Can sleep deprivation cure depression?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I've always had very bad issues sleeping and waking "on time." In school this led to me regularly missing class and eventually dropping school entirely, and with regular work schedules I hardly ever got good sleep.
A little while ago, I made a commitment to myself to sleep when I was tired and to get up when I was rested. I eased into a schedule where every day I got up and went to bed about an hour later every day.
This has been my schedule for the past 9 months or so. I sleep 8 to 10 hours per night. Every night I go to bed about an hour later than the night before. My schedule rotates about 6-8 hours per week, and about 12-14 hours every two weeks, meaning I do a complete rotation about once a month.
During this time I've been vastly more productive and happy, I've had many fewer emotional swings toward anger or sadness, and I'm much more calm and less anxious in general.
My sleep schedule is easy to adhere to and self-corrects if I ever need to be up early/late or at a certain time. I even have an easier time making scheduled meeting times because I'm rested enough to be able to get up early when I need to.
Interestingly, I'm consistently well-rested and alert with my schedule despite having zero dependence on the natural sunlight cycle. I think this is because sunlight has a much smaller effect on me in the morning than computer light does in the evening.
With 9 months of data, how consistently do you shift your schedule by 1 hour each day? I'd imagine there are fluctuations, but I guess if it's reliable you could schedule things on certain days.
Things like going to the store I can do any time of day, pretty much. With things like doctor visits or work meetings that happen in the daytime, I'll stay up late or get up early as necessary. I can usually get back "on schedule" very easily just by going to sleep when I feel tired and getting up when I'm rested. I'll usually go to bed and get up close to when I usually do because of where my circadian rhythm is, and even if my schedule moves a few hours one way or another, that doesn't have a detrimental effect because I'm so used to the lifestyle.
It's pretty consistent. I used to track it on a sleep app but I've gotten out of the habit (it's not been necessary). I don't think there's been a month recently where I haven't completed a full rotation. Back when I was tracking data, I have graphs of my sleep schedule making a diagonal pattern across the month. It's very reliable.
Use this to workout: https://youtu.be/_frdLp5LHng
Have a nice Day!
Think: https://youtu.be/-rd24yXC8Jk
In a way though I wish my natural cycle was closer to the typical 9-5. I found it easy to be isolated or depressed on the days when your waking life is so different than everyone elses.
I recommend finding some Discord or IRC servers with like-minded individuals that may operate in other timezones, if that interests you. It's always the middle of the day somewhere, and I find that just having that communication available—even if I'm not looking at it or using it—really helps me feel connected and not so isolated.
Funny there is a whole world of us out there.
It's possible to communicate this with new clients and set expectations for availability and productive hours, but it obviously wouldn't work for every client or every kind of work. I'd set the expectation from the beginning—this is how I work, and this is how I'll ensure that communication does not break down on weeks when I'm keeping odd hours. If the client is happy with the flow of communication and the work, it shouldn't matter what time of day you're working.
I'm even interested in exploring what kind of opportunities this opens up that normally would not be available, like doing contract work for multi-national companies or finding international clients. It's not something I've looked into much but I'm very interested in.
When it comes to making your own work hours or keeping an unconventional sleep schedule, a lot of people don't have well-formed thoughts or reactions to this (it's pretty uncommon).
In my experience, as a first reaction it is characterized as an extreme version of "staying up late and sleeping through the alarm." Obviously there's a lot of stigma there. Some people will be able to get past this, and some people won't.
I'm perfectly okay keeping this rotating schedule with a partner on a regular schedule, but I can absolutely see how somebody would not be happy with this.
One interesting thing is that my sleep cycle is as fundamental to me as day/night is to folks on a regular schedule. I would say understanding this and being empathetic is essential, and it's probably best if your partner is not just understanding but also appreciative.
My close friends and family range from understanding to appreciative, and I've not had any issues staying in touch or staying friends with these people. They're also willing to compromise and work with me to accommodate my schedule because they understand that it's a very regular and deliberate part of my life.
I had a partner that was very disapproving of me staying up past their sleep time and sleeping through their free hours on occasion, and there was no chance of it working out.
My sleep pattern when I'm in nature with no artificial light is very different than at home with lights + screens. In nature I wake up much earlier and my sleep patterns tend to align themselves with the solar day. At home it's a lot less aligned with the solar day and more impacted by having lights and screens on.
