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Sleep habits may have long-term benefits

croes 4y ago
Couldn't a poor sleep pattern just be a symptom of an illness?
- tanveermunavar 4y ago
  Illness is just coding
- giuliomagnifico 4y ago
  Yes it’s like “Was the chicken or the egg born first?” anyway if you sleep bad maybe you don’t know your issue, and if you just sleep bad you will have more chance to die prematurely. This research just want to say this i think.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Also, say sleeping well adds 6 months to your life, then not sleeping well "killed" you 6 months earlier.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    If you sleep for 20 extra minutes every day, that's a full extra year sleeping over a 72 year span. (If you exclude 1/3 of the time as sleep, that's a year and a half of extra awake time.) If you gain 1.5 years of extra time awake but lose 0.5 years of life, did you win or lose time?
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      Yeah possibly! I wasn't making that point. More the lies, damn lies, statistics point.
    - wholinator2 4y ago
      Well but there's a lot more to sleep than time. I know waking up 20 minutes earlier then my bodies decided wake time creates much more than 20 minutes of grogginess. Waking up n minutes before sleep Cycle end might be okay for some people but in the times I've had to set my alarm a little earlier, the time of waking makes a difference all day. Now, if you're already not sleeping enough for your body and get woken up groggy and tired by an alarm every morning, that 20 minutes probably won't kill you faster than the lessened sleep you already get.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  Sure. But you might just work retail, do shiftwork at a factory, or work in any number of places that require weird hours. Healthcare, plowing snow, train conductor, and anywhere that you wind up on-call just to name a few.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- giardini 4y ago
  Many sleep-deprived are overweight with all the consequences thereof.
Mizoguchi 4y ago
So if I wake up in the middle of the night for two hours every day for 60 years, I can still technically live more years than those having a good night sleep. Unless we count the time we spend sleeping as living.
- is_true 4y ago
  Defragmenting thoughts
- cafard 4y ago
  Well, if it doesn't take a lot of years off your life.
CalRobert 4y ago
I've wondered if my kids will literally kill me through sleep deprivation.
- aswanson 4y ago
  I've been there, brother. Hang in there.
  - CalRobert 4y ago
    At least I'll get some rest when I'm dead!
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      Blamed 4 kids for sleep problems. Turned out I picked up sleep apnea somewhere when raising the littles. CPAP changed my life.
    - aswanson 4y ago
      Lol, always a bright side!
- flangola7 4y ago
  Having more than two people in the house who can act as parents is a game changer. Definitely one place where modern society has slipped up, though there's some change in that with families like mine.
  - Enginerrrd 4y ago
    Do you care to elaborate? I've been thinking about this a LOT over the years. I feel like children were meant to be able to roam around and find different adults to glom onto until they're too annoyed and then move on to the next, all the while learning different specialized skills and niches to find one they fit in with. I can't help but feel that more-than-2-adult households would have a huge advantage in this era.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
As a tangent, I got a new bed couple of weeks ago. My old one had been around for ages and was well past it's expiration date. It cost a small fortune but Jesus Herbert Christ on a tandem bicycle has it made a difference on how I feel during the day. I fall a sleep faster, wake up more well rested. First few mornings I was just sort of confused by the feeling of waking up profoundly physically relaxed. Felt very weird and unusual. I don't think I've been that relaxed for years.
- vecter 4y ago
  Is there anything special about your new bed that’s causing your better sleep or just the fact that it’s new and not saggy?
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Nothing special. Like it's modern mattress technology and all, which has apparently improved quite a lot sine back when I bought my old bed. But overall it's just much better suited to my body. I'm pretty tall so I need a relatively firm mattress to avoid sinking into it and sleeping all banana-shaped, but with this bed the core is firm but the top layer is soft. Hard to explain, but it's amazing.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    Everyone is different, I found that I sleep the best on a firm futon combined with a 2cm thick memory foam mattress from Ikea. If the bed is too soft, it might be comfy for a few nights but then my back and neck start hurting.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      memory foam mattress of 2cm?
      - theshrike79 4y ago
        According to Google Translate "Mattress topper" is the correct term I was looking for =) Basically a thing you put on top of a mattress for extra comfort and it makes making the bed a bit easier and cleaner.
michieldotv 4y ago
I've been going through another episode of sleeplessness lately. Just like it had before, it has serious detrimental effects on my overall wellbeing. I'm less trusting of others, more inclined to shirk social situations, more sensitive to antisocial behaviors in others. I struggle with telling cause from effect, because these things literally stress me out even more, exacerbating the sleep problem. I just _feel_ the sleep deprivation eating away at my general health. I'm getting the best possible treatment (standard of care) which is cognitive behavioral therapy, but man, is it a slow process to recovery.
- keyle 4y ago
  Have you considered talking to your dr about a little sleeping pill or mirtazipine? I had a serious episode of ptsd after a natural catastrophe and I couldn't shut both eyes for months. Meds became a life saver. Sleep. It's underrated.
  - nerdbaggy 4y ago
    Can you sleep without the pills now? That’s my worry
  - ajolly 4y ago
    Mirtazapine ended up giving me blurred vision
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Xeoncross 4y ago
I've seen enough mental issues in people (depression, schizophrenia, etc...) that seem to have a high correlation to poor sleep and/or lack of sleep to make sure I stay on top of getting enough sleep. Depriving your body of food, water, oxygen or sleep is no joke.
- cies 4y ago
  > Depriving your body of food, water, oxygen or sleep is no joke. Though fasting is a thing, and when well performed has health benefits (self reporting here). And I've -- probably for good reasons -- never heard of oxygen of sleep fasting :)
  - Xeoncross 4y ago
    Yeah, I'm not talking about self-directed fasting here.
