Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Whenever I feel tired, I lay down to rest.
Whenever I am sleeping, I allow myself to sleep until I am "fully slept", meaning I can lay there for a while, still physically resting, and not fall asleep.
Sometimes this means only a couple hours, and sometimes it's 16 or more. Whatever it is, if I am tired and want to keep sleeping, that's what I do.
A couple of times I think I was coming down with something, I slept for more than 24 hours with only pee breaks. And I woke up feeling fresh as a cucumber, as they say.
Those flus and colds which I used to get once or twice a year and which would sometimes drag on for weeks? I can't remember the last time I've had that happen, but it's been several years now. (Of course, I have several other practices to thank for this, in addition to the sleep.)
I also practice what I call "dog sleep" or "cat sleep", meaning I lay down and close my eyes and fully rest my body, without necessarily losing all alertness or consciousness.
My rewards have been improved cognition, better health and overall feeling, and still being able to do occasional coding marathons like I used to when I was half my current age.
We've been conditioned to think of sleep as laziness and sloth, but nothing could be further from the truth on the cellular level. When you rest, your cells go to work cleaning, rebuilding, and renewing your body. Your mind also does sorting and self-analysis, and returns the results in the form of remembered dreams.
Also, I used to be very depressed all the time, and now it rarely happens.
I've experienced many different layers of both cognitive health and cognitive impairment, and I also practice mindfulness, so I am able to assess this pretty well.
I have something to compare to: I used to be able to program all day every day when I was younger. I've also had several instances of TBI. I've had times when I tried to follow a schedule which didn't work for me for both corporate jobs and startups. I've been depressed and at peace, in love and with a broken heart. All of these things can be helpful or debilitating, or even both.
I compare my assessments in comparison with all of these different experiences.
The difference between my current practice and getting 8 hours a day on a schedule is... I don't even know how to describe it.
It sounds like changing your sleep was THE factor?
Or were there other things? I know people who have dramatically changed their diet, and espoused similar life changing revelations... Almost word for word, to what you're describing.
The second most impactful factor for me has been meditation and general spiritual development. I have conditioned myself to practice attention to breath meditation several times per day for anywhere from half a minute to several minutes.
Whenever I notice myself stressed, annoyed, waiting, rushing, indecisive, and in other circumstances where mental clarity would help, I return my attention to breath. I've been practicing this for several years, and have experienced tremendous benefits.
For example, I have been able to largely unwire my annoyance reaction. I just don't become annoyed at things anymore. Crying babies, repetitive sounds, squeaky noises, arrogant or childish people, waiting for someone who's late, running late myself, and so on. It just doesn't bother me, no more than the Earth rotating around its axis.
Of course, if a program steals focus or a site is forcing me to use JS, or my [redacted] news feed is in some random fucking indecipherable sort order, it still annoys me. But that's my passion domain, and I project all those things as potentially happening in my software if I'm not careful, so I let it happen as a way of keeping myself sharp and vigilant.
Diet-wise, I avoid processed food and tobacco, which are my addictions. I've never been much of a drinker, but I've cut alcohol out almost entirely, even the occasional sip of vodka or half a bottle of beer I used to have. I attended several AA meetings recently, and it was a clarifying and eye-opening experience, and I just can't see alcohol the same way anymore.
I still love weed, but no longer regularly. I used to be a wake and bake, all day every day, no such thing as too much weed smoker.
Based on my prior psychedelic experience, I think I could have achieved many of these changes much quicker with the occasional acid trip, but I haven't found the right set and setting in a while.
No, I don't go into the office anymore. I live a pauper's existence compared to the past, when I lived like royalty, "earning" enough to pay rent on my own nice apartment in Manhattan, buying new clothes and things regularly, as much as whatever food I wanted, and so on. Though compared to majority of humans and other animals, I'm still doing very well in terms of survival and comfort.
My finances are almost non-existence, and my sense of happiness and self-fulfillment is through the roof.
I'm guessing you were in a situation like many people I know (including myself). Well off, couldn't really reasonably ask for much more, yet still chasing happiness like a carrot on a stick. Tired, unmotivated, and forever looking for the next thing to feel better.
Diet, sleep, and exercise are all "in check". (Not micro managed by any means, but certainly not eating fast food, alcohol, and sleeping poor for example).
Eventually, I found myself working on software maintenance at a bank, a job I become attached to because I thought I wasn't worth much without a degree. I worked there for 5 years.
In corporate, my three role models have been Wally, Costanza, and Gibbons, so I can't say I strained myself too much. I probably spent more time entertaining myself online than proper "working". I was comfortable, and for a while I thought I'd beat the system. I was certainly better off than many who struggle daily.
I worked on CMBS, from the flush days pre-2007, through the crisis, and into times of slow attrition and incremental cost-cutting. Eventually, I was laid off.
I scrambled to find another job, was fired after a month or two for regular and unrepentant tardiness, and then got another one and stayed there for about 3/4 of a year until being laid off. I rode out six months on unemployment, also eating through my savings.
I realized that with five years at the bank on my resume, it will be much easier to find another job, so I did that. I went on a spree of under-a-year stints at different companies, enjoying the first month honeymoon, integration and learning phase, leaving when I became bored.
At this point, I could find a new job before leaving the old one, and my work was good enough that there were no hard feelings. Regardless of how long I worked somewhere, I contributed and was a net positive.
After getting one small raise at the bank over five years, I doubled my salary in three. I was so happy to tell my family that I broke the six figures mark, and they were proud of me.
It sounds good on paper, but here is the problem. Of all the different places I worked "professionally" in 20 years, there is maybe one or two projects that are still in use. Most of what I'd worked on is gone forever, there's probably not a copy left anywhere. Of the systems that are still in use, they're used by a handful of people, and will never see the "light of day" outside of their cellar.
Of all the systems I've worked on, I can only think of one which actually contributed something positive to the world. Most of them were basically negative karma for me.
I played a small part in selling unsound financial instruments, which ruined many people, and left many without a house to live in. I helped integrate advertising into webpages, which helped invade people's privacy and reduce the quality of their Web experience. I worked on countless advertising campaigns, which amounted to helping convince my fellow humans to spend their precious resources on things which would probably harm them, like sugar delivery products and oil drilling.
But the worst of it was that my time was largely out of my control, under the control of someone else. Even if I did absolutely no work at the office and spent all my time browsing [redacted], I was still obligated to get up at a certain time, show up and spend the better portion of a day there, dress a certain way, etc.
Eventually, I realized that this was unsustainable, so I started unsubscribing from those things one by one. One of the first things I unsubscribed from was paying monthly rent. This allowed me to unsubscribe from having to work full-time. I think unsubscribed from many other things, one at a time.