For me getting proper sleep is also very important. I don't get it how some people seem to be able to function well with a lot less sleep and alarm clocks ;) I think they are just in some sort of perpetual sleep deprivation mode.
Do you get jetlag?
I've tried to keep myself on a regular daytime schedule using sunlight but I found myself unable to go to bed and get up at regular times. Even with less natural sunlight, I'm consistently more rested and alert now than when I got sunlight. Even taking melatonin at night and setting numerous alarms, it was a constant, taxing struggle.
When I'm up nights I'll leave the lights on in my room to help regulate and to help me feel awake. I'm also very very consistent with my caffeine intake (same amount every day, at the same time relative to when I wake and sleep).
Regarding jetlag, I haven't traveled recently or had such drastic changes of schedule that would interrupt my circadian rhythm enough to be of any detriment.
I also want to look into this and see what other people's experiences have been like.
I sometimes wonder if it'd just sort itself out if I quit caffeine completely, and stopped staring at a screen all day... but that's not exactly compatible with my career.
I'm seriously considering to go freelance just for the hours.
Edit: I've been doing this for decades.
28-Hour Day: https://xkcd.com/320/
What kind of latitude do you live at? I wonder if the schedule you're describing would be worse in the summer or in the winter.
>>
Over the first two years, 25 subjects stayed in the bunker and were monitored. The researchers noted that the majority of them woke up slightly later every day.
Their average days were no longer 24 hours, but soon lengthened to between 24.7 and 25.2 hours.
However, this length then remained constant, and their bodily functions basically followed this new rhythm.
As this rhythm does not correspond to conventional day and night, it is called the circadian rhythm (lat. circa = approximate, dies = day).
<<
courtesy of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology
But I recently read an interesting article about vitamin D and that lead me to supplement magnesium and vitamins D, A and K. I only do it once every three days to be conservative.
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/stop-vitamin-d
I also recently changed my evening routine during the week, cutting out TV and stopped eating chips after dinner.
For the morning and the evening changes, I devised a routine of things I do that make doing the hard parts easier. In the morning, I turn the light on, use the restroom, drink some water, set a timer for ten minutes, relax until it goes off, exercise, shower, dress and get out the door. I try to stick to this every day.
>last December I became a morning person using early morning light and exercise //
Where do you live that gets light on December mornings?
It could just be that stretchwithme just turns on all the lights, etc. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I know all about waking up and leaving in the dark and coming home to the dark in the winter time.
I do a similar thing in the mornings, though I didn't ever consciously decide to be a morning person. I go to bed at pretty normal times between 9 and 10PM most nights. If I wake up any time before 1:30 or 2AM and keep all the nights off and fumble through the dark I'll be able to get back to sleep no problem. If I have to flip on a light it will take me much longer to get back to sleep.
If it's after about 2:30 or 3:00AM, there's no way I'm going back to bed- and I'm going to be supplementing with copious amounts of coffee to keep my face from dragging on the floor all day.
After about 4:00, I'm fine. Without an alarm I usually start waking up a little after 4:00 and my routine usually has me out of the house about 30 minutes from deciding to get out of bed.
The first thing I do is review my To Do list for the day on my phone. 2 reasons: 1) I start crunching on it in my head as I'm going about the morning routine, and 2) the blast of light (even w/ night mode still on) is like a jolt to get me moving when it's otherwise pitch black.
You can even go back to sleep after ten minutes and your circadian rhythm will start making you feel like going to bed earlier. And you need to go to bed when you feel that effect.
Just kidding. I'm 53.
My bedroom gets light at 6 am when I wake up and turn on the light net to my bed. :-)
So I have an alarm that goes off then. You just need to keep your eyes open for several minutes for the cells in your eyes to recognize that there is enough light to start shifting your circadian rhythm.
It really works. Just be sure to stick with it.
And to go right back to it if you forget. Habits are everything and some habits have a lot more power than others.
I just wish there was a better way to figure out your deficiency than just popping some pills and wait to see what happens. A weekly blood test for vitamin levels combined with mood and health journaling would probably give me the kind of data I'm looking for, but that only seems to be available in science fiction so far.
That's exactly it. A given drug may be one person's savior and another person's nightmare. It's extremely complex. To get just a hint of what may be going on, check out Scott's article on ANTIDEPRESSANT PHARMACOGENOMICS [0].
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/06/antidepressant-pharmac...
It's quite likely that there are many subtypes of that, depending on which pathways are broken, but we aren't good enough yet to figure out the details.