- juve1996 4y ago
  Most people I know with anxiety also: heavily abuse caffeine and sleep poorly. Caffeine is an absolute killer that we don't talk about nearly enough when it comes to sleep.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I’m bipolar and my sleep problems are because of my mental issues. For example, when I’m depressed, I can’t sleep. The part of my brain that makes sleep happen doesn’t work. Lack of good sleep hygiene is unlikely to give you a highly genetic mental disorder.
testmasterflex 4y ago
As a founder I’ve slept irregularly for 15 years. My solution that kinda works is if I’m tired after a night’s sleep, I sleep a few more hours later in the day. My cofounder in one venture you never know when he is awake or asleep as he refuses to set an alarm.
elric 4y ago
I'll keep saying it: sleep apnea is vastly underdiagnosed and undertreated. I had so many weird symptoms for so long, which all gradually started to disappear as I started to get my sleep apnea treated. Unless you're fat, doctors will rarely even consider the possibility. And once you do get a polysomnogram, the usualy course of action is to throw a CPAP machine at you and send you on your way, without much followup. This, predictably, leads to abysmal compliance and the perception that PAP-therapy is awful or innefective. And while I'm on my soap box, I really wish the PAP-manufacturers would dislodge their collective head from their collective arse. Trying to lock down machines and preventing patients from accessing their data (and settings) is plain evil. And maybe put some money into R&D for better machines? There's literally hundreds of millions of people with sleep apnea, there's bound to be a market for better devices ...
- schwartzworld 4y ago
  Two relatives in my family who are highly symptomatic were turned down by their primary care when they asked for a sleep study. One for being too skinny and the other for being "too cheerful". If you want to criticize the pap manufacturers, there's a lot more than just that too. There's a shortage of machines because of the negligence of the Philips company. Documents have shown that they knew their machines were causing problems for years before finally doing a recall.
  - alostpuppy 4y ago
    This is a huge problem! If they are in the US most insurers allow you to go straight to a specialist. Unsure if that helps them but for anyone reading this, if you can, go straight to a sleep specialist. My treatment was delayed for 3 years because I didn’t snore (another common reason for rejection of a sleep study).
- hobo_mark 4y ago
  What symptoms did you have, if one may ask?
  - cshokie 4y ago
_fat_santa 4y ago
I've currently got two issues with my sleep: I'm a chronic couch sleeper and I am incapable of sleeping in. The first problem is most nights, about half my night, from 11-3am usually, I sleep on the couch before getting up and going to bed, I don't feel tired the morning after but I know there's an impact. The second issue is that I just can't sleep in, if I go to bed at 11pm, I wake up at 7am, if I'm out late with friends and stay up till 3am, I'm still up at 7am. For me it's like at 7am my brain just starts working, I was laying in my bed at 6:50am this morning and my brain is already going "alright we gotta work on that new database, oh how should I design it, yada, yada, yada", after a while of staring at the ceiling I always just go "fuck it might as well get to work".
- haswell 4y ago
  As a former chronic couch sleeper, this one hit close to home. You're describing my sleeping patterns over the past few decades pretty well. After I encountered the book "Why we Sleep" and heard some podcast interviews with the author, I was convinced that I needed to change my habits and started taking this seriously. Here's what I did: 1. If I slept on the couch, I'd stay there. My first priority was to start getting full nights of sleep. This involved "giving in" to my couch sleeping, and stocking the couch with sheets/blankets so I could set myself up for success. I found that once I was no longer "oh shit, I did it again", I could actually sleep through the night. 2. I started a morning mindfulness habit. Over time, this helped me notice more clearly each morning how I was feeling, and how my choices the night before improved or degraded my day. If I passed out while watching something, I would always wake up less rested. 3. After getting some regularity in my schedule, I started feeling more rested, and my meditation habit seemed to be providing even more clarity. One day, I started internally questioning why I was sleeping on the couch when my bed was far more comfortable. So I went to bed on time. And then I kept doing it. For the first time in over 30 years, I feel like my relationship with sleep and going to bed has fundamentally changed. I realized that my poor sleep was more about bad habits I'd been clinging to since I was a kid, and the more I improved my sleep, the more clearly I could see this. YMMV, but figured I'd share how this went for me. > if I'm out late with friends and stay up till 3am, I'm still up at 7am. This was a hard pill to swallow, but as I dug more into the sleep research, it became clear that the body is not well suited for the occasional (or regular) 3AM morning. The body seems to be optimized for regularity/consistency, and adding a 3AM night is never without cost. This doesn't mean I never stay up late, but I now do so knowing exactly what to expect.
smeej 4y ago
I really wanted there to be controllable habits listed in this article, but instead it was about sleep characteristics. Telling me that "having trouble falling asleep," or "having trouble staying asleep," or "not feeling alert upon waking" are working against me is useless to me. These aren't "habits." I'm not choosing to do them until they become routine. They just happen to me. Tell me how to FIX those things. Tell me what habits would help me fall asleep, stay asleep, and feel rested. As-is, this isn't actionable. It's just, "Hey, people who don't sleep well don't live as long."
- isoprophlex 4y ago
  This annoyed the hell out of me as well. I thought, oh cool, some advice to improve my sleep. Point 5: "feeling well rested after waking up at least five days a week" But of course! I'll fix my sleep by ensuring I wake up well rested.
  - haswell 4y ago
    Research and summaries of research will rarely hand out advice. In recent years, there has been an explosion of content that provides practical advice on getting better sleep. Most of this advice involves habit changes, and many of these habit changes are hard (e.g. avoiding screen time for ~2 hours before bed is tough if you always watch Netflix in the evenings). I added links as a response to the sibling comment with some practical resources, and I think it's important to recognize that work focusing on the impact of sleep or the lack thereof is not necessarily in the same category as work that seeks to provide remedies / improve sleep. Thankfully, as we continue to learn just how important sleep is, we also continue to learn about ways to improve it.
