4 ms·

This could be because you're not getting enough sleep (or aren't sleeping well due to e.g. apnea or something). Set up a simple experiment: go to bed 1-1.5 hour

by melted 11y ago

This could be because you're not getting enough sleep (or aren't sleeping well due to e.g. apnea or something). Set up a simple experiment: go to bed 1-1.5 hours earlier than you usually do for a couple of weeks and see if your "cognitive decline" disappears. As you age you might find you need more sleep.

jacquesm 11y ago
> As you age you might find you need more sleep. This is very true for me, much to my surprise. I used to get by on 3 to 4 hours every night but that seems to have really caught up with me. If I don't get 8 hours minimum now I'm woozy the rest of the day.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  Same here. And "buzzy" when I'm really sleep-deprived. It literally feels like low-level electrical interference running through my head and my thinking and focus are nowhere near as sharp. It is like some sort of intoxication, which is fitting, because one of the things sleep does for us is clear toxins from our brains.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > And "buzzy" when I'm really sleep-deprived. It literally feels like low-level electrical interference running through my head and my thinking and focus are nowhere near as sharp. That's eerie, I have that too. Especially when it is totally quiet in the house. At first I thought it was because I heard the refrigerator, but I switched that off to rule it out. Then I powered down the whole house and the low humming remains. I'll have to try this when I'm totally rested to see if it goes away then, I never made the link to lack of sleep.
    - unclebucknasty 11y ago
      Ok, now this is really funny. There's the buzzy feeling, which I considered distinct from the low hum (til now), but I absolutely hear that low-hum too and also assumed it was the refrigerator. It is more pronounced at certain times, but I never linked it to my sleep deprivation. I'll have to pay attention to that. Another thing is that I seem to be "sensitive" to some electronics. For instance, I cannot hold a cell phone to my head for more than a few minutes and I even have to take breaks when listening to music on headphones. The feeling I get bears some similarity to my sleep-deprived state, so I have wondered about a relationship there, if not just a further reduction of my tolerance of electronics.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        I think a good part here is that where I live it is very quiet. Last house on a dead end street, nothing but fields around me for miles and miles. So when it's quiet it is really quiet, so quiet that sounds that you'd otherwise never even notice become audible because your brain just keeps cranking up the gain. I can hear the dear foraging around the house at night, and if a car passes on the nearest highway (a few kilometers away) I can hear that clearly too. But during the day all those sounds vanish, masked by the ever present background noise level which is far higher than it is during the night. And my hearing is actually not nearly as good as it used to be. One simple solution I've found is to play really low volume white noise, that seems to instantly drown out all of it but strangely enough is very hard to detect by itself. I never noticed any 'sensitivity to electronics'.
        unclebucknasty 11y ago
        Interesting. Yeah, it's strange that I never seemed to notice the low hum until, say, 5-6 years ago. I assumed it was the house in which I was living at the time, but we moved and I continued to notice it. In my case, both areas are kind of your "standard" suburb and not too far away from one another. BTW, I've also wondered if it was from some far-off industrial source. But, I also know we lose our high-frequency hearing as we age. I wonder if that somehow increases our sensitivity to the low frequency range. In any case, I'll have to try the white noise. Seems like it could help with sleep quality, which might in turn reduce sensitivity to it.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        Good luck, let me know how it works out if you want, jacques@mattheij.com.
        unclebucknasty 11y ago
        Thanks!
    - BoardsOfCanada 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum Read that a while back, look at the possible explanations, especially tinnitus might be a possibility.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Interesting how much of this I'd already figured out just by experimenting on myself. I definitely did not rule out tinnitus (and I had a pretty bad case of that at some point in the past, which totally ruined listening to violin music for me, but fortunately it has since reduced to the point of not being noticeable, maybe this is some kind of remnant). Anyway, I think of it as an interesting phenomenon, it doesn't bother me much (except when trying to fall asleep, once I notice it it is impossible to stop noticing it).
unclebucknasty 11y ago
Good point on the apnea, which tends to come with age, especially if overweight. There are different forms and degrees that don't involve waking and gasping for air, but that could easily impair quality sleep. One sign is consistently feeling unrefreshed after a full night's sleep. Also a good point about giving it a couple weeks. Chronic sleep deprivation can't be fixed with a night or two of "catching up".
DenisM 11y ago
Very important point. When I sleep well for a couple of week my memory and cognition are very sharp, but when I don't sleep well I'm having all kinds of cognitive problems. At 30 years old you're likely to have developed something like a sleep apnea, or caffeine metabolism slowdown, or some of the many other problems affecting sleep. Having said that, simply going to be earlier is not likely to help weed out most of these disorders. Go to a sleep doctor and see what they say. Also, are you getting more irate? For many people it's a lot easier to get angry when they lack sleep.