If you have a car with a locked hood, there is not much you can do but hit it in various places and hope it works.
Some people are trying to unlock the hood, and one day they surely will succeed. But for now, all we're left with is listening carefully and trying from the safest to the craziest options.
In any case, make sure your doc presents upfront an analytical approach to curing your illness. Don't let them just do what they think is right because you're likely to end up in a maze.
by "acute and chronic" relating to my experience, I intend this to mean long term and severe, but also "narrow basis" and severe and recurring. I know I am overloading a operator somewhere here... [ inline footnote for reading meter]
If cancer is many kinds, it is a a disease in the sense that it is systemic, and can be cured, in theory, by medicine.*
In the similar way, depression is a very wide and complex range of similar things, but the systemic nature is less definable, we only have systemic symptoms, do we not? I mean is my supposition accurate medically?
By systemic I mean depression is a malfunction of systems, interacting, that we can define as alien,unwanted, interactions of our body and brain chemistry (for surely depression can affect the entire being, and so we find things like magnesium, or sunlight or better diet help, if not resolve)
But the conditions which can cause my depression, are emotional or circumstantial even, very much more than environmental or physical health.
(I learned this after too many years had passed, I was made to be unaware, unpleasantly made to be unaware, of a infant trauma i endured amazingly well, but which sank triggers deep into my psyche)
Luckily - if by luckily you understand at enormous human cost* - I got through most of my younger years without resort to clinical medical intervention, such as by medication regimes, and I curl up in a fetal ball every time I hear even reference to another lamentable saga of medication experimentation (by the doctors, not patients) endured along the way to a viable life, so common among programmers.
My question whether "disease" is first of all the appropriate word to describe depression, must come with a sister question: if disease is not a universally sound description of depression, is it so in some cases, even edge cases, and if we have stretched the definition, is there a underlying argument for why we stretched the definition, other than those afflicted so often feel accursed and afflicted as if by terminal disease?
It seems to me, that because depression is a vital and axial point of interaction between brain, mind systems (reflexive brain body interfaces, e.g. exercise benefits almost always functioning) and body, is therefore a better taxonomy not necessary?
The best description I ever heard, of the DSM, is that with only the effort of observation and tedious reference, you could probably diagnose any child with all the pediatric diagnoses therein contained. Whether strictly true or not, and I wish I could recall to whom that quip is attributable, but a Psychiatric doctor 5 , that certainly ought to strike home with anyone old enough ever to have had the pangs of wanting a family.
I suggest that the computing community, is uniquely positioned, to develop a better and more innately intelligent, taxonomy, of psychiatric "disease" (if it must be so called) and that it might be right to "reclaim" a important but seriously, gravely, and frequently abused "discipline" from a profession almost a industry of commercial practitioners.
* years and years after i learned what "survival rate" for cancer really means, I am still aghast that such a blatant semantic spin could be applied to something s incredibly important. The very idea that a huge, industrial scale, hard science in modern medicine, would willingly supplicate to acceptance of language so distorting, and liable to distort perception, remains beyond me, a assault on the senses I first gained benefit my first and earliest exposure to science as a discipline.
* Beyond me, the personal devastation to loved ones, to anyone who cared for me, ever, was appalling. For only myself, I elected to end up in prison, rather than risk being committed, which would have created a probably fatal misdiagnosis that freezes me, i feel nauseous just saying this.. these people play with lives... in prison, i only found about two thirds were dumped there who probably should have been in hospital for mental health problems, and did some amateur lawyering, of which I am intensely proud, and one day want to figure out a way to encourage like efforts, because it sure ain't hard, law, only getting any legal system or judge to understand the black and white ink on paper thing, is actually hard.
* I think many of us seek the rationale and intellectual uterine safety of computing, the warm appreciation of rationality and consistency that in particular low level programming can provide. My earliest observation of a sales floor, was that mental health must be inversely proportional to the immediately available intellectual structures, and that the semantic playfulness, to be polite, of my company's sales outfit, was the obvious explanation for whiskey under desks, and regular delivery of marching powders. Sometimes this drives the more creative to create enormous works, of varying success, in creating reflexive, consistent, homogeneous systems. At least I thought that efforts such as CLOS, C++ templates, were efforts at including the world, by type inheritance, and therefore insuring a hermetic and therefore emotionally safe, environment in the editor. (But then I purchased Design Patterns, when it came out, hardback, and loved it... but i knew i may have projected this thought onto it, as much as it may be a projection now, and by no means should I expect to be able to apply my own self meta cognition into the world, not before some very careful type definition, anyhow...