  - nmcfarl 4y ago
    This is probably a clear metric for our annoying friends who complain that they don’t get high enough quality sleep, but go to bed at 2 and have an alarm set for 7 every day. Sure you may have worked best on 5 hours sleep in college (though probably not), but if you aren’t "feeling well rested after waking up at least five days a week", you might try more sleep. Some people need this advice, and a clear metric to hit. I’ve known them, and although I failed to make a dent, eventually something did. Maybe it was an article like this.
jb1991 4y ago
Any advice in overcoming insomnia? I’ve tried everything I can think of. Melatonin, various vitamin supplements, exercise, dietary changes of a wide variety, nothing seems to help. Always waking up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.
- vjk800 4y ago
  Exercising. More specifically aerobic exercising. High and low intensity both work, but you have to do enough to properly exhaust yourself, just 15 minutes of walking is not enough. And not doing anything too exciting or demanding 2-3 hours before going to sleep. Maybe you just haven't done enough or not consistently enough.
- galenko 4y ago
  I picked up meditating daily in an attempt to address one of my mental disorders. Falling asleep is much easier for me now, whereas I used to struggle with it a lot. My thoughts used to feel unstoppable and the moment I would wake up in the middle of the night, they started going and I was wide awake and no longer sleepy within seconds. Now it’s like I’m observing them, but no longer get excited. I still have bad days, it’s not a 100% consistent solution, but it’s helped me massively.
- eastbound 4y ago
  What has worked for me, but with only one month experience: An apparatus that pulls my lower teeth forward, prescribed by a doctor, that keeps me from snoring. Then suddenly, I slept so soundly that I didn’t wake up at odd times during the night. I used to wake up at 2am and stay awake until 6am, only to sleep between 6 and 8 and be late at work.
  - ajolly 4y ago
    Can you share more about this apparatus, or what made your doctor think you needed this? Were you investigating sleep issues or dental issues or what.
    - 4y ago
mupuff1234 4y ago
I'm a pretty bad sleeper, but some habits I find helpful: 1. Dim house lights 1-2 hours before going to bed. 2. Earplugs + blackout curtains. 3. Doing some sort of physical activity during the day.
- 11235813213455 4y ago
  4. sunlight
sambull 4y ago
For me the number one issue in the industry for sleep health has been PagerDuty and chronic short staffing.
artemavv 4y ago
I recommend the book "Why we Sleep" by Matthew Walker [0]. It helped me to fix sleep schedule and better understand why good sleep is important [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep
pin24 4y ago
Sleep has been my biggest issue for the last 10 years and I don't know what to do about it. Even after this time, I still have not much of an idea regarding the cause. I'm in my thirties. Falling asleep or staying asleep is not an issue, with rare exceptions. However, how I wake up is a whole other story. I hardly remember the last time I woke up truly relaxed, that happens maybe 10 times a year. It's a huge spectrum, most of the time it is somewhere between okay-ish (feeling exhausted after waking up, but it gets much better within 1-2 hours) and super exhausted (like the biggest hangover in my younger years. Can't concentrate at all, minimal effort activities like going up a small staircase become demanding, strained cardiovascular system in general, not hungry.. in short, a lost day). How I wake up is not predictable, there is no obvious pattern or causality. I am closer to being underweight than overweight. Even on a mediocre day, I can be cheerful. Doctors therefore do not necessarily take me seriously and things happen slowly. Personal "experiments" with an oxygen and pulse tracker clearly show ups and downs when sleeping, but not to a degree to alert doctors with. Over the course of the last 10 years, I actually did 5-6 polysomnograms at a diagnostic center, but every time it was difficult for me to get any sleep there, so the results are close to being worthless. For the 45-60 minutes of sleep that I got per night, the graphs actually did show small irregularities. Which was enough to end up with a CPAP device that I rarely use because I don't feel any better with it. Although I'm quite sure poor sleep is the immediate reason for my exhaustion, I do not rule out that the root cause is not somatic. There is this other problem of mine, a skin disease which makes me very susceptible to sunlight, which has a severe impact on the way I life and do things. I mainly stay indoors. Doing sports, running errands etc. usually happen after sunset. Bad weather is my friend. I really like my job and colleagues and get well along with everyone, but my personal social circle is small and most of the (spare-)time, I'm alone. Although I don't feel depressed and can be cheerful on most of the days, I talked to someone in therapy for a few months, but it didn't help much. As a software engineer, rational und deterministic thinking makes me wanna try antidepressants, just for the sake of trial and error. But it didn't come to that. By the way, the last time I went to polysomnograpy, they also did two other tests regarding daytime fatigue. I failed miserably on the first test (basically my ability to keep my pupils focused on something), but succeded in the 99.5 percentile on the second test (reaction time), which is unusual. They came to the conclusion that I have become so accustomed to the situation that my body compensates very well for it. Which coincides with my impressions and helps me in my job and daily life. But doesn't help much when it comes to overall quality of life, or... potential conseqential damages to my cardiovascular system. Over the years, I got used to this whole situation, even with all the time I lost feeling miserable. Sometimes, I'm trying to ignore it and get on with my life, there are some good days after all. But lately, there is this emerging fear of said potential damages. Being in my 30s or 40s and tied to a bed for the rest of my life due to a stroke or something similar is a thought that makes me shudder. Much more than not surviving it. Maybe it's just plain old sleep apnea with a wrongly adjusted or otherwise not helpful CPAP device (I was at the diagnostic center for trying an ajdustment, but guess what... I just can't sleep at that place). Or maybe the root cause purely psychogenic. Or it's something in between. Which is my current guess, but would be even worse, since it requires some interdisciplinary work and thinking from doctors, which, from my experience, they don't do that much. I have no clue what to do.

