Chronic sleep deprivation suppresses immune system | Hacker News Reader

Chronic sleep deprivation suppresses immune system

sciencebulletin.org

277 pointsupen134 comments

I used to like to sleep for as long as possible, then slowly it began to feel like a waste of time.

Also, having small children affect sleep although not directly, it's the time you try to claw back after putting them to sleep, pushing it a little later to get other things done.

After a while it became obvious nothing much was being achieved this way, in fact my mental acuity seemed to drop substantially.

Then I realized I hadn't been dreaming (or at least remembering dreams) for a while and that was weird. Slowed down, went to bed as soon as tiredness kicked in for a few months. Improved my diet which probably helped a lot.

Dreams have returned with a vengence, it feels like all night is one long dream, I feel better and sharper.

I wish I could sleep less than 7 hours, but my body disagrees.

I agree with everything you listed, but I have one complication. "went to bed as soon as tiredness kicked in".

Give me a night or two of good sleep...and I won't be tired until 1am. Waking up for work will then be hell (I don't function well on low sleep).

My body knows when it is tired...but that doesn't match the work schedule :( When I'm practicing sleep diligence (which comes and goes based on whether I've been tired a lot lately or not) I have to force myself to go to bed when I'm not feeling tired. That feeling of sacrificing time is almost as hard to maintain as being constantly fatigued.

First world problems, but they are my problems.

There is definitely a drift towards staying up later and later, and of course kids and/or work are not forgiving of that trend, so the sleep deprivation starts to accumulate again.

I guess just listening to what your body is telling you and not pushing it, especially if the reason is work (side-project or career), but even just staying up for something trivial like watching a movie or whatever. Maybe I can use a lack of dreams to tell when I've gone too far.

This is hard for people with kids and a full schedule but there is an effective solution: Work. Out. More.

Seriously, part of the reason you're probably not tired is because you simply have not done enough physical exertion.

which also takes time, which you don't have enough of, which is why you were staying up late in the first place.

having kids basically just makes life impossible and painful.

can you take a half hour to do a workout in your lunch break?

Physically exhausting yourself doesn't actually take too much time -- do intervals at max exertion. If you take 'max' literally, you'll be exhausted after 10 minutes.

You don't have to dedicate 1 hours of your day to this. Take the stair, walk/bike around, do some light gardening, ect. All small everyday stuff that exercise your body - and it works.

I got one of those bike-like thing to put under my desk. Initially for work but that wasn't working so now it's at home. I haven't been great about using it often but it is easy to use while playing games like I would anyways. It might not be terribly efficient or anything but it's something.

Which type is more effective? Cardio or strength

The most effective method is something like high-intensity interval training. You need to stress your CNS to some degree. Low-intensity cardio is going to require a lot of time (like an hour 30 or more). Strength will require several, consistent big lifts and can be hard to work at home.

Buying a kettle bell or stationary bike and doing HIIT can wear you out in <20 minutes.

How many days do you do this per week? for me, everyday would totally wear me out and be unsustainable.

The point is to do is to be worn out. Initially, you start with 3 days a week. As your body adapts its energy levels you increase. I ride 20 miles a day on a bike (10 to work, 10 from).

On weekends I ski moguls for 6+ hours in the winter and hike 12ish miles in the summer.

The only time I feel a lack of energy is when I _stop_ regularly working out. You can be very efficient and get the same effect doing 20 minutes of HIIT. When the weather is marginal or I just don't have time that is what I do.

I've found that fairly ineffective with my condition (delayed sleep phase disorder). There's not much improvement at all when I'm working out regularly after work / on weekends to when I'm only doing it occasionally.

But then again, I'm fairly active at work (have to go up and down stairs between my office and the lab dozens of times a day, standing lab work, walking out to the warehouse to get parts, etc. which actually adds up to quite a lot, even if it's not very strenuous) so maybe if I just sat at a desk all day it would be a lot worse.

I went to a sleep specialist for delayed sleep disorder. He told me to take 1mg of melatonin about 6 hours before bed, and to wear sunglasses at night when around lights.

Have you tried taking melatonin an hour or so before your target sleep time? That's worked wonders for my family.

Michael Breus has a theory that different individuals tend to sleep/wake at different points in the day naturally.