*5 two school friends attained giddying heights, one Royal Colldge Psychiatry and General Medical Council (one of the boards anyway), the other a worldwide veep for a major pharma, having a psycho-pharma career taking him to that position. Neither will;speak of their experiences, both quit from such great heights, i sense about the moment their family was financially secure. One works with startups now, and I wish I could give my bottom of lunch box adoring endorsement, but both are privacy intense, for indisputably valid, obvious, reasons..
The culture of hacker news-type thinking can be very toxic and lead to such thoughts as "I just wish there was a better way to figure out your deficiency than just popping some pills and wait to see what happens. A weekly blood test for vitamin levels combined with mood and health journaling would probably give me the kind of data I'm looking for, but that only seems to be available in science fiction so far."
Notice how you are trying to find a solution based around technology. Why does the solution have to involve technology? I think hanging around on forums like this, or with engineers to often can blind us to solutions which don't require engineering.
If all we have is hammer then nails nails everywhere!!
We're all guilty of it. Let's just be aware of it when it happens and move on.
Ready for the solution? It's very simple but tough to follow through with : Radically Change your diet.
Eat plants mostly, eat within a time window (don't allow yourself to oversnack, etc.), don't eat shit, not even a little bit, cut it out 100%. Be extreme, this is the experimentation phase. Later you can be less extreme, but let's see how much a radical change to the diet will affect the body.
This isn't a guarantee to fix vitamin deficiencies, but I will gladly bet that it will sure help a hell of a lot.
Finally, I would like to add that another trap that we all fall into is trying to optimize a system by changing one thing at a time. Firstly, this doesn't actually work. Secondly, this is extremely slooooowww.
If we want to experience change fast we have to be radical about changing our habits. If I am experimenting with anything in my life it's a good idea to try all sorts of different stuff. Diversify my experiments. Explore. If you are having vitamin deficiency issues and are not setting yourself up to be in the position to explore and experiment with diet, then you will have to wait for luck to come along before your issue can find itself a solution.
Again, hopefully I don't sound like an ass, I am just trying to help, given that I make the same mistake a lot in my own life, and have screwed myself over too much to not try and speak up a bit on the subject.
Feel free to be angry with me :) :(
> Why does the solution have to involve technology?
Because technology has the potential to be more powerful than other solutions.
Your suggestion, and the direction of your post in general, sounds like moralism. Moralistic suggestions have more to do with virtue and privilege signaling than actual results. I am generally extremely suspicious of any advice that comes from a moralistic angle because it's noisy and mostly driven by logic in the nature of "bad things don't happen to people who live correctly".
Unsurprisingly, the suggestion misses the fact that eating plants is not going to address something like a Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D deficiencies, as far as we currently know, are caused by lack of sunlight and the use of sunscreen.
I'd like to think that society as a whole has moved on from your mindset about a century ago. We're past meaningless non-statements like 'this isn't guaranteed to solve the issue but I bet it will help a lot'.
You have no idea who I am. I could be a pretty smart guy for all you know.
History repeats itself because of people who think they are above it. What you say here worries me.
Be careful. You are a citizen of the echo chamber now.
Conversely, if you say you've got all the answers and everyone else just needs to reproduce your hard work, but you won't share your process or results, you can expect to antagonise people.
This applies throughout life and not just in "science".
Circadian rhythms are a thing, and eating within a time window may have a great effect for some people. I'm already very rigid with my eating patterns and I don't see that it adds any value except for giving me a headache if I happen to miss my window.
Eating mostly plants is probably a good idea, I know there's mountains of evidence backing it up. But every time I try it, I find it difficult to physically put enough food in my body to satisfy my energy needs. I have to spend so much time shopping, prepping, cooking, and planning - activities that I do not enjoy - that I end up less happy because I'm spending my time on something I don't want to do.
In addition to that, eating a lot of plant material gives you hella constipation. Believe me, I know. Maybe your body gets used to it after a while, but a month of asshole-tearing shits is enough to tell me that I need more meat and dairy in my diet. I lift - at least, when I'm able to eat enough calories to sustain the energy level I need to lift, I lift. That hasn't happened for a while because I'm trying to save up for something and be frugal, so I've been eating less meat and dairy to save money. As a result, I don't have enough energy to lift. There just aren't enough hours in the day to consume that many calories in beans.