Couldn't a poor sleep pattern just be a symptom of an illness?

tanveermunavar 4y ago
Illness is just coding
giuliomagnifico 4y ago
Yes it’s like “Was the chicken or the egg born first?” anyway if you sleep bad maybe you don’t know your issue, and if you just sleep bad you will have more chance to die prematurely. This research just want to say this i think.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Also, say sleeping well adds 6 months to your life, then not sleeping well "killed" you 6 months earlier.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  If you sleep for 20 extra minutes every day, that's a full extra year sleeping over a 72 year span. (If you exclude 1/3 of the time as sleep, that's a year and a half of extra awake time.) If you gain 1.5 years of extra time awake but lose 0.5 years of life, did you win or lose time?
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Yeah possibly! I wasn't making that point. More the lies, damn lies, statistics point.
  - wholinator2 4y ago
    Well but there's a lot more to sleep than time. I know waking up 20 minutes earlier then my bodies decided wake time creates much more than 20 minutes of grogginess. Waking up n minutes before sleep Cycle end might be okay for some people but in the times I've had to set my alarm a little earlier, the time of waking makes a difference all day. Now, if you're already not sleeping enough for your body and get woken up groggy and tired by an alarm every morning, that 20 minutes probably won't kill you faster than the lessened sleep you already get.
Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Sure. But you might just work retail, do shiftwork at a factory, or work in any number of places that require weird hours. Healthcare, plowing snow, train conductor, and anywhere that you wind up on-call just to name a few.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
giardini 4y ago
Many sleep-deprived are overweight with all the consequences thereof.