So perhaps your natural rhythm is very late night bedtime and late morning wake time? Does make life in the standard 8-5 world difficult unfortunately.

EDIT: non-affiliate link to his book The Power of When https://www.amazon.com/Power-When-Discover-Chronotype-Lunch/...

When left without any external obligations even for a couple of days I seem to wake up and go to sleep later and later each day. My rhythm doesn't settle on any fixed 24-hour period. Is something similar to this discussed in the book?

Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome

Seems increasingly common with our modern lifestyle.

http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/delayed-sleep-...

I have the same issue. I progressively sleep and wake later and later until I wake up around 1pm. I then force myself to reset my cycle and go to sleep before 2am.

I work from home and I have a lot of flexibility since I live in a different timezone from my clients so I make that work but it is frustrating for my wife. Workouts don't really seem to help much, melatonin seems to improve things slightly.

I wish I could just reset it and go to sleep earlier like that. I'll either just lay in bed wide awake or fall asleep for an hour or two and then not be able to sleep again for the next several hours.

Sometimes my clock gets so out of phase that I'll fall a sleep at around 10AM and sleep until 19PM or so. It's pretty tough to go back to regular schedule after that, heh.

Oh I make it sound easy to reset in my message but it's actually more akin to jetlag... I'm usually pretty much down for the count for 1-2 days

Have you tried strictly abstaining from LCD / artificial light usage 4-5 hours before bedtime? Might easier trying this on vacation somewhere rural.

We know that blue light is a strong cue to your brain to keep delaying the clock -- perhaps your brain is unusually sensitive to it.

Not the person you asked, but my experience was the same before I had any LCD's or smartphones. I did have artificial lighting of incandescent kind and CRT monitor.

CRT would have the same effect

I use flux which does restrict somewhat the amount of blue light I have.

I do tend to work late at night because of timezone differences between me and my clients.

One thing you could try is safety goggles that block UV:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000USRG90

My experience with flux was that the screen still gave off enough blue light that it didn't make much of a difference for me.

Good idea, I'll try that

The poster probably is: I'm much the same way.

Low functioning on little sleep, but a good night or two and I'm up at 1am.

Right now, I simply sleep when I'm tired and waking when I please most days. I generally sleep from about 4am to noon, approximately. Additionally, sleeping later in the day produces a better sleep. I sporadically sleep through alarms and loud noises.

It does make the normal 8-5 world more difficult to deal with.

Sounds like you could have delayed sleep phase disorder/syndrome. It's just having a delayed circadian rhythm - not really a disorder except that it's hard to fit in with 'normal' schedules.

I have a lot of issues with this (my circadian rhythm delay is pretty bad). My employer tolerates me coming in at 10am but even then I'm still suffering symptoms of sleep deprivation pretty constantly and don't feel like I can survive without sleeping in to midday on Saturdays and Sundays...

It's a frustrating condition to have, because while research into circadian rhythms has generally found that you can't fight against your natural sleep cycle long-term without experiencing sleep deprivation, pretty much everyone who has a normal cycle will tell you that you just have to "be more disiplined", "just wake up the same time every day and you'll get into a better routine", etc. Even most GPs I've talked to aren't up-to-date with the latest research and it's been really hard to convince them to refer me to a sleep specialist! It's also especially bad at work, because management tend to be older (sleep cycles are usually at peak delay during adolescence, and then shift earlier as you age) and seem to have an impressive ability to not understand the condition. But if the science is to be believed, what people tell me is about as effective as telling a severely clinically depressed person to "just be happier."

But even for people with more normal (average) cycles, one sleep scientist has suggested [1] that work shouldn't start until 10am, which would make people more productive and more alert.

1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/staff-should-s...

> pretty much everyone who has a normal cycle will tell you that you just have to "be more disciplined", "just wake up the same time every day and you'll get into a better routine", etc

I feel your pain. Been there many times. The way I solved it was to become the boss.

Daywalkers will never understand. Even if you're an owl rather than a lark it's looked down upon - and the standard trope of "you're just lazy" come out; but delayed sleep phase syndrome where it's possible to go in and out of sync with the day is a real killer for the regular office hours.

