Sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of serious illness | Hacker News Reader

Sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of serious illness

theguardian.com

196 pointsopen-source-ux77 comments

I haven't used an alarm in probably a decade, outside of super early flights. I consistently wake up when I need to. I have no problems with insomnia. I don't need caffeine to feel awake and in fact haven't drank any in about three years. I wake up feeling refreshed and happy and looking forward to the day.

I say this because I used to have pretty bad insomnia. Weeks of almost no sleep. Let me tell you: when sleep is not going right for you, nothing is going right. Sleep does wonders for depression, too. So I looked at everything I was doing wrong and changed it all. I changed my diet, my work habits, everything. I don't do a lot of critical thinking an hour or two before bed (no work, no computer). I've trained my body to know how to sleep. I go to bed at around the same time every night, and I listen to my body. Barring those with actual medical issues, for the majority, it is a choice.

Dont depressed people sleep like 12 hours ?

A person I knew with depression complained that it was just impossible to sleep at the time when one needs most and then get 12 hours of a bad sleep when one better do other things.

Seems like bipolar ? Sometimes you don't sleep (manic) and sometimes you oversleep (depress). Maybe he was misdiagnosed (often are). But I'm probably talking too much from 1 sentence.

Depression makes sleep more or less impossible sometimes, and more or less unavoidable others. My SO has severe depression, and no symptoms of bipolar (which I would recognize due to my own diagnosis), but experiences times where he's dead to the world for 12-14 hours, but then also experiences times where he will lay awake for hours trying to fall asleep.

Not all. Depression is highly different across people. Some depressed people don't sleep much at all (insomnia) Also, from what I've read, that 12 hours of sleep isn't restful to a depressed person.

It's not about resting, it's about escaping from life.

That's what I said, though.

> I was doing wrong and changed it all. I changed my diet, my work habits, everything...

I did all of those things too and it did nothing for either my insomnia or depression. There are a surprising number of us out there with, as you say, "actual medical issues".

He found his cure so he thinks it will work for everyone. It never works that way.

But the author never claimed it would work for "everyone"

Re-read the last sentence of his post.

I did. Carefully. So did you though because you admit the medical condition.

So you must arguing about his statement about it not being an actual medical condition for the majority? (emphasis added to clarify what I think you're arguing about.)

So it would appear you're challenging him on his statement about population distribution. Your anecdote vs his. While ignoring the condition in his statement.

I think his point was that a lot of people first reach for medicine, when it's often a lifestyle issue.

I didn't see it as belittling those with actual medical conditions.

OP here. That's right. I know several people with medical conditions, and it's important to speak to a doctor when common sense changes don't improve the situation.

It's true that some people reach for medicine without trying to change their lifestyles, but I suspect many more reach for the grande coffee or the double shot of espresso in the morning or the beer or wine in the evening. I certainly did my share of that. Nothing wrong with any of those except when they are papering over dissatisfaction with energy level and emotional state. Humans didn't co-evolve with coffee.

Or he may have "found" his cure but it was not one of the variables he mentioned. With that caveat, here's what I changed to fix my 25+ years of insomnia.

1) Always wear socks and semi-tight fitting pants and t-shirt.

2) I increased (yes increased) my calories by ~20% but I stop eating by 6PM.

3) If you suffer from PTSD or wake up screaming when someone tries to wake you, either A) get a dog or B) Do heavy weight training and learn a viscous form of martial arts / street fighting as it will make you feel safer.

4) Avoid toxic people. This one was the hardest.

Just because you changed things doesn't mean you changed them for the better. You could have changed from hitting yourself in the head to hitting yourself in the crotch. Not really an improvement.

So to be clear, you made sure you experienced a natural night - 10 hours of pure darkness (can't see your hand) starting and ending at exactly the same time every day, for at least four to six weeks? And no result at all? Realllly?

There is massive problem in the culture about value of sleep. The culture implicitly defines mentality where working hard without much sleep is somewhat heroic. Therefore according to the culture (again implicitly) those who sleep a lot are lazy.

Hard working heroes who sacrifice sleep from time to time displayed in popular films. Take for example three films Micro Men [1] and The Martian [2] and The Social Network [3].