So if I wake up in the middle of the night for two hours every day for 60 years, I can still technically live more years than those having a good night sleep. Unless we count the time we spend sleeping as living.

is_true 4y ago
Defragmenting thoughts
cafard 4y ago
Well, if it doesn't take a lot of years off your life.

CalRobert 4y ago

I've wondered if my kids will literally kill me through sleep deprivation.

aswanson 4y ago
I've been there, brother. Hang in there.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  At least I'll get some rest when I'm dead!
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    Blamed 4 kids for sleep problems. Turned out I picked up sleep apnea somewhere when raising the littles. CPAP changed my life.
  - aswanson 4y ago
    Lol, always a bright side!
flangola7 4y ago
Having more than two people in the house who can act as parents is a game changer. Definitely one place where modern society has slipped up, though there's some change in that with families like mine.
- Enginerrrd 4y ago
  Do you care to elaborate? I've been thinking about this a LOT over the years. I feel like children were meant to be able to roam around and find different adults to glom onto until they're too annoyed and then move on to the next, all the while learning different specialized skills and niches to find one they fit in with. I can't help but feel that more-than-2-adult households would have a huge advantage in this era.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

As a tangent, I got a new bed couple of weeks ago. My old one had been around for ages and was well past it's expiration date. It cost a small fortune but Jesus Herbert Christ on a tandem bicycle has it made a difference on how I feel during the day. I fall a sleep faster, wake up more well rested. First few mornings I was just sort of confused by the feeling of waking up profoundly physically relaxed. Felt very weird and unusual. I don't think I've been that relaxed for years.

vecter 4y ago
Is there anything special about your new bed that’s causing your better sleep or just the fact that it’s new and not saggy?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Nothing special. Like it's modern mattress technology and all, which has apparently improved quite a lot sine back when I bought my old bed. But overall it's just much better suited to my body. I'm pretty tall so I need a relatively firm mattress to avoid sinking into it and sleeping all banana-shaped, but with this bed the core is firm but the top layer is soft. Hard to explain, but it's amazing.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Everyone is different, I found that I sleep the best on a firm futon combined with a 2cm thick memory foam mattress from Ikea. If the bed is too soft, it might be comfy for a few nights but then my back and neck start hurting.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    memory foam mattress of 2cm?
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      According to Google Translate "Mattress topper" is the correct term I was looking for =) Basically a thing you put on top of a mattress for extra comfort and it makes making the bed a bit easier and cleaner.

