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Sleep duration, chronotype, health and lifestyle factors affect cognition [pdf]
- dsolo777 2y ago> Interestingly, our study did not identify a significant relationship between sleep quality—that is, sleeplessness/insomnia and cognitive performance— contrary to some previous findings > The regression highlighted a positive association between normal sleep duration (7–9 hours) and cognitive scores... while extended sleep duration negatively impacted scores across both cohorts > intermediate and evening types, were linked to superior cognitive function propaganda by big insomnia ;)
- kranner 2y agoMore like propaganda by Big Alcohol, given the following > Individuals who abstained from alcohol showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed alcohol, conflicting with previous research that has connected moderate drinking with cognitive impairment. Weekly and monthly alcohol consumption, as opposed to daily drinking, was found to somewhat correlate with lower cognitive scores.
- treetalker 2y agoThis is a situation of correlation ≠ causation, because — as all Rick & Morty fans know — some geniuses are drinking copiously just to slow down their turbo-charged intellects. :-)
- anigbrowl 2y agoYou have to put 2 spaces at the head of each line to get code formatting, otherwise your artistic endeavors are fed to the HN paragraph enforcement daemons.
- treetalker 2y agoThanks! For some reason it actually looked correct on my phone when I posted it. I’ve removed ASCII Rick just to be safe.
- giantg2 2y agoYes, let's go with that as the reason I drink.
- andrepd 2y agoGood lord
- danielheath 2y agoThose who abstain entirely are disproportionately likely to be former alcoholics - which explains eg the apparent protective effect of moderate drinking
- kranner 2y agoI don’t see how that’s the most likely reason to abstain. A lot of religious people have never consumed an alcoholic drink; at least that is the case for South Asians: Muslims in particular, but also many Hindus and Sikhs.
- j_bum 2y agoThis type of led to statistical issues that skewed our understanding of the health effects of alcohol consumption. Unless abstainers who previously abused alcohol are excluded or controlled for statistically, their health effects can skew results [0]. Here’s a blurb from a recent NYT article: > Fillmore was concerned about possible misleading variables in the studies: To start, they included ex-drinkers in the category of “abstainers,” which meant they were failing to account for the possibility that some people had stopped drinking specifically because of illness. The moderate drinkers looked healthy by comparison, creating the illusion that a moderate amount of alcohol was beneficial. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/magazine/alcohol-health-risks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/magazine/alcohol-health-r...
- khafra 2y agoAnd it's fairly difficult to make it an apples-to-apples comparison, suitable for causal analysis, by excluding the lifelong teetotalers who would have become alcoholics if they had ever partaken.
- criddell 2y agoThe Presbyterian church my parents took me to used actual wine (with an option for grape juice) at communion. I think most people participating in the ceremony didn't consider that having a drink any more than if their prescription medicine contained alcohol.
- mnk47 2y agoSo the Ballmer Peak is real! https://xkcd.com/323/ https://xkcd.com/323/
- flobosg 2y agoFrom a few months ago: The Ballmer Peak: An Empirical Search – https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10002 https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10002 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40062892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40062892)
- luke-stanley 2y agoSome might just be avoiding falling asleep or being even less capable.
- bratbag 2y agoHypothesis: The better you understand the world, the more likely you are to need an occasional drink.
- ziggyzecat 2y agoaddition to hypothesis: and that need grows exponentially with your understanding of the world until a certain point. That need can be reduced to a healthy "Mom said everything is fine in moderate amounts" once you choose to not live by conflicting standards, or rather: when you choose to not support implicitly AND explicitly conflicting causes ( many on the left, finboys & fingirls, law enforcement, ... but unemployed who don't work on themselves or their environment as well )
- jajko 2y agoNot really, you need a coping mechanism with all the crap and stupidity across society, and how powerless truth and correct moral behavior can be. Alcohol is one of the worst ones, you just blunt yourself while still realizing all failures, just temporarily a bit downtuned, next morning back to misery. No solution or even improvement is happening, just basically giving up (or a bit of complaining which is just group psychological therapy). Sports, meditation, maybe even occasional psychedelics steered in right direction, active vacations, good food, good sleep. Life is much easier in such mode.
- AbstractH24 2y agoSo you are saying “psychedelics good coping mechanism, alcohol bad”? That is California sobriety at a level I’ve never seen before.