In first two films, hard working heroes don't "waste" time on "useless/unproductive" sleep and instead drink lots caffeine.

In corporate culture it's often the same. Since 2006 till 2008 I worked as a technical support engineer and I often had to work at night. Sometimes, I took two hours of sleep (in an office's couch) from 4 AM till 6 AM. After these two hours of sleep I would be energized and work really productive till 9 AM. But the company decided to impose strict ban on sleeping in office and instead put coffee machine. As I expected my performance fell significantly no matter how much coffee I took. So the company put stupid discipline over actual performance.

In 2014, I had insomnia so I couldn't perform well at work (again no matter how much coffee I took). I went to corporate doctor (a doctor assigned by company). She looked at me and said that I don't have bruises under my eyes, so I'm totally fine. More than that she actually didn't take any my complaints seriously and instead assumed that I'm lazy.

Nowadays, I mostly sleep well and I almost don't drink caffeine. Sometimes, my insomnia came back. Since I participate in algorithm contests and I know very well that no matter how hard I try to work hard without enough sleep I do not perform well in algorithm contests.

The mentality that working hard is opposite to good sleep is most irrational, harmful and widespread yet very implicit thing in the culture.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network

I wonder if there is a reverse effect of taking caffeine when tired/sleep deprived? Some days when I'd hardly slept the night before I would try to rely on caffeine to make it through the day but actually found myself ready to fall asleep after the drink.

In any case I definitely agree, get sleep instead of coffee.

caffeine can be a trap. amazing short term but a curse long term. strongly advise never making it a habit.

It may be similar to ADHD medication where the stimulant affect causes you brain to “fall in line” which just makes it for the different parts of your brain to agree that sleep is the correct course of action.

So weird, same thing happens to me - I can drink a huge can of energy drink, or a strong coffee or anything else with a lot more caffeine in it than usual and within 20 minutes I'm ready for a nap.

Not medical advice, I'm not a doctor, go speak to a doctor, this isn't a substitute for sleep etc etc. But in my experience, whenever I've found myself in a situation where I'm not able to get much sleep but still need to function for an extended period of time, Modafinil or Armodafinil has been an absolute life saver. No lingering caffeine like coffee as well, once it wears off it's gone and you can sleep normally (roughly 12-14 hours).

Overall downside - it's not super well researched, especially long-term effects, might cause brain problems, or cancer, who knows? I also often hear of people coming to rely on it as a substitute for sleep - it's not addictive per se, but what it allows you to do definitely can be.

This article says:

> It’s his conviction that we are in the midst of a “catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic”, the consequences of which are far graver than any of us could imagine... sleep deprivation... constitutes anything less than seven hours

I thought we found out that we sleep the same as our ancestors. This article -- https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nightmare-sleep-no-more-plentiful-... -- says

> Even without electricity or other modern trappings, they [the Tsimane people of Bolivia, Hadza people of Tanzania and San people of Namibia] logged an average of 6 hours and 25 minutes of sleep daily, a figure near the low end of industrialized society averages.

How long do those peoples live? If their expectancy is less than or similar to modern society's after controlling for infant mortality and preventable deaths before say 18, then maybe the lack of sleep is hurting them too.

But you can't consider that figure in a silo. All those peoples live vastly different than most 'modern' people. Mich closer to the natural environment is one prominent difference.

Might be interesting to look at the study itself. It doesn't say if it was summer or winter when it was undertaken. I wonder if results would be much different for other non-electrified people

Even if it's true that less sleep results in less life, it's still a wash.

Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14 wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 * 365 hours, in other words. Now compare this to sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking hours. 1440 * 365 in a year, in this case.

This gets more complicated if you abandon the hours and rather frame it as a percentage of time you spend with the people you care about. Now your sleep is a function of their sleep and the math gets too convoluted, but I'm sure you get the point.

Whether one is better than the other is more of a philosophical question, but just food for thought.

IMHO people shouldn't worry about these kinds of things. In general, trying to optimize the quality of life you have when you're awake will generally lead to the optimal outcome in general. In this case, eating well, exercising and having meaningful relationships will result in a higher quality sleep due to lower stress and also make your waking hours also more enjoyable. Ultimately, that's the point, right?