I learned that if you make it a priority, and only change one small thing at a time, there is little to fear and much to gain. Not only that, but my life became infinitely richer and more interesting.
One of the most incredible changes I've experienced is that I no longer get that feeling of, "wow, that was 3 years ago? feels just like yesterday... time flies". In fact, I have the opposite experience often, when I think, "wow, it feels like that was 3 years ago, but it's only been a couple of weeks".
I attribute this to the amount of new and unique experiences I have every day, which used to be close to zero, and is now several per day.
I might come back and write more, but I have to go for now. Thank you for asking your question, and I hope this helps.
One more thing: If you consider the quantum nature of our Universe, and the power of observation and intention, you will begin to see just how powerful your intention is, especially when you intend well, and work to improve your karma every day. There's a lot more to our Universe than today's science admits, it's tuned for love and enjoyment, savoring, and if you focus your attention, incredible, magical things will begin to manifest. I say this as a clear-minded computer programmer and systems maintainer who's spent most of my life figuring out how systems work and experimenting with them.
I am low-maintenance, so it is not a burden on them. My rider is clean water, unprocessed food, Web hosting, a 104-key, a computer, and an Internet connection.
I unsubscribed from rent by not renewing my lease and moving out. I rented a storage space for the things I was still attached to at the time, but for much less. After all those boxes went unopened for months and I didn't miss them, I felt comfortable getting rid of them too.
I read that Elon Musk was big on couch-surfing, so I thought, if he could do it, why not me? I was blessed with friends and family who would put me up for various amounts of time, and the grace and patience to get along with them.
Generally speaking, if you want to accomplish something great, you should study those who have already done it. Read their biographies. Read articles and comments about them online. Ignore the noise of common advice you could've gotten from any other schmuck, and look for what they did differently from everyone else.
Elon Musk couch-surfs. Steve Jobs "dropped out" of college on paper and kept attending classes he was interested in. Kurt Cobain wore layers. Jimi Hendrix took speed and spent endless hours practicing guitar. Jesus abandoned physical possessions and embraced all-encompassing love of our Universe. If they could do it, why not you? Probably not any smarter or more capable thank you. All it takes is determination.
Perfect your actions. Every little thing that you do, make it impeccable. If you can't do the small things well, how can you hope to do the big things any better?
Connect with the other dimensions. Ignore the nay-sayers and concretists. 150 years ago, something like telephone would be considered impossible. 50 years ago, videochat was just barely non-fiction. We've been alive for millions of years, adapting to all the possibilities our existence provides.
In my quest, I visited Urbana-Champaign. I went to the old Netscape office and sat in the parking garage and meditated and slept and dreamed. I traveled to Redmond and Mountain View and all over Silicon Valley, and I listened to the space.
I think what's really carried me through all these changes is my relationship with higher power. I believe in intelligent Universe which helps me, provides for me, and never gives me more than I can handle.
I've heard a saying via my family, and later via others: Gd gives you a day, and Gd gives you food to eat. I live by that, I believe that Gd always loves me, is always there for me, is always watching me, rooting for me, supporting me, and will never give me more than I can handle.
I cannot overstate the comfort I feel from knowing this in every situation. It's like being an ant or a beetle, but knowing that there's a giant mountain of a human somewhere up there who's watching out for me, and won't let me come to any harm.
Of course, my ability to take care of an ant is infintesimal compared to the one who is sysadmin, operator, and developer of my very existence. And an ant has a much greater chance of comprehending a human than I have of comprehending this existence. So I just run along and hope that I'll find some sweets in my path, and that I am amusing or interesting or good enough to still be taken care of tomorrow. Kind of like that car battery in Rick & Morty.
You can model this any way you want in your mind, but the key is that this spirit of goodness permeates everything in our existence, and it's always looking for a way to make things a little bit better, a little bit nicer, a little bit kinder. It's infinitely more powerful than all the money in the world put together. It's infinitely smarter than all the world's computers and humans together. It can literally control every aspect of our existence, modify past present and future faster than you can type sudo. And it's here, right now, watching you read this from inside your very mind, opening it up to receive its gift.
In your case I assume you didn't always subscribe to these beliefs and viewpoints, right? I assume based on everything you're written that there was a time, perhaps working at the bank, where you were just like me or anyone else... Working, dissatisfied, looking for more...
What changed?
What sparked the transition?
I admire your conviction but at the same time, it's yours. You'll never be able to just say those things and convey the same power that it has on you. It just doesn't work.
Instead, maybe, you can explain to someone how you got there. How did you come to these convictions? How did you become a person who believes in a higher power who has good intentions and is always watching? For some of us, that sounds more like an acid trip than reality - yet I'm open minded.
In my case I'm comfortable. Very comfortable. Maybe even too comfortable. I want more in life, and I chase happiness like a carrot on a stick. I guess you could say I'm having a mid life crisis my entire life. I can perform exceptionally well when I am inspired, but being inspired is a transient state. I'd love to find peace with my situation, and be inspired to work hard, and work well.
Edit: sibling comment posted as I was typing. Apparently its couch-surfing and religion.
It's not religion, it is trusting in a higher power, subtly different.
> I realized that with five years at the bank on my resume, it will be much easier to find another job, so I did that.
What are you saying here? You had the five years on your resume all the time you were struggling and on unemployment.
then ~2 more jobs, about a year.
then unemployment with half-hearted minimal job searching and spending the savings.
then back to the workforce for a few more years.
In my misspent youth, I used to drive to a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts, pound a coffee and close my eyes for 15-20m. Another thing is to reserve a conference room on a remote floor during lunchtime.
However, this is how I would also raise a child, letting them sleep as much and whenever they want.
When I was a child myself, my parents were in disagreement. My dad's opinion that I should be "broken in" so that I am better able to integrate into society. My mom thought more along the lines of what I describe.
Seeing that my dad had a societal job while my mom raised me, she largely won out.
I think I have her defense and sheltering of me to thank for being blessed with rarely having problems in this department.
With small kids, the problem is usually not you trying to force a schedule on the kid, but the kid forcing a schedule on you.
We can't always sleep as much as we want to, even without kids. But I've certainly made it a high priority.
However, if the responsibilities are shared between multiple adults, you can still get it done some of the time, and be well-rested and comfortable for when it's your turn to watch the kids and let other adults do their sleeping.
Also have your kids younger so you don't need sleep as much. Just accept that the first 5 years wont be as sleepful ;) Also small kids tend to sleep a lot, just not on your schedule :D
I still lack sleep though, but I heard this is normal with small kids...
Good luck to you ..
we are already in the clinic by now.
WFH for your day nap!
hyper-mindfulness and hyper-awareness is one of the best tools I've found to overcome them.