I now get significantly more work done than at any time in my career because I sleep and awake when I want. Of course occasionally I need to be in-sync with someone (meetings, etc.). But it's relatively easy to have a few things to get in-sync with if I get good sleep the rest of the time.

This many times over. I don't have problems with adapting ot new time zones. But it is difficult to get on a "standard awake/sleeping" schedule. It's not for a lack of trying.

I had this exact situation and it became much worse when I was working at a job I hated and had trouble dragging myself into at the best of times. My spouse has a very good bedtime routine and forcing myself to at least follow that along with her helped, though I still have trouble getting to sleep as easily as she does.

I don't think there is any one thing that helped me come out of it either. A few large changes, like a better job, and some moves like limiting caffeine intake after 3PM or so helped. I feel like it's stress, plus being a night owl to begin with, and maybe a light sleeper as well.

I used to have the same problems as you, the exact same problems as you just described. I mean this without malice, are you sure you haven't diagnosed yourself with something funky when you're actually just bad at preparing for sleep?

Using f.lux, exercising, no caffeine past 5 and establishing proper sleep hygiene fixed it for me, but it took me till my 30s to figure it out. Drinking alcohol seems to be very expensive on sleep cycles. With exercise I also found I needed to do it before 8pm or I would often still be very awake. The other thing is meditation to calm yourself down, I found that sometimes I would be breathing very fast when lying in bed, turns out I was wired still.

And when I slip, I'm back to finding it harder to get to bed on time, 12:30, 1am, 1:30am, 2am, problems start with getting to work on time. Having to catch up at the weekends, sleeping till 12. Finding it incredibly hard to get going on Mondays.

I also found when I had slipped with correct bedtime, melatonin helped me reset my sleep clock back to midnight. Taking it just one or two nights 45 mins before bedtime, will help me get back to bed at a right time. Apparantly the standard dose is 10x what you actually need (300 micro-g is enough, rather than 300 mg). I only use it once every few months.

> Drinking alcohol seems to be very expensive on sleep cycles.

I've heard that as it wears off there's a "rebound" effect, so that alcohol now means being more wakeful X hours later. I've never really been (or wanted to be) drunk enough to know for sure.

The biggest issue is when you stop drinking, sleep is terrible for few days. I found that valerian is helpful as it produces GABA chemotransmitter -- same thing that alcohol replaces.

Try implementing the tips in https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep

In a nutshell, with a bit of free running sleep you can readjust your cycle.

This is me as well. There is so much to do, see and make. Both workwise and a million odd projects outside of work.

A serious complication to the variable length of sleep is that when you get a bad back after sitting for 20 years, you can't catch up on sleep anymore as the back hurts after X hours in bed anyway.

Mentioning lack of dreams is on point. As a student I would do at least 1-2 all nighters (~36+ hours without sleep) a week. In the rest of the week I would probably be partying. In hindsight, it was pretty stupid as I was incredibly inefficient at everything, my health was poor and I was cognizant that my mood would get depressive the more sleep deprived I got.

One of my benchmarks of my tiredness, and conversely how rested I was, was if I was having dreams. When I was exhausted, sleep would be pure black abyss and the time between sleep and awakening could have been the blink of an eye for all I knew. When I was sleeping reasonably (~6.5+ hours) I would start to dream again after a few days.

I take things a bit easier now, it's much easier to resist distractions like Facebook or the news when I'm rested than when I'm extremely exhausted.

Heavens knows what happens during parenthood and you simply have no choice, presumably there must be some psychological instinct that takes over...

I used to have trouble sleeping as a kid, was always the last one wide awake at the sleepovers; always up at the end of a teenage conversation with a girlfriend noticing she had passed out like an hour earlier an hour later (maybe my convo was that boring).

After my first kid, I've had no problem at all catching and cherishing a nap. Dreams, I think, are the brains garbage collection mechanism. Without them, the system just grinds to a halt.

I sleep when tired and wake up when I wake up. I thought that would lead to 12 hour sleeps but I average on 6 per day. But I do sleep two times (at night 4 hrs and afternoon 2). I work best nighttime but Skype meetings are during the day so this works perfectly.

That dreams returning thing has a cool name too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REM_rebound

wow im going to name my band tha... damn..

It would be a good name for a tribute band.