EDIT: Hah, forgot to multiply by 365, but my point stands.

Those waking hours are not of the same quality according to the article. Moreover, the article states that with sleeping 6 hours a day one will die in their sixties rather than living to 80, without medical assistence.

There's something off in your math, but I'm too sleepy to figure out what.

14 h/d x 100 y x 365 d/y = way more than 1400 hours

>Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14 wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 hours, in other words. Now compare this to sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking hours. 1440 in a year, in this case.

True, but what's the quality of life of those zombie-walking hours?

That's not the point though. You could replace 6 and 10 with 8 and 12.

>Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14 wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 365 hours, in other words. Now compare this to sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking hours. 1440 * 365 in a year, in this case.*

You haven't adjusted for the worse 'wake-time' quality, loss of productivity, and worsened day-to-day health and focus, because of the lesser sleep.

What is wrong in your deduction is that you suppose that we all live up great to the moment when we die.

Long health span is more important then long life span. Given that the hypothesis here is that sleep deprivation brings the chronic disease its not that simple as measuring percentage of time you spend with your loved ones - what if last N years of it is totally not worth it, for both them and you.

you're assuming that the quality of your wake hours with less sleep is the same as the quality of your wake hours with enough sleep.

I'm unemployed. I sleep 10 hours per day.

When I was employed, I slept 6 hours per day.

The difference in mood is massive.

However, I'm not sure if the working world will change. It's a zero sum game of who is willing to torture themselves the most, which is sometimes correlated with how much work you produce.

At my past job, it wasn't enough to just produce. You had to /look like/ you were producing. This meant working 8-6. This meant skipping lunch. This meant always sitting at your desk (no walking meetings).

Obvioisly not every employer is like this. But working is a pretty decent way to kill yourself. It happens to most people eventually.

>The difference in mood is massive.

What are two adjectives that describe your previous mood, and two that describe your current one?

6 hours' sleep = zombified, confused, stressed, steeped in dread

10 hours' sleep = alert, optimistic, sharp, happy

And the only variable that changed was lengthOfSleep !

I thought another variable that changed was your employment status. That's a huge one, no?

Correct, becomeUnemployed() was what altered lengthOfSleep :)

I certainly could have tried to sleep more while I was working, but there really wasn't a way for me to personally achieve that. My boss and company were psycho. Lots of unpaid forced overtime, else fired. Lots of meetings and political games to play, else fired.

I wish my skills were desired elsewhere but it's been difficult to find a new job. So, plenty of time for me to sleep.

I definitely am exercising the same amount as I was while working. Sleep changed everything.

EDIT: How on earth is this answer downvotable?

What have I said that is even remotely wrong or controversial?

the job stress elimination could be the first order cause rather than amouny of sleep. thus pedants must downvote. it is their way. our way?

One thing that never seems to be discussed in these type of articles is that for most people time awake is significantly more valuable than time spent asleep. An extended lifespan is of little use to me if those extra hours are spent unconscious.

If I spend 10% extra of my time awake (2.4 hours) but shorten my life by 5%, that seems like a worthwhile trade-off. (That's just an example; I've no idea if those figures are in any way plausible, but I'd be interested in any research that tried to figure out the optimum level of sleep for maximum life-awake time.)

That would make sense if one were talking about time spent on furthering one’s goals, or enjoying life’s pleasures. But in many cases I think we are talking about an hour before sleep spent “idly” browsing social networks for one more “information fix” which I suspect most would not consider worth the trade off if made to choose. A bit similar to smoking perhaps... the reduction in productive life span feels far away, and the temptation in the moment is hard to resist.

>One thing that never seems to be discussed in these type of articles is that for most people time awake is significantly more valuable than time spent asleep. An extended lifespan is of little use to me if those extra hours are spent unconscious.

Those extra awake hours will be worse quality anyway, and less productive, because of the insufficient sleep -- and this is cumulative too.