I think it's laughable, preposterous to call focus and flow a "disorder."
Whoever wants to call me being able to focus on a task at hand a disorder can stuff it up their butt.
by whose perspective?
But honestly, at least for me, the hyperfocus is not really that debilitating, it's the lack of being able to focus on anything mundane or boring, your mind will literally just not latch on and it's like pulling your hair out to continue to force yourself to try to mentally latch on.
This is where medicine comes in, specifically amphetamine based stimulants, which honestly are one of the real true success stories of modern mental health science. There are few other drugs in the mental health sector that have the efficacy of amphetamines and its ability to regulate the issues associated with ADD/ADHD.
So the problem with those of us that have attention disorders is our minds latch on hard to what we are interested in and just fog on the uninteresting parts. This leads to a few issues, one can be sloppiness, one just flubs over the details that they don't like, no follow thru is another big issue, so one starts a project does all the details they are interested in and then loses interest in the project. Avoidance of task until it becomes a big problem is another. As a note on the latter, for some tasks that one cannot focus on are almost physically painful and extremely stressful to even think about. Before I sought treatment a big one for me was just doing the dishes, I don't know what it is about dishes but I find it to be one of the most boring and mundane tasks you can do. So I would avoid it, until the sink hit critical mass, and then I had to drag myself kicking and screaming to the sink and in the processes I would get distracted by every single little thing. What should have been a 30 minute job would stretch out 2 to 3 hours while I found every other thing I could to distract myself in the kitchen. The whole time, I knew the dishes needed to be done, I knew as they where stacking up it would be easier to just deal with them now, and it would be worse later, it caused me a lot of stress knowing it was building, but yet I was locked in this pattern each and every week yet my pathological behavior never changed.
Now back to the medicine, ADD/ADHD medicine provides those of us that suffer from it, with the ability to turn on and off focus as well as allows us to remain focused on more mundane tasks. When I am on my medicine it is like I have the ability to turn hyperfocus on and off, on whatever subject I want to, it becomes like a superpower as well I am able to break that focus as it is not so compulsive. As a contrast, now I can be extremely focused on a task, realize that I am getting eye or wrist strain remind myself that I need a break, get up walk over to the sink and wash a few dishes as an activity to do while I take a breather. Where off the medicine, I am extremely single task focused, and have to drive that task to completion, any distractions from that single task are almost physically painful and stressful to even think about.
The way I always explained it, is it's like taking a road trip where all you focus on is the destination, you dream about the destination, you speed to get to the destination, you don't get off any exits until you are so low on gas that you can't ignore it, but in the end the destination was far less interesting than the trip to get there but you missed all that, because all you could do is focus on getting to the destination. With medicine you can still be extremely focused on the destination but realize that the sign of the roadside oddities and emporium at the next exit actually looks pretty cool and might be worth a slight detour. It allows you to see opportunities along the trip and view the trip as an experience in and of itself.
Thanks for the write-up!
Though I don't think that we should just blindly recreate our ancient habits.
I've been told by a few wise people to wait to drink until I'm done trekking, by the way.
I don't think we should blindly do anything, and abandonining millions of years of evolution and wisdom especially.
I'm not sure what distance we are talking about but doing any kind of sport (even light exercise) you should start to drink after at most 1 hour.
If drinking wasn't necessary, long distance runners or athletes of other endurance sports wouldn't drink. You need to stay hydrated or you'll face fatigue, muscle problems and generally perform worse.
Trained athletes will be able to drink much less but that is because their bodies are more efficient, they still need to hydrate for maximum performance. The 1 hour rule isn't set in stone and you can go 3-4 hours without drinking but it has many drawbacks.
I've tried out several different approaches many times, and the best I've learned is to wait to drink when resting, no sipping in between.
I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. YMMV.
I drink some when I first wake up just so I don't forget to drink some, and if I'm exercising I drink a lot
On the subject of peeing, I've come to the conclusion that it's unhealthy to hold it in more than on the rare occasion, and I aim to pee within a few seconds of having the urge.
Actually, I believe it should be a human right to pee within 30 seconds of wanting to, and I'll do it, too.
I didn't claim anything to be bulletproof, just saying that your body tells you when it needs water and drinking in excess of that is probably unnecessary
Yes, and it's important to listen to it, and hear it. Some body signals are subtle, and you won't hear them unless you pay attention.
Headaches, migraines, and other unignorable signals are the body screaming for help after many other more subtle signals have been ignored.
PSA: Look before you flush, it's actually not a bad way to gauge general health.
It's the closest you can get non-invasively to looking inside yourself.
Honest question: why? Are there studies that point to coloured urine as the cause of disease?
It's clear to me that coloured urine is associated with disease (since the body excretes waste products via urine), but not that it can be the cause of it.
Apparently, "drink when you're thirsty" does not work for me.
I surely sometimes have to get up when I don't want to, it just happens less often than it used to, every couple days or weeks rather than every morning.
When I wake up, I usually don't eat for several hours, nor do I have any desire to, as my digestive system is still "booting up". I have heard countless times from various wise beings that drinking a glass of clean water after waking up is very beneficial, so I do that. Sometimes it is yesterday's tea, though.
My ideal eating technique is once a day, and then maybe a few light snacks here and there. It's to avoid processed food, meaning anything which I didn't see its original form of and wasn't prepared by someone I know, whether it is grinding up or mixing, and to avoid things with multiple ingredients.
However, because I co-exist with others who are not as far along as me, I stray from this quite a bit. I partially alleviate it with occasional water fasting to give myself a chance to clear out the junk.
(When I say "natural", it's shorthand for "how our life was for millions of years and what evolution tuned our bodies for".)
I didn't like it at first but got used to it eventually
I advise anyone reading this and experiencing similar sleep pattern or fatigue to visit their doctor. This could be anything from diabetes, iron difeciency, Vitamin D difeciancy, and whole other things that could be wrong. Please don't use someone's else experience as the whole truth.
I advise the exact opposite, to visit doctors as little as possible, unless you experience pain which does not go away after a day or two.
In my experience, doctors will find something to do with you, and it will rarely work out to your advantage, unless it is emergency medicine.
My personal experiences: One doctor told me I need to get circumcised because I had minor irritation on my glans due to a scratch, which I told them about.
Another doctor insisted, without even looking at my X-rays, IIRC, that the cast on my broken hand was not sufficient, and that I needed him to take the cast off and perform surgery, or I would not be able to use my hand properly again.
If I had listened to these doctors instead of thinking for myself, I'd be without my precious foreskin and undergone unnecessary surgery, which would've delayed my getting better.
Fortunately for me, their diagnoses did not overlap with other dentists.
Several years later of me doing nothing (except regular dental cleaning) - I am still comfortable with my teeth.