There are counterarguments for all the points I've made, I know them all. But arguing the points is another example of the hackernews type toxic thinking. You don't need the counterarguments. You know that the changes you recommend work, because they worked for you.
Fair enough. But magnesium worked for me, and I didn't even have to give up meat. Chances are switching to a mostly-plants non-shit diet would have given me the same effect, but my way is soooo much easier. If all someone needs to not be depressed anymore is a vitamin, then damn, they need to know what that vitamin is. Because when you're depressed, healthy eating is really unlikely to happen. You NEED the shortcut.
Just turning on the light for a moment or looking at the time on your phone is not enough to stimulate the retinal ganglion cells. You have to keep your eyes open for several minutes.
If you consistently do this at a time before you would normally wake up, your clock shifts earlier. You'll wake up earlier even if you don't use an alarm. And you'll get sleepy earlier in the evening too.
Does that provide enough information?
I tried to avoid mega-dosing, so to ensure that I only supplement every third day. I was more concerned about any deficiencies.
And I went to Whole Foods because of that supplement scandal a couple of years ago. Whole Foods may charge a lot but is more trusted than GNC or Walmart, at least by me.
Here's what I use:
... if whatever you want hasn't been tested by labdoor yet: find the best form of whatever you're trying to take:
1. Vitamin K2 in the form of MK7 is a great form of Vitamin K.
2. Reputable brands otherwise (I avoid most drug store brands like CVS/Walgreens).
I thought this bit was neat. I'd heard that sleep deprivation can bring on a feeling of euphoria, and anecdotally, it has worked for me
What I've noticed is that without sleep, some of my abilities are stronger, but everything memory-related is much weaker. I notice everything extremely fast, think quickly and react much faster than normally. My focus is pretty crazy. But, I can't remember some things I know, and detailed memories of that day after a sleepless night are usually gone by the next day. I think it might be some sort of survival mode.
I mean lions literally because four-legged things with the big teeth were a driving force of our evolution for millions of years. Those instincts/traits are very much with us today.
Edit: what's the word for that state of mind, maybe frenzy?
I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but I think it's pretty safe to say there are bigger things contributing to "ravers" euphoria than sleep deprivation. Like the music, alcohol. Or in many popular European clubs, the recreational drugs.
That's not to say I'm suggesting people need to on something to be having a good time, but your "raver" example is a pretty poor one if it's not meant as a joke.
Most people there weren't sober. But who cares what adults get up to as long as they respect one another. :)
You also cannot understate just how significant the effect music has on one's mood. I'd wager that alone would have a more significant affect than sleep deprivation alone. Plus exercise releases endorphins too
So I really don't think raving is a good example here since there's a multitude of other significant and well studied effects also at play.
edit: And as a sibling comment mentioned, we do know that cognition suffers immensely when sleep-deprived.
'Distinct' you mean?
If only there was a way to get the euphoria without the reduction in function, huh?
Other sleep-related studies show things like decreasing REM sleep helps as well. Some psychiatric drugs already have this effect on people, in fact. Obviously, going without sleep is going to do this. Granted, this is all speculation from the bits I've read, but it would make sense - as well as why some folks find weed to help greatly: taken regularly, it often decreases dreaming.
I'd provide the link, but I can't remember where I read it. I've seen a few articles reporting on this particular thing.
This seems to be a well known phenomenon. There's a whole subreddit called 3am jokes (https://www.reddit.com/r/3amjokes/) for this.
Personal experience, caused an accident when I was 23 this way and learned an important lesson: don't drive without having rested.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genetic-mutation-...
It's anecdata and small sample size and other possible confounding variables, but I think there is a kernel of truth in there.
EDIT: I should clarify that this is nearly always the argument brought up against year round DST, so that children during winter go to school with sunlight in the morning.
I'd also much rather work 7-3 than 9-5.
I go even further with this and say the whole world should be on the same clock. Who cares if it says 03:00 when you eat dinner or 17:00 when you eat breakfast - and think how much easier it will be to plan anything that spans timezones!
If you say you were up at 3 am, I know that was very late, no matter where on the Earth you are referring to. I don't need to adjust my sense of time whenever I change timezones. 12 is always roughly the middle of the day no matter where you are.
