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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

Sleep allows the brain to catch up on the day's events. That is, it buffers certain things to be processed in full later. Disrupt that process - e.g., not enough sleep, alcohol (as a REM sleep disruptor) - and memory will go sideways.

I'd be interested in knowing how many of the prescription drugs common among older adults have REM disruption as a side-effect. I wonder if that's even tested for. Perhaps we're managing one set of ills only to create another?

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Although not normally considered a prescription drug, Cannabis has marked affects on the REM sleep phase.

Which are ...? (not a cannabis user, just curious).

According to a study from the 70s, cannabis interferes with REM sleep.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/200906...

Generally heavy cannabis users don't dream as often or vividly as normal. One of the primary symptoms of cannabis withdrawal is extremely vivid dreams. I don't know if there's been any formal studies on this in particular, but I've heard enough independent anecdotes, that I'm convinced there is some relation.

Above was just the subjective part, there have been studies on the objective effects of cannabis on REM sleep, where it appears to decrease total REM sleep duration.

As far as the implications of this go, your guess is as good as mine.

I have noticed that not sure if I have ever heard a reason.

My cousin had to stop weed rapidly; first thing he said "never dreamed like this in years". He was also in 2x speed, so quick it was almost funny.

Remembering dreams as vivid and not remembering the that much does not mean dreams are not vivid. Deep sleep hides those dreams or is there some empirical data?

Not a cannabis user, but I hardly ever remember my dreams. Maybe one every 1-2 months if I'm lucky. I wonder if that means that there is something wrong with my sleep.

Actually the opposite. In order to remember a dream you would have to wake up in the middle of it.

Some research exists[1] though limited to testing with THC, so it wouldn't be strictly accurate to say 'cannabis' (for example, it would also be worth doing a similar study on CBD, as it has quite a few interesting properties as well).

1: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/200906...

I agree. I'm a sample of one, but when I used to smoke cannabis in my teens it definitely made me sleep dreamless and usually wake up pretty groggy as well.

Since CBD only products (< 1% thc) have become legal in Switzerland, I've been using them to handle anxiety and one of the upsides is very refreshing sleep + more dreams.

Have there been any studies comparing the direct effects of THC with REM sleep?

It seems remotely plausible that cannabis could be inducing a REM-like state while the user is still awake.

> Sleep allows the brain to catch up on the day's events. That is, it buffers certain things to be processed in full later

Citation?

I didn't know there was a proven reason why we sleep...?

Here's a good review that came out not too long ago:

>Specifically, newer findings characterize sleep as a brain state optimizing memory consolidation, in opposition to the waking brain being optimized for encoding of memories.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9ac5/c749244b9e2509a670a816... [pdf]

Interesting. It's like the Refactoring phase of TDD. So basically during the day you experience new observations ("tests" if you will), you address/process them however you can on the spot ("green bar"), then during sleep you take stock and generalize so you can reuse the experiences of the day for the future ("refactor").

I've been seeing this TDD process in a lot of things lately. Scientific progress seems to follow the same process as well (at least that's one way to capture what Popper or Lakatos have been telling us, not that I've actually read them yet mind you).

Both refactoring and GC.

> I didn't know there was a proven reason why we sleep...?

I don’t know if you’re being coy and trying to say the opposite—that we don’t have one, and therefore op is wrong? If so: they didn’t say that was the reason. Just that it was what happened during sleep. Could be a side effect of sleep. We know about some of those, as far as I’m aware.

There has been a lot more research recently about the neurobiological effects of sleep. A good summary: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5501041/

I don't think it's a question of why. That's board and difficult to pin down. However, there's plenry of studies on what happens when we sleep. Post-day processing _is_ one of those things.

The article mentioned a book that is literally called Why We Sleep, written by a sleep researcher.

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