Doctors are encouraged to systematize and commoditize their "care", and few are able to stand up to the pressure.
The few who are worth treasuring and showering with support.
One of them even went as far as telling me "Man, there's so many people sick ou there and you're here wasting your time and money while you're damn healthy. Go enjoy life :)"
Maybe doctors think differently in the US or you were just unlucky?
The important bit is, think and advocate for yourself, have healthy fear and respect for medical profession, and treasure the good doctors you come across.
And take good care of yourself so that you don't need them.
If you sleep 24 hours twice a year and all other time you sleep 7-9 - it is a reason to see a doctor?
Sometimes the stress is not obvious.
I don't really take sleeping that seriously in general, but I used to get sick pretty frequently (sick enough to not work, a couple times a year). Nowadays I have a routine, and it's not so different: if I feel a tiny bit sick, I go home, lie in bed, and order semi-healthy Mediterranean food (I have specific cravings when I get sick -- is this common?). I stay that way until I can't stand being in bed any more. I also avoid any source of stress.
The number of days per year when I'm sick has probably gone down by a factor of 4: I get properly sick half as often, and when I am sick, I get better much faster. Almost as importantly, getting sick is no longer "miserable" in the same way. It seems a substantial part of the misery of being sick (with something mild, like a cold or, at my age, flu) just comes from trying to do things you shouldn't try to do. Lying in bed and executing a nap/snack/pee/read loop... that's not so bad.
(As others in this thread love to point out, this doesn't work for people with bad sick leave, or stressful jobs, or single parents, and so on and so forth. That's a strong case for sick leave etc., as far as I see.)
I'm grateful to the sacrifices of all the chickens I've consumed over the years. May their spirits feel my gratitude and find peace in helping me.
This very much.
And I go crazy lying in bed for long, so for me I rather find a quiet spot in nature in the sun (or shade), even if I am quite sick. A river is perfect. And then just sit or lie for hours.
But I live close to wild nature, so I could not do this if I would have to drive through some rush hour to get there.
Every single time I've said "well, I'll just go into the office and if I don't feel well, I can just head home midday", I've regretted it. It's too late.
I do not understand how people can live off 7 hours of sleep each night. It seems a big advantage though - they have 5 hours more per day.
Do you mean in the day you rest, and you sleep at night? Or you mean you might sleep four hours in the day and four at night?
Not sure if the first line means rest in the sense of cat sleep, or actual sleep.
Recently, thanks to my living circumstances, I generally stay up working through the night until sunrise, then sleep until about noon or a couple hours past, get up and start my day, do a couple hours of work, take a break for a walk, do some housework and socializing, and then around midnight, plus or minus midnight, start getting into working.
Throughout the day, I may feel tired, and that's when I take a break and lay down, sometimes cat-napping, sometimes dog-sleeping, and sometimes taking a legit nap.
Other times I may follow a "neo-traditional" schedule of getting up early in the morning and going to bed early-ish at night, maybe with a nap or two thrown in.
I may go to bed at dusk and then get up for a couple hours in the night, as people used to do commonly before artificial lighting.
If I am camping, it depends on the weather. In colder weather, there's a major advantage to sleeping during the day in that the sun keeps you warm. It's easier to stay warm through the night's cold awake and alert than tired and asleep.
If the weather is nice around the clock and there's plenty to do, I may only sleep a couple hours a night, the excitement of new experiences carrying me. Rainy or gray weather typically means sleeping more.
I would like to hear these other practices as well. I think your sleep practices are sound and derived from a solid theoretical basis.
I felt I had to eat sweets frequently, drink coca-coca everyday and 3 meals a day etc. My body felt terrible when I didn't. I stopped listed to what my body wanted and consciously stop those things. First week it was really painful. Second week I got used to. Third week I completely changed. Now I have to force myself do eat sweets, drink soda or having so many meals a day.
I still listen my body about drink water and not sure if I should really listen it when it comes to sleep.
I think you were right to consciously remove those things from its access.
Sleep was always an essential part of the equation, however.
Try to imagine how you lived 10K years ago.
All the things you mention would indeed take priority, and we probably spent days sleep deprived at times, making up for it with extended long sleep when there was opportunity.
I think our lives were not nearly as difficult or demanding as some imagine, however, especially when you factor in the social and tribal factor. Sleeping in shifts would allow for plenty, attacks were not constant, especially with good shelter, and shelter only takes so long to construct, if that's necessary at all.
Remember, we started in an environment which provided everything we needed already, and one we were evolved for.
If you look at the lives of other apex predators like lions, bears, and eagles, their lives are pretty good in this respect, and their biggest threats are either their own species or humans.
Exercise and absence of artificial light would probably have us sleeping much more deeply and much more quickly
In modern hunter-gatherer societies there is also a lot of free time and play, so perhaps there would also be less stress to recover from at night
Now I mostly eat spinach, lentils, organic granola, yams, brown rice, occasional fish. Cognition is better, sleep is better, energy is higher. I don't personally believe the body can get used to processed foods, I think it's much more likely that one might simply forget what it felt like to eat a normal diet and feel regular all the time.
Sausages are processed foods, but they kept us alive over the winter. Salt pork anyone? Dried fish? Weevil-filled grains that hopefully stay dry during the winter and foods in root cellars.
I'll add that plenty of processed food is an absolute miracle. Frozen vegetables, for example. You weren't simply eating processed food. You were eating low-quality food that wasn't exactly healthy.
As well there is a lot of misinformation and pseudoscience miracle cure babble in nutrition. For a long time now, we have been sold that preserved/processed foods = bad. But we where also sold that butter was bad and to eat margarine. Come to find out, trans fats where worse and butter and olive oil are actually pretty healthy for us. We were sold that all fat are bad and to eat more grains and carbs, then we got an explosion in diabetes, heart disease and various other related ailments.
These, examples don't even get into the pseudo science "cure cancer with body ph diets" type snake oil being sold, as well as the other multitudes of quackery that exist to sell a book. The fat, sugar dynamics was considered settled science and was pushed hard by the American Heart Association, and the Cancer Foundation for decades. In my opinion, nutritional science and the big tobacco science debacle that was raging at the same time, did more to damage "sciences" credibility with the uniformed public than anything else.
The reality is there are processed and preserved foods that are really good for us, there are processed and preserved foods that are really bad for us. Just as there are fresh foods that are really not so good for such as Asparagus for women.
Honestly short of a a few really bad things, such as slim-jims, modern processed candy and candy bars, soft-drinks and processed juices, the real trick is balance and moderation. Food variety, calorie restriction and fasting will do more to preserve health than eliminating a certain type of food, because it has been deemed "unhealthy" by the current regime of nutritional pseudoscience.