I don't want to like DST because it seems so inelegant. But it does give people an extra hour of sunlight. And I think that is a very desirable thing. There are a lot of mental health benefits associated with outdoor activities and exposure to sunlight. I have personally noticed my mood is very affected by the weather and whether I'm in sunlight.
Unless you expect all the Auzzies to move to the night shift, it just becomes more of a pain in the ass. You still have to line the phase of the day and timezones help simplify that by doing the work upfront.
You could switch to only using UTC outright for all your planning today. But even if you do, you'll find there is still a translation step of figuring out that business hours at location X are Y-Z UTC. Timezones make juggling the offsets easier, and also give you a stronger ability to roughly predict someone's schedule (like what time the business day starts, or not planning something during their lunch) just based on geography.
That's just not how it works. it's much easier to have one entity say this is the time. having every business open up an hour earlier without some decree is not tenable because of tradition and change inertia.
the noon argument is not very compelling to me.
If it helps, don't think of clock as a measure of the sun. Think of it as a measure of humanity's daily cycle. 12:00 is the middle of most people's day. Even if that isn't necessarily when the sun is highest in the sky. It's nice to have everyone's cycle regulated to a single standard.
And what was going on before DST was invented? Chaos?
And where people ignore this idea? Is it chaos there?
That's what I mean. Imagine if business hours changed suddenly at a certain date instead of the clock itself changing. And every business had a different date, and some did change and some didn't, etc.
>And what was going on before DST was invented? Chaos? And where people ignore this idea? Is it chaos there?
To avoid the chaos, people didn't even try to do it. And they stayed on the same schedule year round. This means they lost an extra hour of sunlight for half the year. Which is a pretty undesirable outcome. Less time for outdoor activities, worse moods, increased depression, etc.
"Daylight-saving time is dumb and we should get rid of it"
In this case, it'll be somewhat obvious who slept and who did not. There simply isn't a way to fake that. But we can compare the results of different types of sleep.
edit: 8 quality hours of sleep, e.g. you wake up and you're not tired.
I'd imagine that self-medicating with lots of caffeine is a pretty natural response for most people in that situation even though it doesn't actually solve the problem.
Yeah, that's the important part. I can sleep 10 hours and seem to get nothing out of it and still need coffee. And the coffee may be part of why I'm also not sleeping well. Not a good loop to be in.
I need 10 hours of sleep and coffee in order to function.
Modafinil has been a lifesaver for me.
Also, you have people with inherited dopamine management issues. Adhd aside, dopamine regulates internal clock, so delayed sleep phase is also a real thing. F.lux, blindshades and enough sunliht help, but just to a certain extent.
I don't feel depressed.
Short of a genomic test, how can one differentiate?
A lot of people do not realize how important a good sleeping schedule is for both physical and mental health.
I go to bed roughly at the same time every day and get up at the same time every day as well and it really helps me with a lot of things.
edited to add: fat part of the bell curve, since being outside of the bell curve entirely is not what I meant.
You know that Gaussian distributions specifically include outliers.
If we change it to "fall outside of 2-sigma", will you allow us to return to the actual point, or will you continue with your passive-agressive hair-splitting?
2. Around 1% of people have the gene I'm referring to. Telling them they are all depressed without bothering to mention the possibility of the gene is something I'd expect better of the NYT. Just sharing the comment provides alternate theories to other HN readers that don't feel depressed.
3. I'm not sure if you read to the end of my comment, but the point is right there in black and white: "Short of a genomic test, how can one differentiate?" It isn't just a question for me, it's a question that I'm sure many people going to the article might have, and it broadens the topic more generally.
On the other hand you have people who have messed up sleep due to genetics, and this causes depression. And people who could sleep all the time and on schedule and still not feel rested.
The article hurts them all, and you too.
Anxiety is weird in that some of the symptoms overlap with depression.
If you don't feel depressed, you're probably not depressed. Depression is like having rats in your head. Your failures are always in front of you. I'm kinda just getting over about 25 years of various degrees of suicidal depression. You guys may be a little neurodivergent but it's what they say, everyone needs a few mental blocks to play with. I'm sure you'll be fine :)
So that left my parents no other option, but to eventually take me to psychiatrist.
When she put me on antidepressants, I started to act even worse. I wrote and drew on blackboards at college breaks, once asked a profssor in the middle of his lecture " what is time?", I wrote in my sister's chat while she was afk and talked nonsence to she's friends, I started to have all sorts of crazy ideas and I wrote on all walls and furniture in my room.