by melted 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago

> As you age you might find you need more sleep. This is very true for me, much to my surprise. I used to get by on 3 to 4 hours every night but that seems to have really caught up with me. If I don't get 8 hours minimum now I'm woozy the rest of the day.

unclebucknasty 11y ago
Same here. And "buzzy" when I'm really sleep-deprived. It literally feels like low-level electrical interference running through my head and my thinking and focus are nowhere near as sharp. It is like some sort of intoxication, which is fitting, because one of the things sleep does for us is clear toxins from our brains.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > And "buzzy" when I'm really sleep-deprived. It literally feels like low-level electrical interference running through my head and my thinking and focus are nowhere near as sharp. That's eerie, I have that too. Especially when it is totally quiet in the house. At first I thought it was because I heard the refrigerator, but I switched that off to rule it out. Then I powered down the whole house and the low humming remains. I'll have to try this when I'm totally rested to see if it goes away then, I never made the link to lack of sleep.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    Ok, now this is really funny. There's the buzzy feeling, which I considered distinct from the low hum (til now), but I absolutely hear that low-hum too and also assumed it was the refrigerator. It is more pronounced at certain times, but I never linked it to my sleep deprivation. I'll have to pay attention to that. Another thing is that I seem to be "sensitive" to some electronics. For instance, I cannot hold a cell phone to my head for more than a few minutes and I even have to take breaks when listening to music on headphones. The feeling I get bears some similarity to my sleep-deprived state, so I have wondered about a relationship there, if not just a further reduction of my tolerance of electronics.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      I think a good part here is that where I live it is very quiet. Last house on a dead end street, nothing but fields around me for miles and miles. So when it's quiet it is really quiet, so quiet that sounds that you'd otherwise never even notice become audible because your brain just keeps cranking up the gain. I can hear the dear foraging around the house at night, and if a car passes on the nearest highway (a few kilometers away) I can hear that clearly too. But during the day all those sounds vanish, masked by the ever present background noise level which is far higher than it is during the night. And my hearing is actually not nearly as good as it used to be. One simple solution I've found is to play really low volume white noise, that seems to instantly drown out all of it but strangely enough is very hard to detect by itself. I never noticed any 'sensitivity to electronics'.
      - unclebucknasty 11y ago
        Interesting. Yeah, it's strange that I never seemed to notice the low hum until, say, 5-6 years ago. I assumed it was the house in which I was living at the time, but we moved and I continued to notice it. In my case, both areas are kind of your "standard" suburb and not too far away from one another. BTW, I've also wondered if it was from some far-off industrial source. But, I also know we lose our high-frequency hearing as we age. I wonder if that somehow increases our sensitivity to the low frequency range. In any case, I'll have to try the white noise. Seems like it could help with sleep quality, which might in turn reduce sensitivity to it.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        Good luck, let me know how it works out if you want, jacques@mattheij.com.
        unclebucknasty 11y ago
        Thanks!
  - BoardsOfCanada 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum Read that a while back, look at the possible explanations, especially tinnitus might be a possibility.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Interesting how much of this I'd already figured out just by experimenting on myself. I definitely did not rule out tinnitus (and I had a pretty bad case of that at some point in the past, which totally ruined listening to violin music for me, but fortunately it has since reduced to the point of not being noticeable, maybe this is some kind of remnant). Anyway, I think of it as an interesting phenomenon, it doesn't bother me much (except when trying to fall asleep, once I notice it it is impossible to stop noticing it).

unclebucknasty 11y ago

Good point on the apnea, which tends to come with age, especially if overweight. There are different forms and degrees that don't involve waking and gasping for air, but that could easily impair quality sleep. One sign is consistently feeling unrefreshed after a full night's sleep. Also a good point about giving it a couple weeks. Chronic sleep deprivation can't be fixed with a night or two of "catching up".

DenisM 11y ago

Very important point. When I sleep well for a couple of week my memory and cognition are very sharp, but when I don't sleep well I'm having all kinds of cognitive problems. At 30 years old you're likely to have developed something like a sleep apnea, or caffeine metabolism slowdown, or some of the many other problems affecting sleep. Having said that, simply going to be earlier is not likely to help weed out most of these disorders. Go to a sleep doctor and see what they say. Also, are you getting more irate? For many people it's a lot easier to get angry when they lack sleep.