michieldotv 4y ago

I've been going through another episode of sleeplessness lately. Just like it had before, it has serious detrimental effects on my overall wellbeing. I'm less trusting of others, more inclined to shirk social situations, more sensitive to antisocial behaviors in others. I struggle with telling cause from effect, because these things literally stress me out even more, exacerbating the sleep problem. I just _feel_ the sleep deprivation eating away at my general health. I'm getting the best possible treatment (standard of care) which is cognitive behavioral therapy, but man, is it a slow process to recovery.

keyle 4y ago
Have you considered talking to your dr about a little sleeping pill or mirtazipine? I had a serious episode of ptsd after a natural catastrophe and I couldn't shut both eyes for months. Meds became a life saver. Sleep. It's underrated.
- nerdbaggy 4y ago
  Can you sleep without the pills now? That’s my worry
- ajolly 4y ago
  Mirtazapine ended up giving me blurred vision

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Xeoncross 4y ago

I've seen enough mental issues in people (depression, schizophrenia, etc...) that seem to have a high correlation to poor sleep and/or lack of sleep to make sure I stay on top of getting enough sleep. Depriving your body of food, water, oxygen or sleep is no joke.

cies 4y ago
> Depriving your body of food, water, oxygen or sleep is no joke. Though fasting is a thing, and when well performed has health benefits (self reporting here). And I've -- probably for good reasons -- never heard of oxygen of sleep fasting :)
- Xeoncross 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm not talking about self-directed fasting here.
juve1996 4y ago
Most people I know with anxiety also: heavily abuse caffeine and sleep poorly. Caffeine is an absolute killer that we don't talk about nearly enough when it comes to sleep.
kayodelycaon 4y ago
I’m bipolar and my sleep problems are because of my mental issues. For example, when I’m depressed, I can’t sleep. The part of my brain that makes sleep happen doesn’t work. Lack of good sleep hygiene is unlikely to give you a highly genetic mental disorder.

testmasterflex 4y ago

As a founder I’ve slept irregularly for 15 years. My solution that kinda works is if I’m tired after a night’s sleep, I sleep a few more hours later in the day. My cofounder in one venture you never know when he is awake or asleep as he refuses to set an alarm.

elric 4y ago

I'll keep saying it: sleep apnea is vastly underdiagnosed and undertreated. I had so many weird symptoms for so long, which all gradually started to disappear as I started to get my sleep apnea treated. Unless you're fat, doctors will rarely even consider the possibility. And once you do get a polysomnogram, the usualy course of action is to throw a CPAP machine at you and send you on your way, without much followup. This, predictably, leads to abysmal compliance and the perception that PAP-therapy is awful or innefective. And while I'm on my soap box, I really wish the PAP-manufacturers would dislodge their collective head from their collective arse. Trying to lock down machines and preventing patients from accessing their data (and settings) is plain evil. And maybe put some money into R&D for better machines? There's literally hundreds of millions of people with sleep apnea, there's bound to be a market for better devices ...

schwartzworld 4y ago
Two relatives in my family who are highly symptomatic were turned down by their primary care when they asked for a sleep study. One for being too skinny and the other for being "too cheerful". If you want to criticize the pap manufacturers, there's a lot more than just that too. There's a shortage of machines because of the negligence of the Philips company. Documents have shown that they knew their machines were causing problems for years before finally doing a recall.
- alostpuppy 4y ago
  This is a huge problem! If they are in the US most insurers allow you to go straight to a specialist. Unsure if that helps them but for anyone reading this, if you can, go straight to a sleep specialist. My treatment was delayed for 3 years because I didn’t snore (another common reason for rejection of a sleep study).
hobo_mark 4y ago
What symptoms did you have, if one may ask?
- cshokie 4y ago

_fat_santa 4y ago

I've currently got two issues with my sleep: I'm a chronic couch sleeper and I am incapable of sleeping in. The first problem is most nights, about half my night, from 11-3am usually, I sleep on the couch before getting up and going to bed, I don't feel tired the morning after but I know there's an impact. The second issue is that I just can't sleep in, if I go to bed at 11pm, I wake up at 7am, if I'm out late with friends and stay up till 3am, I'm still up at 7am. For me it's like at 7am my brain just starts working, I was laying in my bed at 6:50am this morning and my brain is already going "alright we gotta work on that new database, oh how should I design it, yada, yada, yada", after a while of staring at the ceiling I always just go "fuck it might as well get to work".