I can't really know exacly what happened, but my brain started a roller coaster ride between being uterlly depressed to extreme overthinking and I had a thought that I somehow controlled the reality by changing the mood I was in. At the same time all inhibitors were gone. A part of the feeling I had I can relate to a movie "A beautiful mind". That part of it that scares the uninformed viewer. So after regulating my treatment, my state become good enough for my parents to send me to the psychologist. Too bad she passed a few years latter. RIP. I mean she was top class. I had about 7-8 90-minutes sessions until my state became a-well-functioning-member-of-society again. My family's support was unprecendented. After a few more months I satrted team gaming heavily. After a year more my psychiatrist removed my therapy alltogether. After 1 more year I returned to church (other one) to youth choir and never had this thing again. The main thing that kept me alive and sane through my darkest hours was thought that I was once happy, and if God existed, he would not let me perish. This was just a hell one has to go through to get to heaven. Sorry for being a little off topic, I just wanted to share what had helped me. Oh, one thing, if you are diagnosed with anxiety and depression, hang in there and talk to somebody. It's not permanent. It passes. I wish you the best. ih
I have found however that _listening to music_ during sleep will prevent my sleeping a lot from having a depressant effect on my mood. I recommend avoiding music contain exciting or bracing passages; you don't want your sympathetic nervous system to become active during sleep.
If I learn something that I want to retain, then I don't listen to music that night, because the same process (REM sleep?) that tends to depress the mood also helps with the consolidation of new learnings and new skills.
> Que
As much as I love to travel, at this point I have to cognizant of how it affects my mental health
https://crisisofthemind.com/fallout-from-an-international-bi...
Prayer and music helps to cope with the lows. Like a diode.
Sleeping less to wake up early and pray before work has had a huge emotional benefit. It's like an half-wave rectifier.
Can someone explain a bit more clearly? If someone is traveling from SF to Europe or SF to Asia, when should melatonin and light be used optimally?
But then 2 paragraphs later, he says "Travel east and you’ll need morning light".
I find the entire article hard to read, but I am pre-coffee right now.
I find that I can go one night with minimal sleep and function just fine during the next day. So if I was going from NYC to Rome, I'd lift the shades in the early morning in Rome to make sure I'm super tired by the evening and go to bed at the correct time.
On the negative side, this substance may become one of the reasons the pharmaceutical industry will lose recurrent revenues from disappearing dependency on expensive anti-depressants.
If you read reports of people after psychodelics, for many of them, after two weeks the symptoms return.
But yehah, people should research it more, and try it. Same with MDMA for fighting with traumas and anxiety.
You sound like someone I know who is an acid head. He also has some far out there beliefs that he has no evidence to back up with, acid is a cure all among them, although his life is very messed up.
I've never tried it , personally, but I think a lot of people that take it end up believing something or some things that do not follow.
This can end up great for a person if it involves their own success and it gives them the drive to pursue it where others would give up (this is what I believe happened to Steve Jobs). But it can also have profound negative effects. The guy I knew used to be a good friend, have a good job, and on a great track , but now he's running around trying to cajole money from people and systematically lies about his problems.
I believe this effect during sleep deprivation is due to dopaminergic supersensitivity.
That is blatantly untrue. For a large part of the population it is not, and even the content of the article acknowledges that.
If you usually sleep 7 hours a night, and you're only getting 4, then you will feel tired grumpy and sad. But if you stay up all night, you may start to feel euphoric and energetic. Of course, you'll need a good long sleep the next day or so.
Didn't seem to help with her depression in the slightest.
I was a night owl + stimulant fiend until I started working out in the morning. Decided to pull the trigger on a daily 9am Crossfit habit.
Now I'm too tired to stay awake past 11pm or so.
Psychiatrists go to medical school so they can prescribe medicine without killing a patient, not because medical school has a scientifically rigorous psychiatry curriculum. Remember that homosexuality was a psychiatric disease until recently.
- 4 years of undergrad, ideally with one major in Biology
- MCAT
- 4 years of general medical school
- 4 years of specialized psychiatry residency, usually at university hospital
Meaning, here in the US it's a medical discipline, but this may not be the case where you live.
You're absolutely right that there is a horrific history to the field of psychiatry - homosexuality indeed wasn't unlisted until a little over 40 years ago. However, this is rapidly changing with the advent of tools like PCR and Western Blotting, which allows psychiatry to research mental disease on the level of individual gene expression and proteins.