I'm pretty sure the numbers aren't plausible. I feel at my best if I sleep about 8-9 hours. Maybe I can cut half an hour and still do well but sleeping only 6 hours every day guarantees I'll feel like shit all the time and I'd be surprised if it shortens my lifespan by anything less than 30%

Additional anecdote here, if I sleep 8 hours or more I feel horrible, the same as if I slept 12 (oversleeping) but I feel better than ever when I get 5-7.5 hours a night. I don't think there's a one size fits all, sort of like calorie counting

Are you able to "oversleep" even when you are not sick? I suspect that the few times that I've been able to sleep more than 9 hours have all been because of illness and/or bad quality sleep. I can easily stay in bed for 12 hours, but staying asleep is another matter.

Yup, though one might argue that I'm always sick, because I have mild allergies to just about everything airborne. Otherwise on a completely normal day, if I sleep for 8 hours I'll feel as if I overslept, especially if it's more than one night in a row

When you put it this way, it makes me realize I'd rather live 400 years while losing three quarters of my waking hours than to live 100 years without any loss of waking hours. Experience centuries, and all that.

Exactly. And just imagine they find fixes for all the age related diseases (basically any organ failure) in the next decades, but not for Alzheimer‘s. You will hate yourself for not just having slept more. Perhaps everybody is then almost guaranteed to turn 125, and you come down with Alzheimer‘s at age 65.

Another perspective is that time asleep is not wasted at all. In Tibetan dream yoga, sleep is extremely important time to practice meditation.

Does that involve lucid dreaming? I rarely manage to get any conscious control when I'm dreaming but last time I did it occurred to me in the dream to question whether I was getting the full physiological benefit of sleep if I'd managed to "manually override" the process.

Yeah, lucid dreaming is the middle of the progression of the practice. The lower being regular dreams, and the higher being clear light dreams (where one resides in pure awareness). I am just a student though. The best teacher I can recommend is Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. He has a YouTube channel with a lot of free resources.

If you're advanced enough to remain aware even while sleeping you've probably already adjusted your life to be quite balanced.

This makes no sense. It's not just that you might, for example, die at 70 instead of 75 if you don't sleep. The point is that your quality of life during those 70 years would be horrible, for all the points listed in the article.

But you could use caloric restriction to get some of those years back. You're probably near rock-bottom grumpiness/misery anyway so the cost is minimal.

There's bound to be some level of trade-off. For example, you might be marginally better off health-wise to sleep for 8.5 rather than 8 hours but that's a lot of extra time wasted if the benefit is negligible.

New research is showing how the brain resets during sleep. Sleep is when the brain dumps lymph, which is how the body takes out the trash, so to speak. Some synapses also shrink substantially, which is apparently critical to the ability to learn new information and create new memories.

If you don't get adequate amounts of good quality sleep, your mind does not function as well. If you think sleep is a waste of time and reduces the amount of life you are experiencing, try keeping a dream journal or reading up on lucid dreaming. A lot goes on in the mind while you sleep. It can be a valuable part of your life experience, in addition to the critical role sleep places in health and welfare.

"One thing that never seems to be discussed in these type of articles is that for most people time awake is significantly more valuable than time spent asleep."

time asleep is much more valuable than time awake when you need to sleep. ever notice how shitty life is when you need to sleep, or how good a good night's sleep feels when you need it?

> An adult sleeping only 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only to their early 60s without medical intervention.

I wonder if this controls for other lifestyle factors. Eating a lot before bed makes me sleepier and I could go 7-8 hours a night. Small dinner several hours before bed results in about 6 hours. No alarm clock, that's just how much I need. I find it hard to believe that I'm shortening my lifespan by eating less at night.

Maybe sleeping long enough (7-8 hours) requires a certain (higher) amount of energy, which would be supported by a big dinner before bed? Not sure if there are any studies on this.

This reminds me of a delightful article that helped me fall back in love with sleep (and therefore find it easier to fall asleep): https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-l...

> the number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population and rounded to a whole number, is zero.

Pretty deceiving claim, the author starts with "the number of people", but gives a rounded down percentage instead

the point would be perfectly clear as "only 0.X% of people ..."