haswell 4y ago
As a former chronic couch sleeper, this one hit close to home. You're describing my sleeping patterns over the past few decades pretty well. After I encountered the book "Why we Sleep" and heard some podcast interviews with the author, I was convinced that I needed to change my habits and started taking this seriously. Here's what I did: 1. If I slept on the couch, I'd stay there. My first priority was to start getting full nights of sleep. This involved "giving in" to my couch sleeping, and stocking the couch with sheets/blankets so I could set myself up for success. I found that once I was no longer "oh shit, I did it again", I could actually sleep through the night. 2. I started a morning mindfulness habit. Over time, this helped me notice more clearly each morning how I was feeling, and how my choices the night before improved or degraded my day. If I passed out while watching something, I would always wake up less rested. 3. After getting some regularity in my schedule, I started feeling more rested, and my meditation habit seemed to be providing even more clarity. One day, I started internally questioning why I was sleeping on the couch when my bed was far more comfortable. So I went to bed on time. And then I kept doing it. For the first time in over 30 years, I feel like my relationship with sleep and going to bed has fundamentally changed. I realized that my poor sleep was more about bad habits I'd been clinging to since I was a kid, and the more I improved my sleep, the more clearly I could see this. YMMV, but figured I'd share how this went for me. > if I'm out late with friends and stay up till 3am, I'm still up at 7am. This was a hard pill to swallow, but as I dug more into the sleep research, it became clear that the body is not well suited for the occasional (or regular) 3AM morning. The body seems to be optimized for regularity/consistency, and adding a 3AM night is never without cost. This doesn't mean I never stay up late, but I now do so knowing exactly what to expect.

smeej 4y ago

I really wanted there to be controllable habits listed in this article, but instead it was about sleep characteristics. Telling me that "having trouble falling asleep," or "having trouble staying asleep," or "not feeling alert upon waking" are working against me is useless to me. These aren't "habits." I'm not choosing to do them until they become routine. They just happen to me. Tell me how to FIX those things. Tell me what habits would help me fall asleep, stay asleep, and feel rested. As-is, this isn't actionable. It's just, "Hey, people who don't sleep well don't live as long."

isoprophlex 4y ago
This annoyed the hell out of me as well. I thought, oh cool, some advice to improve my sleep. Point 5: "feeling well rested after waking up at least five days a week" But of course! I'll fix my sleep by ensuring I wake up well rested.
- haswell 4y ago
  Research and summaries of research will rarely hand out advice. In recent years, there has been an explosion of content that provides practical advice on getting better sleep. Most of this advice involves habit changes, and many of these habit changes are hard (e.g. avoiding screen time for ~2 hours before bed is tough if you always watch Netflix in the evenings). I added links as a response to the sibling comment with some practical resources, and I think it's important to recognize that work focusing on the impact of sleep or the lack thereof is not necessarily in the same category as work that seeks to provide remedies / improve sleep. Thankfully, as we continue to learn just how important sleep is, we also continue to learn about ways to improve it.
- nmcfarl 4y ago
  This is probably a clear metric for our annoying friends who complain that they don’t get high enough quality sleep, but go to bed at 2 and have an alarm set for 7 every day. Sure you may have worked best on 5 hours sleep in college (though probably not), but if you aren’t "feeling well rested after waking up at least five days a week", you might try more sleep. Some people need this advice, and a clear metric to hit. I’ve known them, and although I failed to make a dent, eventually something did. Maybe it was an article like this.

jb1991 4y ago

Any advice in overcoming insomnia? I’ve tried everything I can think of. Melatonin, various vitamin supplements, exercise, dietary changes of a wide variety, nothing seems to help. Always waking up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.

vjk800 4y ago
Exercising. More specifically aerobic exercising. High and low intensity both work, but you have to do enough to properly exhaust yourself, just 15 minutes of walking is not enough. And not doing anything too exciting or demanding 2-3 hours before going to sleep. Maybe you just haven't done enough or not consistently enough.
galenko 4y ago
I picked up meditating daily in an attempt to address one of my mental disorders. Falling asleep is much easier for me now, whereas I used to struggle with it a lot. My thoughts used to feel unstoppable and the moment I would wake up in the middle of the night, they started going and I was wide awake and no longer sleepy within seconds. Now it’s like I’m observing them, but no longer get excited. I still have bad days, it’s not a 100% consistent solution, but it’s helped me massively.
eastbound 4y ago
What has worked for me, but with only one month experience: An apparatus that pulls my lower teeth forward, prescribed by a doctor, that keeps me from snoring. Then suddenly, I slept so soundly that I didn’t wake up at odd times during the night. I used to wake up at 2am and stay awake until 6am, only to sleep between 6 and 8 and be late at work.
- ajolly 4y ago
  Can you share more about this apparatus, or what made your doctor think you needed this? Were you investigating sleep issues or dental issues or what.
  - 4y ago