> Also, having small children affect sleep although not directly

Hah. Haha. Hahahahahhahaa trails off

One of ours woke 4-6+ times per night, every night, for nearly a year straight. It's beyond just "affecting sleep" and well into Gitmo-style sleep deprivation.

I hope to see more and more of these studies.

I've always since I can remember struggled with sleep.

During the periods where I've had it under control everything is just better: your outlook is more positive, more energy, less anxiety, and on and on and on.

People say exercise should be put into a pill - I really wish they did this with sleep.

There are sleeping pills, everything from benadryl to xanax to ambien. It's just that there are a lot of side effects to any of these approaches.

And they only help you get or stay asleep. The actual quality of your sleep can still be horrible. Like not breathing 40x a night like I just found out I do.

How did you get that diagnosed/discovered? If you don't mind me asking.

Sounds like sleep apnea[1], which is usually discovered by a sleep partner, would be diagnosed with a sleep study, and can often be treated with a CPAP[2] machine, it keeps your airways open while you sleep, which helps you breathe.

[1] https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sleepa... [2] continuous positive airway pressure

I'm late to this one, but the most common symptom is extreme sleepiness during the afternoons, even to the point of narcolepsy. It'll cause all kinds of havoc with your sleep routines.

I got suspicious after falling asleep at work a few times, just an unbearable sleepiness, like I had just taken Benadryl and some vodka. Turns out I had sleep apnea to the tune of 61 events/HOUR.

Pretty much what these two posters said. Extremely tired all the time no matter the amount of sleep, went in for a sleep study and discovered I never fully entered deep REM so my brain was never fully rested. Got the Rx for the CPAP but haven't received it yet.

Thats a lot.

I think his comment was more about the idealism of the idea rather than the practicality.

Melatonin is at least natural, don't know if there are many studies on it though.

Co-Q-10 in the a.m. -- either by itself or paired with melatonin at night -- is probably a better solution.

I tried Melatonin during a heavy travel stressful period doing interviews.

Getting back off it and falling asleep naturally was not easy for me.

I think conventional dosages may be a bit extreme at 3-5 milligrams.

I agree on the dosages sold being too high. I'm a terrible sleeper that wakes up all through the night. I've found taking a fraction, between an eighth and quarter, of the 3mg pills is enough for me to sleep and wake up refreshed.

Also I've found sleeping at least 7-8 hours is necessary while taking it. Any less and I feel groggy all morning.

Studies tend to say that any more than 3mg of melatonin, your body will just evacuate it. Also, taking it more than 5 days is most likely pointless.

I can tell you with personal experience that this is not true. I have taken 30-40mg before bed, and there is a definite difference in my experience from taking 1-5mg. The sleepiness I felt 30-45 minutes after dosing was the most extreme sleepiness I've ever experienced in my life, the dreams are mind-blowing, and I feel tired the next day far beyond what I feel after taking a smaller dose.

Thanks for your personal experience but I was talking about scientific studies [1].

- [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12076414

- [2] (a narrow google search that i'm sure i could find more) - https://www.google.com/#q=melatonin+dosage+site:.gov+OR+site...

I don't see anything in that study about excess melatonin being evacuated. The paper only talks about effectiveness as a sleep aid.

Under the main results section "Daily doses of melatonin between 0.5 and 5mg are similarly effective, except that people fall asleep faster and sleep better after 5mg than 0.5mg. Doses above 5mg appear to be no more effective." [1, from parent comment]

Upon further research with the link I provided. It seems that for older people dosage levels should be introduced small and then increased, this study talks about the effectiveness of 50mg in older patients [1]

[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24802882

I don't see anything in your comment about excess melatonin being evacuated.

Could it be a placebo effect? If you were to randomly take either 5 mg or 40 mg would you notice the difference?

I did not do a double-blinded experiment, so I suppose I can't conclusively rule out a placebo effect. All I can say is that the effect is extremely unsubtle. 40mg of melatonin is a lot. It was a bad time in my life when I chose to do that, and I have no intention to repeat the experiment.

"Sleep in a pill", to me, would be something that gives you the effects of having slept without sleeping, not something that makes you sleep.

That might be modafinil, but again it comes with side effects and probably doesn't address the core issue

Maybe I'm still not being clear. I don't think people mean "the effects of having slept" in a symptomatic sense, either (alertness, etc.)