And honestly, if you don't differentiate that you don't mean that stuff, there is no way for a reader to tell. Some people absolutely mean processed foods like smoked fish, canned/frozen vegetables, and the like.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Slim-Jim-Smoked-Original-24-Count/dp/....
Edited for spelling.
It is simply bad if the substances are proven carcinogens, mutagens, endocrine disruptors, and sterilizers.
Not to mention all the poison which is produced and dumped into our air and water producing this stuff.
Your slim jim example includes the following:
Corn Syrup: proven harmful to human/animal health
Soy Protein Concentrate: proven harmful to human/animal
Spices: what is this? nobody knows
Dextrose: proven harmful to human/animal health
Paprika Extractives: nobody knows how this happens
Flavoring: flavoring is not an ingredient, this ingredient is concealed from view, and cannot be trusted
Hydrolyzed Soy: proven harmful to animal/human health
Sodium Nitrite: proven carcinogen, mutagen, and harmful to micro-biome.
You're talking about preserved food.
Processed food is made in giant boiler vats, with chemicals which we have not had in our environment for more than 50-80 years. Chemicals which were approved as "generally recognized as safe" several years before the same agency even admitted that tobacco was harmful to health. Which are proven carcinogens, mutagens, and irritants. If you compare this to salted sausage or sauerkraut, you're a fool.
Sausage is a highly processed food and definitely not good for you. Same for bacon. You can have highly processed food without chemicals: You can make processed cheese at home without the vats [1]. Not all "chemicals" are unnatural things that we didn't eat before, and some of the "chemicals" are preservatives, basically making them preserved foods.
We didn't really have frozen foods before refrigeration became common.
Bread in the 1800's wasn't very pure if you were buying the cheap stuff [2]. We weren't really eating "pure and natural" stuff before, and have been experimenting with different chemicals and things for eons. Some were fine (I'm guessing lutefisk isn't really bad for you despite the lye, same with pretzels), others weren't (lead whiteners, for example).
Just because one agency sees things as generally safe and has messed up doesn't mean all agencies have done this nor does it mean they are always wrong. Just like the fact that coke will clean battery terminals doesn't mean it is bad to have occasionally. Heck, eating lemons will destroy tooth enamel, but yet the juice will help keep scurvy away.
[1] https://youtu.be/qlJ30PGUk8Y [2] http://www.victorianweb.org/science/health/health1.html
Conceptually you are on to something. Pushing exhaustion isn’t smart.
All those meetings and deadlines and business software would mean nothing.
I do have some kind of FOMO, not really about being hyper productive but to be conscious, I could consider a perfectly well spent day even if I just lazed in bed, but i would need to be able to even think about stuff, watch the ceiling or just feel the sheets on my hands.
With how little time I have on this planet and all the possible experiences, I would definitely do without sleeping if I could.
How do you keep your sleep rhythms while you're working?
I've set a goal for myself of one commit daily, and I usually overshoot.
In my school days I used to maintain a dream diary, where I would note down every dream I had after waking up. I stopped doing that when I got into college, but dreams never stopped and I never stopped analysing and trying to remember the dreams.
Fast forward to present time (10 years from school), whenever I want to wake up i.e. after 6-7 hours of sleep I can't stop myself from thinking about the dream. It's like I am in a half-awake and half-sleepy state and I can't control myself to get fully awake, I know for sure I am not lucid dreaming.
I wake up to turn off the alarm, but my mind rushes back to thinking about the dream (because 99.9% of time it is very interesting and it seems like I need to dive into it further to understand/remember it). This cycle keeps on continuing, I drift to sleep while thinking about the dream, and then when I wake up there is a brand new dream in my head, and I get back to thinking about it. This cycle keeps on going for 2-3 hours, so my total sleep time from an outsider perspective is 10+ hours.
No matter how much I think before going to sleep to not think about the dreams in the morning no matter how interesting they are, I am not able to control myself in thinking about the dream in the morning and then just falling back to sleep eventually.
https://www.amazon.com/Clocky-Rolling-Sleeper-Bed-Room-Run-a...
Maybe you could start being grateful about the dreams and let them go, and focus on your body, be grateful you have two legs, you can breath... (find your own things).
Gratitude is not just contemplative bullshit, it can be about action, like OK I'm acknowledge all these good things I have, and I need to fight thermodynamics, taking action or they might go away, like are you grateful you have two legs, take the action of walking and so on, it can be about honoring those things we take for granted but we can lose.
I hope is not too cheesse or sounded crazy.
I know consciously expressing gratitude can be a powerful way to ground yourself and stay positive, but your insight about spurring action to fight thermodynamics is awesome.
Are you having a form of sleep paralysis maybe? This "half awake, half asleep" state is one I know quite well.
Here's a variety of sleep paralysis symptoms I've experienced over the years:
- You're in the "real world", but you feel like you're not really awake
- Limited control over your movements; or extreme difficulty moving your limbs; or you "feel" like you're moving, but you're not quite moving (or not at all; kind of like you're swimming in tar)
- Extreme stress / nervousness, like something's wrong and you can't figure out what; panic even sometimes
- Manifestation of some phobia (spiders, insects, monsters) in your room / around you
- The last few moments, or last situation of your dream keeps repeating, like it's on a loop (you "wake up", think you're awake, and you're still dreaming)
I usually feel pretty good if I don't remember any dream after waking up(Assuming they never happened).
Now that I think more of it, I agree it might be my lack of sleep quality which makes me tired and maybe places/offsets the REM sleep at odd times so I am able to remember the dreams. My circadian rhythm is definitely disturbed as go to sleep around 3:30 to 4:00 AM.
One of my friend has similar problem to yours, sort of like dreaming every night. One of the few thing she find very useful now is to drink a little bit of Alcohol / Red Wine before she sleeps, or do Sports that actually makes you sweat during the day. It seems your mind will spend all the energy on repairing your body then bothering to dream about something.
Well, from within the dream at least.
I remember once dreaming that my grandpa was tickling me with static electricity from his arm hairs (for some reason he had very hairy arms in this dream), and inside the dream that didn't seem weird at all. Then I woke up and realized that a fly was walking on my skin and that was the cause of the tickling sensation.
Yes, that happens. I have both read about and experienced it. For example if you are thirsty or hungry (in real life), that can be reflected in your dream, in a related but possibly also weird way (sometimes). Like if you have real hunger, you may dream that you are eating something. I either read or think that the brain/mind does this as a compensating/adjusting mechanism, so that sleep can continue. Same for needing to take a leak, although of course that cannot go on for long. And for the weird part, you may dream that you are eating something impossible to eat, like rocks, to take a wild example. After all, not all events in dreams are logical or follow physical laws of real life.