- samstave 2y ago[flagged]
- monero-xmr 2y ago[flagged]
- bitexploder 2y agoEvery study I have ever read emphasized importance of sleep. Many show grey matter reduction long term the less you sleep. Sleep studies literally use a little alcohol to disrupt sleep. All the research out there indicates alcohol also directly shrinks your grey matter. These findings are hard to believe for sure.
- someothherguyy 2y agoGrey matter correlates with cognition and ethanol consumption, but that doesn't necessarily mean it makes every cohort (age, amount, duration, etc) worse at every cognitive battery. There are studies that show alcohol consumption is associated with greater novelty seeking, learning capacity, etc.
- bitexploder 2y agoI generally think the direction is being smarter/curious first and alcohol comes along. Chemically, I don’t see how alcohol can make you have better cognition in the long run. In some narrow ways, I can see it. Long term is more interesting to me than a peak healthy person that also uses alcohol.
- rawgabbit 2y agoThe study appears to say alcohol consumption has protective effect on cognition. Those who drank had less cognitive decline compared to those who abstained completely. If this is correct, this directly contradicts the other studies that says alcohol has zero benefits?
- resoluteteeth 2y agoA lot of studies that don't control for confounding factors like the fact that many people who 100% abstain from alcohol are former alcoholics show benefits to small amounts of alcohol consumption compared to no alcohol consumption. However, the studies that make more of an effort to control for those confounding factors have generally found that there are no health benefits, so right now the evidence seems to favor the idea that there are no health benefits to alcohol and in the studies that show otherwise it is due to confounding factors. This study doesn't seem to have particularly attempted to control for these factors (it just controlled for specific cardiovascular diseases, etc.) so it's not surprising that the results match older studies that showed positive effects from small amounts of alcohol.
- bigbacaloa 2y ago[dead]
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoMy pet theory is that extended sleep correlates with hide-away, hunger and depression modes - which signal to our body that energy must be conserved. And cognition without the ability to act is the definition of energy waste.
- jamesmotherway 2y agoLong sleep duration often presents with poor sleep quality, which negatively impacts cognition. "Long total sleep time may suggest prior sleep deprivation, medical conditions, or effects of medications."[1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4246141/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4246141/
- The_Colonel 2y agoI've been taking creatine for a while and it has interesting effects. On one hand, it seems making my sleep worse, i.e. sleeping less and kind of lightly? On the other hand, it helps me with cognitive performance, I get way less mentally exhausted during the day than I used to.
- lynx23 2y ago> normal sleep duration (7–9 hours) Show me one employed person with a life that manages to get 8 hours sleep on average. Most commuters would have to go to bed at 2100 to get a breakfast and enough time to get to work. I only get 8 hours when I know I am sleep deprived and go to bed at 2100. However, this is not "normal", and I bet it isn't normal for most. So why do we call it normal, then?
- louvki 2y agoidk it's normal for me but then again i live in Denmark and i dont have any children
- hansc 2y agoI do sleep 8+ hours each night (Netherlands): Up at 7.30, leave at 8.15, 30m commute. Leave work at 5.15, get to sleep around 10.45.
- hug 2y agoI work a full time tech job, I am out with friends or on a “date night” with my partner three or four times a week every week, and I have a few hobbies like music production and combat robotics. I get at least 8 hours every night. My “must be home and in bed” time on a weeknight is by 12:30AM, and I sleep in until 8:45AM. I am normally woken by my alarm. Weekends I simply set an alarm for 9 hours after I get in bed, which sometimes means sleeping until 2PM. I don’t eat breakfast, and I basically never commute in the morning, but if I do, my office is about 15 minutes away.
- andrepd 2y agoYeah not having to commute helps. More than lack of time, I'm usually too tired after a full day of work (8 or 9 till 6 or 6:30) to do anything else.
- XCSme 2y agoIn the EU it's quite normal for the average person to get the 8 hours of sleep. Of course, it depends on the work sector you are in, but for most jobs you don't have to wake up at 6 AM. Also, most people live close to their work, within 30 minutes of biking/driving/public transport.
- ETH_start 2y agoSo the main findings are superior cognitive performance being found in: • people who sleep normal amounts (7–9 hours) • night owls
- gonzo41 2y agoWhat if you're a night owl who sleeps in. Does that make you just an offset normie?
- johnathandos 2y agoAren’t we all just offset normies?