Rather, what people want is "the effects of having slept" in a physiological sense: a pill that rapidly sweeps the same toxins out of your body that sleep does gradually. Taking such a pill would have all the same long-term benefits that a healthy sleep schedule would have.

Of course, a "pill" that did this properly would likely have to contain something like complex organic-waste-molecule-chellating molecules, or perhaps even biofilm-scrubbing nanomachines. :)

A negentropy pill; the holy grail, the philosopher's stone

DARPA used to work on something like that for the US Army.

IDK about any results yet.

you still get psychosis after not sleeping for a few days, just like with amphetamine IIRC.

the brain needs sleep, we aren't sure why, but stimulant psychosis does a pretty good job of proving that you start to break down after depriving yourself of sleep. paranoia, hallucinations, etc are all very common with this kind of stimulant abuse where you're keeping your body awake for days at a time.

generally speaking, if you use stimulants (or "wakefulness promoting agents" like modafinil) regularly you should be dosing first thing in the morning after feeding yourself, not re-dosing, eating what you can when you can and sleeping each night as much as possible.

Exercise and quality of sleep are related. Timing exercise to the right time in afternoon can improve your sleep considerably

That's tough, given a lot of people work 9-5. Easier to time your exercise before or after that.

I wish Americans as a whole took sleep more seriously.

We stay up late, brag about how little of it we need, and ignore the downsides. When I sleep less I find myself more irritable.

To see studies like this is refreshing.

This is America, where we ask strangers, "So, what do you do for a living?" as an opening question because income generation is the most important thing about a person in the USA.

Or, more charitably, because we're interested in what it it they actually do, as opposed to the income itself. There is an issue with conflating work and what's the most important defining characteristic of a person, but I don't think it has to do with income in general.

We don't ask that question though. That could be covered by "So, what are you interested in?" and if it happens to overlap employment, you find out just the same.

We ask what people do because everybody does something, while only a fraction of people have hobbies. (Hobbies include people whose work is their hobby, and exclude people who happen to care deeply about more private, or at least bigger-than-smalltalk things.)

Strange that more people have jobs than hobbies...

Why is it strange? What do you draw from that? Why do you think that is? Please add something more substantial than an open-ended possibly deep question with trailing ellipses.

I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't have some sort of hobby. You seem to be excluding a lot of things with those qualifiers.

That's not at all why we do that.. It's just to find out things about a person if you have no information, so you can find something to talk about.

You miss the point. The fact that you start by asking that question first, instead of say "what do you love doing" or "where do you live" says a lot about culture.

Those other questions are too intimate for a conversation starter.

"Too intimate" as defined by our culture.

No, I don't miss the point. It would very weird in all the cultures I'm part of to ask those questions first, not because anyone cares about money, but because those are too specific and would weird the other person out.

Northern European here:

I'd also find it a bit weird (edit: or awkward) if someone started by asking what I love to do:

Is this a salesman or a recruiter?

Maybe a teacher?

And what should I answer that wouldn't be weird? "Volunteering for Troll patrol at Internet forums"?, "Writing Java"?, "Sleeping"?

> And what should I answer that wouldn't be weird? "Volunteering for Troll patrol at Internet forums"?, "Writing Java"?, "Sleeping"?

Honestly the weirder the better. Its a great icebreaker.

“Where do you live” seems like an even less interesting question.

Well, if you don't spend the most hours of your day at work, you spend them sleeping. And it would be pretty dull to ask someone "how do you spend most of your time?" and they said "sleeping". In fact, it would sound rude and dismissive.

What else? Oh, I'm married. Cool. I live in a house. Yeah. Exciting.

Just say you freelance.

"How do you spend your time" is a better question.

Why not go straight to it? "So, how do you sell your labor?"

If you're an adult more often than not, you'll be trading your time for income. Therefore this is a safe comparatively in offensive question to start a conversation. Given a working person spends around half their waking hours working, many will opt to choose something interesting to them. Whether it's the culture, the vision or the nature of the work it can lead onto more interesting topics of conversation.

It's a lazy one, but so is remarking about the weather or mentioning something about current affairs.

We also make small talk about the weather, even though nobody really gives a shit what anyone else thinks about the weather. And we ask how people are doing, even if we don't care.