>What's more spooky is that the entire dream preserves it cohesion and nothing feels out of place, even when the events outside (in the real world) are completely random. Like sound of the door closing or someone walking by the bed, all of that integrates seamlessly into the dream.
Yes, that too happens, and is because any crazy/impossible event can happen in a dream, and in the dream it seems normal - i.e. what I said about physical laws above, and also because our physical senses still operate somewhat in dreams, and those sensations can show up as events in the dream.
I often wake up at night or early in the morning to go to bathroom, or take water. I found that the best way to go back to sleep after waking up is to think about the dream I just had. It seems like this 'forced' dream continuity is somehow sleep inducing.
What may be happening to you is the same thing: your firs instinct is trying to remember your dream, as you trained yourself through years of dream journaling. It's a learned behaviour. But what happens is, this induces sleep, and you're caught in the loop.
Maybe the trick is to go back to writing down your dreams when you wake up. This activity may keep you from falling back asleep.
Hope this helps.
I stopped journalling because I noticed I was interpolating the missing bits of my memory while writing down the dream. It became more like writing an imaginary story inspired from my dream, then recording my actual dream.
But that said, I definitely think this is good way to force myself out of the loop.
Gradually dimming the bedroom light with a warm color temperature helps me get tired in the evening, and fading it in to a cold color temperature in the morning helps me wake up.
Very interesting ideas in this thread: 1. Remembering the dream you were just having re-induces sleep 2. Writing a dream journal first thing every morning as a means of warming up higher levels of cognition (to help break through the morning haze) 3. Given #1 and #2: if you stop journaling, you might end up with a habit that puts you back to sleep in the mornings.
That is what I do too. For me, it is the best way to fall sleep right away.
Also, as usual, don't listen to random folks on the internet.
EDIT: My own experience with DMAE is that it made some dream memories hard to distinguish from reality. Did that happen only in a dream? I wasn't so sure sometimes.
When you wake up, force yourself out of bed, and immediately go wash your face, then do some pushups or go for a run around the block.
You're in charge of yourself, if you want to wake up, get out of bed and do it. How old are you?
Have you made reality checks? In lucid dreaming the blur between dreams and reality fades fast. Reality checks become non-reliable very fast. One has to make sure to invent constantly reality checks when the old ones stop being reliable.
I believe any kind of conscious dream processing is unhealthy. Our dreams is already the results of some kind of processing, so feeding them back as more experiences that need to be analyzed is confusing and tiring for your brain.
You said that you've been doing it since your school days, so perhaps you don't remember, but dreams are made from a different material then regular memories: they are usually very "slippery" and hard to hold on to. I think it's important in this case to go with our default behavior and to forget them as fast as possible. And yes, it means that all lucid dreaming practices are damaging your brain functionality IMO.
To break the loop you're in, I think you need to re-learn how to not mess with dreams. Give yourself the time you need, and if you're tired the best thing to do is to go back to sleep. But avoid doing so while thinking about any dream, or anything that is related to a dream, or even the abstract concept of dreams. When you catch yourself doing do, dismiss the thought with "oh, that isn't important" and then switch the topic to anything else, anything at all. You can follow the line where the wall meets the ceiling, for all your brain cares. The dismiss part is important, don't skip it. It prevents your brain from re-saving the thought. This trick can also be applied to that embarrassing moment your brain keeps popping at random times. Just "not important" wave, and a quick change of subject. Works like a charm.
Good night, sleep well and wake up :)
My claim is that processing a by-product of processing is confusing. It's blurring the line between what's real and what isn't, and to me this is a dysfunction.
That's it. That's the story. There's nothing wrong with you. Trying to set additional alarms, or worrying about how you used to record your dreams... Not relevant. Your body isn't done resting. Stop interrupting it before its done, and you'll find that 8ish hours of uninterrupted sleep is more restful than the quasi-sleep you're getting now.
That said, it’s important to realize that not everyone needs 8 hours of sleep. Some people are blessed to only need 6, some people are cursed to need 10 or 11 hours. Some people have extreme generic quirks that can go from only needing 4 to needing more than 12 (of course you should talk to a doctor if that’s you). 8 is definitely by far the most common, but it’s not a hard rule.
Probably true, but I value my free time and I want as much of it as possible. That means staying up late. Spending that time sleeping makes me feel like I live to work, and not work to live.
Staying up late enough that it will impact your following day due to curtailed sleeping is just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
As an unrepentant night owl, this fact doesn't make me happy, but that doesn't stop it from being true. If you want the best possible hours, as many as possible, step one is getting enough sleep at the right time, so that you feel your best during the day. As much as we may wish it were different, that's the way it is.
I’ll be honest, right now my routine is in rough shape after a bout of depression, but I’m at about 3-4 days a week and slowly building it up. This is a problem that comes and goes for me and focusing on a steady routine always helps.
I also recommend some meditation practice. On my worse days my mind is a mess of thoughts and dreams in the morning and I can’t make sense of the world much less the running shoes next to my bed. The way I get myself out of that is to bringing back my attention to my breath and body as mindfulness. Eventually I have enough awareness I can start to curl my body and prop myself up for a few minutes while I continue to collect myself.
Second, while I now use a lamp which ramps up the light before it starts to chime, I used music (instrumental and not to hectic) to wake me up. Music might get you something else to concentrate on while finally waking up.
BTW, both ramping up lights and playing music at "alarm time" looks like a nice side project for a Raspi. Does somebody know about such a solution?
You're lucky. It takes me much practice and cultivation to be able to have that kind of clarity in dream retention.
I ask that people don't talk to me after I wake up, and I keep a journal close, and I work at it, and I'm still able to attain anything like what you're describing only sometimes.
In programming terms, in your sleep, your brain runs a full reference check against all nodes, and the ones that fired the brightest are what you're seeing when you wake up.
Don't let this valuable information go to waste.
The solution to many addiction problems (which you suggest this might be) can be to simply be more context-aware. In the heat of a game, of course you want to keep playing the game. But the more you think about your entire life's context, who you are vs. who you want to be, what you need to get done vs. what you're getting done -- the less focus the object of addiction is able to retain.
(Fun related fact -- more than half of drug addictions in the US are simply "outgrown", with no intervention to blame.)
Probably related, I've struggled with depression nearly my entire adult life. I've learned to cope, drug free, but yea, I'm sure on a neural level my brain just isn't firing at peak levels like a normal person.
Ask to not be disturbed.
Go to sleep.
Sleep until you wake up.
Stay laying down until you fall asleep again.
Your sleep will now be shallow, and it will be easy to drift in and out, and retain a half-conscious state for extended periods.
