How you sleep today may forecast when Alzheimer's disease begins | Hacker News Reader

How you sleep today may forecast when Alzheimer's disease begins

news.berkeley.edu

Sleep is important, but I am hesitant on these drawn conclusions.

Article: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)...

Another paper, same authors: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/39/32/6315

UPDATE, quoted from paper: >> Importantly, the present results cannot establish a causal link between impaired sleep and subsequent Aβ plaque accumulation. The majority of subjects in the study already had substantial Aβ deposition at baseline, so the directionality of this relationship cannot be determined without further investigation.

Not normally a poster, but figured this might help peeps. In my 20's to early 30's I went through pretty bad insomnia. I tried treating it with substances (atavan, etc.), and when I realized it was only getting worse (much worse) from medication, I set about fixing it properly. I have been a great sleeper now for about 15 years I think. Here's what worked for me. The trick is, you need to do them all and you need to do them consistently, so that your brain gets used to it and you stop being anxious about it - because the anxiety about sleep will make it worse.

The biggie: no brain work of the problem solving variety less than 2-3 hours before bed time. This was the #1 thing! No coding, no reading coding books, no thinking about code. CODE IS THE WORST. It puts me in rumination mode, and you can't stop. I can do music practice, exercise, read books (that don't make me think about solving a problem), clean the house whatever. But I structure my day so that no computer work happens for those critical hours.

Little to no screens for the same period. Read on paper. If you need screens, redshift away all the blue light. NO social media at night. Getting worked up over bullshit does not help.

No caffeine less than 8 hours before bed. And much less caffeine over all. I have 2-3 coffees over the day, but they are 4 ounces.

Little alcohol in general. Half a glass of wine with dinner, and I'm good.

Running! Get running. Seriously, it's good for everything. If you can't run, find some similar cardio, but every athlete will tell you running is king. There's a reason even chess champs and pistol shooters run tons.

Try to get regular on your times. I shoot for 8 to 9 hours a night, and bed time is almost always between 10 and 11. I never use a reader in bed. But I will say that the above to me are more important than regular, in that I could handle 2-3 hours of jet lag fine last year with regular travelling if the others were all in order. I saved melatonin for travelling.

Over all though, I can't stress how much changing what kind of thinking and work I allow myself in the last 3 hours of the day changed EVERYTHING. Bigger than all the rest put together. Just structure your day so that you are winding down your brain. We can't just turn off like a light switch.

I've been a sleep fanatic for my whole life, as I do a bunch of things that are just a waste of time if overtired (practicing for playing music at a professional level etc).

Hope that helps some folks. iain

This study was on people in their 60’s - 80’s, in case anyone else panicked after reading the title. I am literally in the middle of dealing with some of the worst sleep in my life, but am in my late 20’s. The idea that these problems could eventually result in Alzheimer’s is terrifying to me because my mind is literally who I am.

Just a few years ago all these problems seemed so far into the future that they were irrelevant, but every day I’m realizing more and more that I’m on a train barreling through time.

This realization you mention is extremely odd and bizarre, yet so true.

Another thing I've come to understand is how many things I do today will, over time and through cumulative effects, have long lasting, some irreversible, effects on my body.

Obvious, yet surprising and strange when finally experienced and grasped.

For me at 40 it's cursing 16yo me for putting that motorbike through that fence and screwing me knee, 17yo me for lifting with a shoulder injury and 19yo me for playing football on wet astro-turf.

It's sorta funny how the bill for something something I did over 20 years ago didn't come due until recently.

I have been thinking about this a lot. I don’t really regret the random injuries I got from younger me being dumb on a longboard and overdoing it with weight lifting (my wrist, for instance, is going to get way worse over the years because of a bad power clean). But I’ve settled on bodies are meant to be used, not coddled.

This is something that has been worrying me a bit since reading Matthew Walker's book Why We Sleep.

I've been an insomniac my whole life, so I suspect something like this is coming for me. This is why I'm building a sleep headband to monitor, adjust, and train for better sleep performance. If you're interested, check out https://soundmind.co

Oh, it's from Matthew Walker. He's a very creative scientist: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

My sleep is terrible. How do I improve it?

What is terrible about it?

I wake up at 3 am consistently and can not go back to bed.

What have you tried? We're working on a wearable which measures your sleep state and influences and trains your brain for better sleep performance. Still in development, but check it out https://soundmind.co

use melatonin

My understanding (based in part on personal experience) is that melatonin helps mostly with falling asleep, but not necessarily with staying asleep.

What / how much do you eat / drink in the afternoon and evening?

Maybe you are not tired enough. One advice a professional gave was to not stay in bedroom unless you go to sleep and also no other sofas in the house for too long.

I’m 60 and fucked

Yeah well I'm 45 and fucked.

who else got a little nervous reading this? my sleep schedule is wack

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