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y agoI would argue no because, while you’re doing stuff that matters to you, everyone else is done with their day and partying. You’d just be asleep while everyone else is pretending to do their work.
- afc 2y agoWhat does partying have to do with this? If anything, strong party goers are more likely to be night owls who sleep in?
- slt2021 2y agonight owls are people who are sensitive to light/noise/environment and therefore more productive in the night - when they can focus and be productive for prolonged periods of time without million of distractions. when you don't have people calling, texting, slacking, zooming you, environmental noises (car, neighbours, other people, dogs), when you don't have personal life distractions (wife, kids, personal email, social media etc) - you can be in a flow state for prolonged time and be quite productive. even such a small thing as lunch break, and other snack breaks - divides your day into two killing the flow.
- theshackleford 2y ago
- semiinfinitely 2y agoAm I reading this correctly from table 2 that the highest magnitude correlation is never drinking alcohol, which is a negative correlation.
- yobert 2y agoI bet this is not because alcohol is good for you in any way, but because being intelligent is related to being eager to try new things.
- theclansman 2y agoI knew that smoking crack meant I was smart
- yobbo 2y agoFurthermore, drinking weekly seems better than monthly. But frequency doesn't mean much unless we know amounts. For example, small amounts weekly could be benefiting social relations and regulating things like anxiety. Binging monthly might not give these benefits. Weirdly, BMI seems to have almost zero effect.
- piker 2y agoA hunch would be that alcohol abstinence is strongly correlated with religious fundamentalism which is correlated with lower income and cognition.
- dukeofdoom 2y agoNot sure about the study. But I've watched some fitness you tubers, I mean the real deal ones, that train for a specific sport. And they obsess with their sleep as much if not more than their training. Using bands and watches to track the quality of their sleep. Very important for recovery and training, at elite levels. One theory is that sleep, is a time when the brain cleans itself. If the theory is correct, maybe missing one cleaning is not detrimental. But continued, it will lead to performance decreases. Not just sports. But mental ability.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y agoThe relationship between sleep quality and recovery is pretty well known in exercise circles. A lot of "amateur" elites, like very competitive marathon runners that take it quite serious around a day job, have to work in long low intensity cardio workouts around their schedules, so you start thinking very hard about recovery. When you think about recovery that hard you also start prioritizing sleep a lot, especially if you're up at 4am for a 2 hour run, for example. Missing a lot of sleep for successive days is almost guaranteed to lead to injury when you're training very hard. The effect on your cardio performance (even just average BPM) can be stark. I don't know how some resident doctors, for example, can also be very good marathon runners. Just managing that sleep schedule must be crazy.
- roshankhan28 2y agoi found one thing helpful. if you drink coffee and then sleep immediately , i got a better sleep. it acted as good as melatonin gummies. anyone like me out there? is it normal? or am i addicted?
- pjerem 2y agoThat’s called a power nap. But you have to be a good sleeper in the first place. If you are not able to fall asleep before the caffeine kicks in, you’ll have a pretty different night/nap.
- kraftman 2y agoDo you have ADHD? I read once that for normal people caffiene pushes dopamine levels too high, and stops them from sleeping, but for people with ADHD caffeine can push dopamine levels from too low to normal, calming them and helping with sleep.
- lagniappe 2y agoI do, nicotine works this way for me.
- roshankhan28 2y agoI dont really have ADHD, but one time on nat geo channel i saw this video where they test two people , they were supposed to not sleep. after 12 hours they both were given coffee, one was allowed to sleep 30 mins, other was not . the one who had a nap recovered really well but the others conditioned worsened and he went to sleep even tho he didnt wanted to, his body gave up.
- Dr_Birdbrain 2y agoI have heard of people who say creatine helps them sleep. Creatine is technically not a stimulant, but in most people it causes a state of mental activation that would make it hard to sleep. I suspect you and the people who sleep better on creatine may have something in common.
- 2y ago
- reedf1 2y agoSo some studies show a positive correlation on cognitive performance and some negative correlation for "morningness" and "eveningness". The obvious conclusion to me is that there is no strong effect. Or that at some portions of the year, or parts of the globe, certain chronotypes have advantages, this certainly matches my anecdotal experience.
- energy123 2y agoEven if there was a strong correlation, it doesn't follow that you can improve your cognitive performance by fighting against your natural chronotype.