I don't think "how people talk to strangers" is a representation of what people in the culture care about.

I always ask that because I find it correlates with their personality

Melatonin is naturally occurring and works wonderfully for me. After popping 3mg, I'm out after an hour.

Worth a shot, if anything.

Supplementing with Melatonin can cause your body to down regulate natural Melatonin production, so coming off of it can be troublesome or cause insomnia in some people. Another way to shift your circadian rhythm without the rebound effect is to use SAD lamps or gadgets like the humancharger which work with photoreceptors in your ear.

I wish having healthy sleep became vogue. Imagine people humble-bragging about the quality of their dreams, about sleeping 8 hours or more, having enough self-discipline to routinely go to bed by 10:30pm, etc. Imagine sleep, it's quality, the freshness of body and mind it gives, became a subject of conspicuous consumption, a symbol of higher status. "I work smarter, not harder", etc.

Dies not sound implausible to me.

Dude, I'm in bed right now (9:30pm). After I'm done typing this out I'll read my book for a bit and go to sleep. I'll prob get up around 6am with 7.5 - 8 hours of sleep, work out, and be at my desk by 9.

I bootstrapped my business and I work 8-10 hour days. I wasn't always this way. Getting on a healthy sleep and exercise schedule is the best thing I've ever done.

The hardest part is, right, rejecting the SV mantra that you need to work every waking hour and drink Soylent if you wanna be successful.

As they say, it's a marathon.

I like seeing this, but: "Correlation does not prove causation."

I have a serious, incurable medical condition. Getting healthier has dramatically improved my ability to sleep. So, while lack of sleep may well cause health problems, that relationship can run the other direction. I see nothing in this piece which addresses that possibility.

This is my concern as well. Already this thread is full of "duh" comments and I seriously doubt the issue is this cut and dry.

As someone else with a condition that affects sleep, I think it is safe to say there is a chicken and egg problem with these studies that has not been resolved, at least in many cases.

Most of mind-body connections go both ways. Do one and the other factor will improve. Improve the other factor and first will get better. It's almost never a one-way connection.

It's always interesting to see things that everyone knows, turn out to be things that we don't actually formally know yet.

Or most notably, just kind of ignore - I know some of the things I do are bad for me, but I do them anyways...

I keep telling people it's making them sick to only sleep 4 hours a night and they keep telling me that "It's just how I am". No, it's not. It's how you've forced your body to behave after years of staying up too late and drinking coffee too late and drinking alcohol and not caring about sleep. It's not normal. It's not "how you are". You're not "totally fine" on 4 hours of sleep. You are fooling yourself.

There's a DEC2 mutation, possibly others, that let some people only sleep 4 hours and function fine. Maybe not all of these people, but I bet some of them have some sort of mutation on DEC2.

True for less than 1% of the population.

Nice to see a well done twin study here, but I'm guessing this was conventional wisdom for most.

Sorry, but, this required a new study? Sleep is the most consistent way of preventing, and curing ailments. At even the slightest hint of feeling run down, I'll go to bed extra early.

Considering how little concern people put into it (eg: how difficult it is to handle disruptive neighbors at night, how little concern is put about noise near residential areas, etc), we sure as hell need more of those studies.

Because as of right now, nobody cares.

Handling disruptive neighbors at night is easy, I just call the police. Has worked every time.

In my area, you're allowed to have the police called on you three times in a night before anything is done about it. And my brother in some suburb in Miami, he can call the police as much as he wants and nothing will be done about it unless the disruptive neighbor goes over the decibel limit or shows aggressive behavior. He ended up having to move out of that neighborhood since he had a belligerent neighbor that would drink beer, rev his bike, and blast metal every other night while still technically abiding by the laws.

That's unfortunate. I'm in the burbs of upstate New York. They arrive in about fifteen minutes.

I have chronic anxiety. Last year I moved to a new apartment and—more importantly—to a quiet side street. My old apartment was right on the busiest road in town.

After a few days of adjusting to the new noises, my quality of sleep dramatically improved and my anxiety attacks became less frequent and less severe. Not eliminated but much more manageable.

The importance of quality sleep is vastly underestimated.

(Data is not the plural of anecdote blah blah blah).