My savior has been audiobooks. I listen a lot, but put a book I know and love on when I wake up 4x/night with a timer and that helps me focus on something new and not stressful (dreams, “I need to go to sleep” etc) while still being something that my brain is familiar with and can naturally drift away from into sleep.
Works 80% of the time. Been a life saver for me
I mean, maybe this one will, but the research regarding sleep duration is very, very sound. We are talking upwards of 50k people. Effects of sleeping too little are tightly and consistently associated with Alzheimer, cancer growth, bad emotional control, mental disorder episodes and heavy machinery accidents.
I would say sleep is where cigarettes were in the late fifties or early sixties:
Researchers and people who deal with the matter professionally already know too well how severe effects are. Ask for example ER-doctors in countries with summer/winter time, who are preparing for heavy load every time the switch makes people sleep an hour less. Yet, the vast majority of people, even quite knowledgeable ones, deny any negative effect of missing sleep, caffeine is freely available in children's products and sleep-deprived truck drivers flatten family cars every week like clockwork.
> For cognition only, associations shift to a negative association of sleep duration and cognition for participants sleeping more than 8 hr a day.
Though looking at the charts from the study I can say that Nassim Taleb would not be pleased with how weak the correlations seem to be:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/545fd00f-8924-4047...
I average 7 hours of sleep per night and do quite well on it. Used to do 5-6 hours/night and it eventually caught up to me in my 30s, but improving quality via ear plugs + mask + mattress went a lot further than an extra hour of sleep.
Now, I just sleep as long as I need, which is usually 8-9h a day.
I struggled with sleep for years, but now I sleep good.
I've noticed the same pattern on roommates and family members as well.
I fondly the time between school and university, when I was unemployed.
I was awake until 7 and slept until 16. I didn't even party much at that time.
Melatonin levels should naturally spike near onset, but it can be suppressed by blue light emitting electronics and caffeine. A filter like flux on media devices in the evening can help - https://justgetflux.com/
Also, don't send them to sleep too soon.
It’s interesting how different minds work. :)
I wonder if 8h of sleep is the cause of the better performance or they both are a result of less stressful life, better health or something else.
It was hard at first but now that I am used to it, I'm hooked.
I normally feel best on 7-8 hours of sleep. When training hard I require 9 hours.
There are genetic outliers who require less sleep (google it).
Anecdotally: I have a friend who performs like anyone else, but only requires around 5-6 hours of sleep. I've known him for over a decade now, he seems to be doing fine.
This illustrates well the problem with these kinds of studies. How do we know that stress isn't causing both little/poor sleep and e.g. decreased cognitive performance (as opposed to little sleep being the cause of a decrease in cognitive performance)?
It's not like we can create a control group where stressed people are forced to get 8 hours of good sleep every night.
If you mean that you cannot literally make people sleep: No, but you can manipulate consistently by just setting sleep opportunity and then measure the actual sleep time on top of that to draw conclusions.
At https://soundmind.co, we're building a headband focused on improving Sleep Performance, by monitoring your sleep state and using sound to alter sleep state. There is amazing research around improving sleep quality, by improving sleep maintenance (aka reducing waking during the night), increase occurrence and amplitude of sleep spindles, and more.
In initial trials, we've lowered average time awake from 1hr 41 minutes to 32 minutes, using a sample of 4 nights without stim, and 4 nights with. I need to do a blog post about that soon. We're still gathering more data.
If this is an area of interest, you can sign-up for the waitlist on our website, or happy to answer questions here.
Are there at least preliminary papers you can cite as the basis for this idea? because it sounds super interesting.
I want to write about efficacy of what we're doing, and how we approach that, as well.
I would _never_ give a site like that my email. Consider at least showing your product/research/something that's not a stock image of... a Lion? A sunset? Waves on the beach?
TBH, I'm a bit surprised as many people give us their email address as do. We really want this to be a waitlist, for people that want the product. We took a page out of SuperHuman on design.
In many ways, it's different strokes for different folks. Your response is the opposite of what we've heard from others, who love the design.
We're still in design of the final product, and have prototype units. If you want to see ugly, we've got that!
How would we show our research? The stock imagery seems to be working, so we'll stick to that until we have something more professional to show.
I'm 45, Bipolar type II. Ever since trying intermittent fasting I'm extremely tired after meals, and my caffeine tolerance is way up. I always drank half a cup at most, now I need 2.5 a day just to function. I have sleep apnea, but it's well controlled with a CPAP(AHI<5). I feel like I need a couple month sabbatical to reset myself but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I'm managing the same insomnia with very low dose of mirtazepine (1mg per evening) and the occasional ambien when I wake up.
People use larger doses of melatonin as a hypnotic to make them fall asleep right away, but that's not the only use.
(Personally I get upset at the computer more easily, if I'm tired. Hmm maybe I should stop working now)
Withdrawal was surprising. On the first day, I fell asleep at 6pm until the next morning. The next day, 8pm until morning. Felt ill for a week. Ached all over. The waistband on my pyjamas was uncomfortable... felt like I had the flu, until my one allowed morning coffee, which made it all go away.
Never went full cold turkey, but compared to routine intake, it was close enough. I still have my coffee in the morning, but in the evening, I'm asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. For the first time since I was a kid.
I'm at a point now where I don't think coffee is for me - I love the taste and the effect but not at the expense of a good night's sleep!
I never thought a morning coffee can affect sleep. But once I quit, I realized just how much it does.
Now I use coffee if I wanna stay up late on a Friday night - a cappuccino in the morning makes sure I’m wide awake until midnight.
10 years on and although I don't stay up to socialise anymore, I still really struggling to get enough sleep. No matter how tired I am throughout the day my mind seems to naturally wake up around 10pm and I rarely want to go to bed before 3am despite having to be up at 9am for work. On average I probably get 5-6 hours a night on a week day and 7-8 a night on weekends.
Also every now and then (2 or 3 times a year) my body simply refuses to sleep and I will be completely unable to sleep for 2-3 days. Again, although I know I need sleep I am not "tired". I'll put my head down on the pillow and nothing, my mind is racing and my body is fidgety and hyperactive.
I don't know if I've conditioned myself to develop an unhealthy sleep pattern as a teenager, but I really struggle with sleep these days. I have tried to condition myself with having a schedule and dimming lights past 9pm, but so far I haven't had much luck shutting my head off at an appropriate time. However when I do eventually sleep I will typically want to stay in bed for 12+ hours it's just that's rarely possible because of work, etc.
Does anyone have any tips for me? I seem to naturally want to sleep around 5-7pm so these days if I'm feeling particularly sleep deprived I'll try to get a couple of hours after work, but again this isn't always possible and sometimes my body will refuse to sleep even if I lie there for two hours.