mupuff1234 4y ago

I'm a pretty bad sleeper, but some habits I find helpful: 1. Dim house lights 1-2 hours before going to bed. 2. Earplugs + blackout curtains. 3. Doing some sort of physical activity during the day.

11235813213455 4y ago
4. sunlight

sambull 4y ago

For me the number one issue in the industry for sleep health has been PagerDuty and chronic short staffing.

artemavv 4y ago

I recommend the book "Why we Sleep" by Matthew Walker [0]. It helped me to fix sleep schedule and better understand why good sleep is important [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep

pin24 4y ago

Sleep has been my biggest issue for the last 10 years and I don't know what to do about it. Even after this time, I still have not much of an idea regarding the cause. I'm in my thirties. Falling asleep or staying asleep is not an issue, with rare exceptions. However, how I wake up is a whole other story. I hardly remember the last time I woke up truly relaxed, that happens maybe 10 times a year. It's a huge spectrum, most of the time it is somewhere between okay-ish (feeling exhausted after waking up, but it gets much better within 1-2 hours) and super exhausted (like the biggest hangover in my younger years. Can't concentrate at all, minimal effort activities like going up a small staircase become demanding, strained cardiovascular system in general, not hungry.. in short, a lost day). How I wake up is not predictable, there is no obvious pattern or causality. I am closer to being underweight than overweight. Even on a mediocre day, I can be cheerful. Doctors therefore do not necessarily take me seriously and things happen slowly. Personal "experiments" with an oxygen and pulse tracker clearly show ups and downs when sleeping, but not to a degree to alert doctors with. Over the course of the last 10 years, I actually did 5-6 polysomnograms at a diagnostic center, but every time it was difficult for me to get any sleep there, so the results are close to being worthless. For the 45-60 minutes of sleep that I got per night, the graphs actually did show small irregularities. Which was enough to end up with a CPAP device that I rarely use because I don't feel any better with it. Although I'm quite sure poor sleep is the immediate reason for my exhaustion, I do not rule out that the root cause is not somatic. There is this other problem of mine, a skin disease which makes me very susceptible to sunlight, which has a severe impact on the way I life and do things. I mainly stay indoors. Doing sports, running errands etc. usually happen after sunset. Bad weather is my friend. I really like my job and colleagues and get well along with everyone, but my personal social circle is small and most of the (spare-)time, I'm alone. Although I don't feel depressed and can be cheerful on most of the days, I talked to someone in therapy for a few months, but it didn't help much. As a software engineer, rational und deterministic thinking makes me wanna try antidepressants, just for the sake of trial and error. But it didn't come to that. By the way, the last time I went to polysomnograpy, they also did two other tests regarding daytime fatigue. I failed miserably on the first test (basically my ability to keep my pupils focused on something), but succeded in the 99.5 percentile on the second test (reaction time), which is unusual. They came to the conclusion that I have become so accustomed to the situation that my body compensates very well for it. Which coincides with my impressions and helps me in my job and daily life. But doesn't help much when it comes to overall quality of life, or... potential conseqential damages to my cardiovascular system. Over the years, I got used to this whole situation, even with all the time I lost feeling miserable. Sometimes, I'm trying to ignore it and get on with my life, there are some good days after all. But lately, there is this emerging fear of said potential damages. Being in my 30s or 40s and tied to a bed for the rest of my life due to a stroke or something similar is a thought that makes me shudder. Much more than not surviving it. Maybe it's just plain old sleep apnea with a wrongly adjusted or otherwise not helpful CPAP device (I was at the diagnostic center for trying an ajdustment, but guess what... I just can't sleep at that place). Or maybe the root cause purely psychogenic. Or it's something in between. Which is my current guess, but would be even worse, since it requires some interdisciplinary work and thinking from doctors, which, from my experience, they don't do that much. I have no clue what to do.