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Comment by badminton1 | Hacker News Reader

Pseudoscience!

If you have sleep issues go see a healthcare professional. Don't follow advice from random strangers on the Internet.

The circadian rhythm (aka sleep cycle) is regulated by a hormone called melatonin (not to be confused with melanin). It is produced by the pineal gland after exposure to light.

Light intensity from artificial light is usually low (unless you use luminotherapy lamps), leading to melatonin production issues, which affect sleep.

You can solve that by spending a bit more time outside. If you happen to live in a place with dark winters, get a luminotherapy lamp.

Other than that, there are other aspects that have to do with how tired you might feel... nutrition, hydration, exercise, etc. You can do all of that correctly while still having insomnia.

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> Pseudoscience!

Please don't inject snide dismissals into HN threads. It reliably degrades discussion, and we're trying for better than that here.

Even if your dismissal were correct, it would still be beside the point. A blog post isn't a peer-reviewed journal paper, nor need it be. The idea that people should be punished for making their own investigations and sharing them runs deeply counter to the spirit of this site.

Sorry about that.

I just get very concerned when it comes to prescribing health advice.

I'm not sure what part you found to be pseudoscience. This technique was prescribed to me by a healthcare professional and can be found in medical journals.

And, I fully agree -- light is important. Maybe I'll add an addendum on that.

Helpful but not really necessary. For most anyone who's suffered the level of sleep difficulties described here, them having knowledge of melatonin and its effects can reasonably be assumed.

For anyone like the "Pseudoscience!..." commenter saying that melaton knowledge is, in general, sufficient alone to end said sleep problems -- that's just plain dismissive nonsense!

Melatonin has a strong influence on the circadian rhythm regulation and is nowhere to be found in the article.

If you suffer insomnia this is where you should be starting with.

PS: I suffered insomnia, spent a lot of time working through it, and got medical advice.

Prefer residences and offices with natural light, or take a walk outside around noon (wear sunscreen). There you go...

Then, amount of papers doesn't necessarily translate into scientific rigor. Since research universities adopted a "publish or perish" policy there's a deluge of junk science.

update: corrected typo

Thanks for the feedback. I'll add that to the "common wisdom" invariants to clarify that's an assumed prerequisite.

FWIW, I live in California and spent four months on the beach prior to undergoing this regimen.

This algorithmic method is a useful addition to the insomniac's toolkit. Please don't berate methodologies based on logic and then describe anecdotes with poor english (wtf is "singlest"?).

Or placebo effect, we don't know. It's self experimentation, there's no control group, no accompanying data, etc.

The perceived improvement could be due to other reasons rather than the therapy itself.

Usually you establish a relationship between the therapy and results through something like statistical significance but this was not the case.

Then, it is important to be responsible when offering health related advice to people. If you are not a healthcare professional, start saying:

1) Follow this advice at your own risk

2) I am not a healthcare professional this is a casual exploration of my sleep cycle.

I think this is more responsible than implying this followed some sort of scientific approach.

PS: rather than the ad-hominem try to add value to the discussion staying on topic.

Definitely agree that people should be responsible when offering health advice - but if you’re striking down advice that:

1) ultimately came from a professional 2) was linked to a program with a bunch of literature

You risk your “Pseudoscience!” claim becoming unfalsifiable. What would it take to be, in your eyes, Not Pseudoscience? A direct link to a paper on this exact algorithm?

Placebo effect working for sleep disorders? Kind of reminds me of trying to rigorously test psychoactive drugs.

I think by definition insomnia implies a sleep problem that goes beyond trivial solutions like getting a little more sunlight. There are plenty of us who have trouble sleeping regardless of sunlight exposure, exercise and substance intake. And we can tell you it's overwhelmingly a mental issue. I also happened to have arrived a similar method as what the OP described, and it works.

How did you determine this method works? Does it yield consistent results?

Which parts of the therapy are responsible for the results, all of them? part of them? When are the results favorable? Can any patient be treated in this way?...

You can just say "it worked for me". That's more acceptable.

You could have improved as a consequence of other factors rather than this "method".

Do you think this form of communication makes HN a better place?

"don't trust advice from strangers" followed up with several paragraphs worth of advice from someone I don't know

Bullshit. None of that worked for me. I'm sure lots of it works for other people, but rest assured you don't have all the answers about insomnia.

If you actually did have the answers, you'd make a billion dollars solving insomnia and you won't have to worry about people like me trolling you on HN. You'd be too busy popping the corks of Cristal bottles onto the firm rear ends of women leftover from a rap video.

Sure, probably I oversimplified it, but melatonin does play a more central role in sleep than some of the factors mentioned in the article.

If you are interested in sleep, the 2017 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to 3 researchers for their work in advancing the understanding of the circadian rhythm.

An article can be found here:

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2...

Melatonin is not explicitly mentioned there but you will find multiple occurrences of "hormone release". Melatonin is one of such hormones.

Melatonin is useful for people who can't get to sleep.

It's not so useful for people who wake up during the night, and it's not at all useful for people who wake early.

Your lack of understanding of insomnia is causing you to massively over-simplify, which is probably really fucking annoying to people who've lived with insomnia for years and gone through good quality medical and psychological treatments.

melatonin is one of those "low hanging fruit" solutions people always give for insomnia. And 99% of the time, it never works. At least for me. If only it was that easy.

Amen, brother or sister

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