Sleeping pills aren't great but not sleeping isn't either. And not sleeping well can create a bad cycle where you stay up late to finish stuff that you didn't do during the day due to exhaustion.
Starting from the age of 13 and till 18 I would go to bed at 1-2 AM, occasionally at 3-4 only to wake up at 7-8 AM almost every day. Double espresso every morning, 10-15 minute naps in the classroom/subway/literally anywhere/nights without sleep at all - I had it all. The only exception were Sundays, where I would get solid 11+ hours sleep.
I think during these times I learned the value of high-quality sleep and I am simply afraid to miss on it now.
Also no alarm clocks, coffee/energetics only when it's really necessary (once a few months at most), regular exercise (does not matter what exactly, as long as I move any parts of my body, even plain walking around is amazing) - all of it goes a long way to help with the sleep.
(An alternative interpretation of these events is that my body rewired itself in my mid 20s and my behavior changed accordingly.)
- read a textbook before sleeping (works for me everytime)
- turn off the lights by 8 (not just dimming)
- get rid of your tv if you have one
personal anecdote:
for me, difficulty in sleeping is also caused by work anxiety, so... maybe changing that work environment might be something to think about
That works wonders for me. You won't fall asleep in less than two minutes the first time you do it, but after doing it for two weeks, you will.
Relaxing the muscles is very important to be able to fall asleep. Pay attention to the facial muscles and those of the eyes. To clear my mind of distracying thoughts I count from 120 to 0. These days I seldom reach 100 before I'm asleep.
You might be skeptical that the process works as stated in the article, as I was, but after you see that the process works reliably you also get the benefit of less anxiety about being able to fall asleep.
It is also very important to check your 25-OH Vit D serum levels. Watch the interview with Dr. Stasha Gominak about the relation between vit D and sleep that was posted recently.
Another article I just read on that site was on "hypnagogic naps" basically napping for less than a second, by holding a heavy metal key or ball bearings between your thumb and forefinger, draped over an armrest, or hanging off your bed, and below it are plates or pans. When you fall asleep and your fingers let go of the object(s), they fall and clang against the plates/pans and wake you up.
According to the article, it has been used by many artists and scientists such as Poe, Edison, Dali, Poincare, and Robert Louis Stevenson to gain inspiration and insight into problems/find new ideas etc.
Light pollution, noise pollution, blue light emitting devices, being “connected” 24x7, synthetic bedding materials, global man made crisis to worry about.
Now study after study on how getting more sleep is important.
Melatonin blunts much of degeneration triggers that occur with age and is balanced by vitamin D3 (+ K2; ensure magnesium sufficiency) in the morning.
Another thing is not drinking caffeine AT ALL. My sleep quality got much better after I stopped drinking coffee. Strangely I can drink as much tea as I want but coffee makes me sleep badly.
I started wearing ear plugs and facemask to sleep. I started wearing it because my partner usually sleeps much later than me. First couple night took some adjusting, but after a week or two. I realized something. I started falling asleep almost immediately after putting on the ear plugs and facemask. That's when I made the realization I unintentionally created a habit with the ear plugs and facemask as the cue.
It is a horrendous condition that will ruin your life.
Apnea is serious though. It hit me when I was relatively fit at 43 and took a chunk of my youth with it. Ever since, I have more of an "old man" brain(like getting overwhelmed by stimulus, especially when driving). I've been on CPAP for over 2 years and my apnea is well controlled, but some things just don't seem to come back.
Sp02 is useful, but mainly to ensure you're not dipping in o2 from leaks, bad fit, incorrect pressure, etc. It is not a diagnostic tool.
A sleep study can pick up things like restless leg syndrome, central vs obstructive sleep apneas, RERA's, etc.
Regarding the "brain fog" - I know exactly what you're talking about. I've improved mine significantly via:
- Getting extensive blood tests to find any deficiencies. Turns out, I was deficient in vitamin D (really bad) and testosterone (which is produced during high quality REM stage, I believe). - Taking a boat load of supplements. L-Tyrosine, NAC, too many to list.
Sometimes PAP therapy doesn't fix endocrine issues like testosterone. Going on TRT has been a game changer for both mental and physical improvement.
I wonder why in this day and age where sleep monitoring tech is so widely available and routine, they still rely entirely on self-reporting?
The findings of the present study are in line with other studies, which showed that cognitive performance and white matter are associated with sleep duration.„
On the other hand, I often hear stories of top-performing founders who claim to get by on just four hours of sleep or less over longer periods of time. Yet, getting too little sleep on an ongoing basis can have a negative impact on health. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Stanford University, found that employees who slept for six hours or less per night were more likely to be sick, take more time off work and have higher rates of absenteeism than those who got seven to eight hours of shut-eye each night. When I sleep less than 8 hours, I have this sensation of less energy throughout the day, regardless of how much coffee I'm taking in.
One way to reduce the amount of time you are spending in bed not working is to develop a system for falling asleep faster. This is a skill that can be learned. The first step is to develop a routine for going to bed. This should include the same steps every night, such as brushing your teeth, washing your face, and reading a book. The routine should take about 20 minutes or less.
Next, you need to develop a pre-sleep ritual that will help you relax and fall asleep faster. This could include taking a warm bath or shower before bedtime, listening to soothing music, to relaxing nature sounds, or reading something relaxing like poetry or fiction, but not nonfiction because that‘s harder to process by your brain. It’s important not to do anything too stimulating before bedtime because this will make it harder for you to fall asleep. For example, and I'm not suggesting that anyone here is doing that very often, avoid watching movies with lots of action and violence in them because they can stimulate your mind and body too much at night when you are trying to sleep.
There are many techniques to fall asleep faster, thereby reducing the time you lie awake in bed.
- Use the bed only for sleep, being sick or making love. Don’t read, watch TV, or eat in bed.
- Avoid naps during the day. If you must nap, keep it short (no more than 20 minutes) and don’t nap too close to bedtime.
- Exercise regularly but not within 3 hours of your regular bedtime. Exercise can make you feel tired but also revs up your metabolism, which may interfere with falling asleep quickly.
- Avoid blue light around bedtime. It‘s a potent stimulator of the brain’s retinal ganglion cells, relaying visual information to the brain, which is like queuing up mountains of data for the GPU. It also suppresses melatonin production at night, which makes us feel more awake.
- Be mindful about the sonic ambience in your bedroom. Is there distracting patterned noise like someone snoring, outside traffic or people talking? Mask it by playing unpredictable audio that covers up much of the audible spectrum, at the lowest volume possible just so it masks those noises enough.
(new here, I hope this was a helpful contribution)
Some effects are probably exaggerated (as mentioned in the wiki) but it's clear that evolution highly prioritized sleep across many species