- nkmnz 2y agoTo the contrary. It's possible that the correlation is caused solely by a culture that raises owls as larks, "dumbing down" the latter with individuals maladapted to the lark life style. The effect could be increased by smarter owls being able to resist the conversion therapy a little better than less smarter owls – resulting in a selection bias.
- comfortabledoug 2y agoAll these weird comments about alcohol abstinence...must be a religious fundamentalist, must be an ex-alcoholic, etc. I have a drink maybe 5-10 times per year, and I'm not actively trying to abstain. It tastes gross, and I'm not drawn to it. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that alcohol isn't appealing to everyone?
- bell-cot 2y ago> Why is it so hard...? Stupid (cognitively easy) stereotypes, backed by "everybody's gotta drink!" machismo/insecurity/conformist culture, backed by "all the people I know" (who aren't silenced by stereotypes and peer pressure) experience, backed by decade after decade of massive advertising by the alcohol industry (and adjacent industries).
- piker 2y agoWe're just hypothesizing why at the population level abstinence from alcohol might not actually cause cognitive decline as (somewhat) implied by the data. Don't take it personally.
- ziggyzecat 2y agoYou mean why abstinence isn't causing better cognitive performance, right, RIGHT? Obviously the study result is BS. Because if the the same people, drinkers with higher than their abstinent peers cognitive scores, didn't drink, their performance would be THE SAME. But it's impossible to find out. They should totally continue to study all that, tho. Maybe at some point in the future we can cut people open alive and look properly inside, fuck around & find out, and then close them up and send them back to work again.
- ziggyzecat 2y ago> Obviously the study result is BS. Because if the the same people, drinkers with higher than their abstinent peers cognitive scores, didn't drink, their performance would be THE SAME. That liquor consumption part of the study result.
- ziggyzecat 2y agoThis is one of those funny studies that looks at so much but then falls short to realize one thing: How well a person can breathe through their nose and the side effects of not being able to do that on nervous system, beginning with facial muscles, neck muscles and so on ... there's also a direct relationship of all that on the prefrontal cortex. I admit tho, that I never checked if there are studies like that. If only I could travel backwards in time .......
- mckirk 2y agoI pretty definitely can't breath through my nose as well as I should be able to (deviated septum), and have been wondering for a while how much this actually impacts me. What was your experience like?
- op00to 2y agoHave you had a sleep study done? You may have low oxygen saturation when you sleep. I had literally no symptoms of sleep apnea, no major risk factors, but my body was struggling to breathe when I slept due to my anatomy. I have started CPAP treatment and am excited to see if my cognition improves despite not really feeling bad.
- mckirk 2y agoSo far I haven't, nope, though it might be worthwhile to look into, given that I basically need 8+ hours of sleep to function well. I do have a fitness watch though that can (supposedly) measure SpO2, and while that showed the occasional dip, it seemed more like a measurement error, and generally the values were in the normal range.
- Steve44 2y agoI've a FitBit Sense 2 and as I understand it that measures variations in SpO2. I'm not convinced how accurate nor how quickly it responds, it derives an estimate rather than directly measuring. I think it's also sensitive to any movements of the watch on your wrist. I also have had a finger pulse oximeter which logs and exports to an app via USB. If I sleep with that on it seems to be very reliable at recording the levels, the data certainly looks good and feels much more reliable than the Sense.
- lazycrazyowl 2y agoSo the study shows that night owls and people with flexible sleep patterns might have a slight advantage in terms of cognitive performance implying that it’s not just how much sleep you get, but also when you prefer to sleep that matters for keeping your brain sharp.
- mkermani144 2y agoAny TL;DR? It's a long pdf :D
- tgtweak 2y agoGreat study - I find that anecdotally 7 hours of sleep generally outperforms 8 hours in terms of cognitive function early in the day, but suffers later in the day - likely favored by "morning" people that tend to do more in the beginning of their day.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoBrought to you by the "No shit!" journal of scientific studies.
- fedeb95 2y agoPeople in UK should definitely consume alcohol. Irony apart, my idea (borrowed somewhere I can't remember) is that body functions are too intertwined to just isolate a single variable, or determine a single cause. People, consume what you want, sleep how you want, and assess what it is that you "want" individually. It's not hard too see if alcohol, sleep deprivation, etc. causes you harm or not. As for long-range damage or good: look at people who lived long (and healthy).