while pretending to give scientic advice and bogus numbers of what to do to avoid it, then you're mislead. The same way "don't drink over two glasses of water per day, you can die of water toxemia" is misleading, even if drinking too much water (above a gallon in a span of a few hours) can indeed lead to water toxemia. For example, book makes claims about what should be our sleep duration range, which are wrong and misleading. Second, the books makes claims about the effects of stepping out of that range that are also misleading. For learning about how much you should sleep and what you can get if you don't, it's worse than "gym bro science"...

thenerdhead 4y ago
I think I have a different definition of misled than people defending the blog author here. The way people defending the blog author use the term is as if the author is deliberately deceiving people for their gain. i.e. cynicism. That is not even remotely the case for anyone who read the book. I also do not agree that it is misleading to provide general guidelines/recommendations and potential consequences. Not a single guideline was surprising or different than common sense. One has to read between the lines of their experiences and the facts presented. (i.e. if you ever worked at a startup or are a parent you'd have experience of lack of sleep and health issues)
- coldtea 4y ago
  >The way people defending the blog author use the term is as if the author is deliberately deceiving people for their gain. i.e. cynicism. That is not even remotely the case for anyone who read the book. The author is deceiving people through sloppy science, superificial verification and editing, and sensenationalist/alarmist key points, to create a catchy "clickbait" book and sell for his gain.