I sleep with an eye mask and ear plugs every night. Once you're used to that, it's pretty hard to fall asleep without them.

Yeah, something similar - started sleeping next to an air purifier (white noise) and pulling a 2nd pillow on top of my head for additional random noise suppression. I struggle to sleep without this, unless I'm wrecked with exhaustion from exercise.

Wish I had thought of the 2nd pillow in my younger years..

Yes. It's generally important to study these things, because anecdotes aren't really that valuable on a large scale.

I'm not sure getting more sleep makes you feel better, is in any way anecdotal, after a few hundred thousand years of trials.

It's absolutely anecdotal. It doesn't stop being anecdotal just because there are a lot of anecdotes!

whule it's generally obvious that sleep makes you feel better, what's less obvious is that sleep deprivation an reduce immune activity when other factors are accounted for. Now we know, and that's good!

> Sorry, but, this required a new study?

Yes, it requires study, unless all of this is obvious to you:

"The twin cohort displayed distinctive pathway enrichment based on sleep duration differences. Habitual short sleep was associated with up-regulation of genes involved in transcription, ribosome, translation, and oxidative phosphorylation. Unexpectedly, genes down-regulated in short sleep twins were highly enriched in immuno-inflammatory pathways such as interleukin signaling and leukocyte activation, as well as developmental programs, coagulation cascade, and cell adhesion."

My mother used to tell me that all the time while growing up.

Even if that is obvious to you somehow, it still needs a study. A lot of "obvious" ideas have been overturned when put under experiment.

The result might be obvious, but they're trying to figure out the mechanism by which sleep improves health, which is not obvious at all.

There's a big difference between resting equaling faster healing than not resting enough and everyday sleep quality affecting the everyday immune system functions. Anecdotes aren't science.

I sleep 8 hours and wake up automatically. If I get 6 or less, it feels like a bus hit me.

The article does not mention if they actually showed causality. What if there is a third variable (coffee, acquired virus, anxiety, lack of exercise) that simultaneously causes lack of sleep and a depressed immune system? The cause could even be the other way around - I know I don't sleep well when I'm feeling sick.

When you show a correlation like this, you can still take action.

Even without knowing the underlying reasons behind the issue, you can at least diagnose based on the easily visible corrleated event----sleep depravation is much easier to test for than the comorbid immune supression.

ha I could attest to that.

I also used to experience those sleep-paralysis events Jesus those were terrifying. Thankfully I have not had that in a long time.

But yeah, sleep is good. My body feels sore all over when not sleeping for a long time, get sick easier, can't even watch tv or do anything, you just hate yourself hahaha or briefly go delirious then go back to hating your current situation, can't enjoy anything.

Anecdote: I used to sleep about 8 hours a day, but then had a long period of anxiety and depression that caused me to average about 4 hours sleep a day. This lasted for about 9 months, maybe more. During this time my brain was on constant overdrive, thinking about everything all the time, for most of that time I didn't notice any loss in alertness or clarity. I was particularly anxious about my friends and was out seeing different friends about 13 nights a fortnight. I was probably getting drunk about 3 nights a week. When I get depressed I don't really eat much, and I lost about 17% of my body weight. It was terrible, but in all this time I never got ill at all, not even a mild cold or cough. I missed the whole of winter 2015/2016 cold season, and I've got ill at least twice a year in winter for as long as I can remember. I am even ill now!

I was speculating the other day with a friend as to why this might be. I suggested that because I wasn't looking after my house I was pretty much sleeping in mould and I have heard anecdotally that that can have antibiotics that may have had an affect. He suggested that in extreme stress your body is less likely to overreact to a mild infection, and so maybe any infections may have much less obvious symptoms.

I'm pretty much better now and am attempting to sleep 7h30 a day, but it really does feel like a waste of time.

It's fascinating to think of a counterfactual world where humans don't need sleep -- sometimes I wonder how much more could be done. Sleep seems to be a biological constraint that could be optimized around.

Its something i've put thought into and it seems that it would be a truly incredible advantage to any species to remove it, so there must be some fundamental reason that is preferable than having almost twice as much time in the day. I believe that the primary function of sleep is that it is an inexorable part of learning, but more studies are required in this area

gotta get good sleep.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com