"Deep sleep – the part when we begin to dream"

While I'm glad they don't use the popular but incorrect REM sleep == dream sleep, I don't think this is correct either. I have a circadian rhythm disorder and had severe insomnia before that and so have observed the process of getting to sleep in slow motion many times. At least in many cases for me, dreaming preceeds sleep by a bit as gently waundering thoughts gradually turn into dreaming (this might be considered stage 1 sleep on polysomnograph, but certainly not deep sleep). I have a poor visual memory and when I notice visual recall when close to sleep then that is a very good sign that sleep is about to happen. It turns into dreaming a little bit after that and then I fall asleep, although I don't think it always follows this progression (and I don't think I always get visual recall before sleep).

I was under the impression that rem was the state when you dream, and you can sometimes enter it before the other stages, can you enlighten me to the truth with a decent source? Thanks =D

I think the best article on this is Mark Solms 2000 "Dreaming and REM sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms"[0]. Solms and a couple of coauthors have an article this year, "Dreaming in Neurological Disorders"[1], which is also great although I don't think it directly answers your question.

My sense is that it is still being debated if there are differences in the types of dreams that happen in different stages or not. I couldn't find it last time I looked, but some research somewhat recently found that medically extinguishing REM sleep did not produce a detectable change in dream reports. Other studies seem to show that there may be differences.

[0] http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-dom/My_research/Papers-2.1-done/C...

[1] https://twin.sci-hub.ac/cd77f4d5f6111801eee90b66a3ac13ee/sol...

Awesome material, thanks!

It's interesting how you described that process -- I actually distinctly realized around middle school that lingering thoughts led to visualizations and eventually sleep. I got good enough at training myself to close my eyes and start thinking about non-stressors/random thoughts to trigger fast and easy sleep, most of the time. It doesn't really work if there is something significant on my mind, like a work or personal issue.

Two thoughts on how sleep deprivation directly impacts hackers and people working in the tech industry:

1. Glorifying low sleep through all-nighters, perpetual crunch time, etc., has become part and parcel of startup life for generations [0]. (I've always wondered if it's a carryover from the particularly collegiate nature of software culture [1]). There's been some backlash against founders and the like boasting about operating on low sleep, as part of the general backlash against poor work-life balances in tech. Hackers need to push back against the suboptimal performance and system degradation that chronic sleep deprivation creates.

2. The tech industry, known for its whimsical benefits and presumptions to think differently and be unconventional, could explore allowing employees to take nap breaks. So far it looks like Google and Cisco are among the handful of large tech companies to allow employees to nap [2], but one wonders how many employees with poor sleep hygiene actually do take advantage of it, and whenever those articles pop up it always seems like ads for sleep pods. Yet siestas and naps are something that have been allowed in cultures around the world, even in work-heavy East Asia [3].

[0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299145

[2] http://fortune.com/2011/08/18/why-companies-are-cozying-up-t...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/japanese-firms... http://mashable.com/2017/07/12/capsule-beds-beijing/#ohlpi6K...

It doesn’t mention taking naps.

But damn, they make life pretty great!

It does, and mentions that they are not long enough to reach deep sleep. The next sentence says that we need 4-5 cycles to get enough deep sleep.

for the last few years, i've been getting by with 6 hours/night on weekdays and 10 on weekends, but lately i've found myself waking up too early on several weekends, and i'm a bit worried my body is getting used to "six hours are all you get". need to work up the self discipline to close the book at least an hour earlier every night.

I read somewhere recently that the 8 hours a night number is wrong, and it depends on your age, lifestyle, and genetics. 6 was at the lower end of what they said was fine, though unfortunately I don't remember the source or if it was reputable.

The quality of your sleep is an important factor too. If you suspect you may have obstructive sleep apnea then go get it checked out.

Wasn't the consensus that 7h sleep was the best for lifespan and more or less than that lead du decreased life span?

Yes, but that requires more time in bed than 7h. It would require I'd say 7.5h in bed.

There was never a conclusion that certain sleep lengths lead to decreased life span, only a correlation. The causal link has been suggested to be the reverse - that sick people tend to stay in bed longer because they're sick. I believe I saw a recent article that even said that the popular takeaway that avoiding "oversleep" is healthy is the opposite of reality, because extended sleep is actually a healing mechanism.

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