Biomarker of Alzheimer's found to be regulated by sleep cycles | Hacker News Reader

Biomarker of Alzheimer's found to be regulated by sleep cycles

newatlas.com

You should take these findings with a big grain of salt. Remember we don't yet even have a causal model of Alzheimer's and dementia. Amyloid plaques are strongly associated with Alzheimer's but it's not clear if they're the actual cause or if they're just a residual indicator that something else has already gone wrong in the brain. As a counterpoint to the amyloid hypothesis, we also see amyloid build ups in patients suffering from sleep apnea, and yet they don't show the hallmark signs of dementia or Alzheimers [1].

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200928103416.h...

This can be said for a ton of other bio indicators . Similar: does alcohol consumption increase risk of cancer by X percentage or do X percent of alcoholics engage in some cancer causing activity/practice.

Are the sleep cycles of Alcoholics causing them to have weakened immune surveillance for cancerous cells or is it the direct effect of alcohol on the cells that causes them to divide incorrectly?

>big grain of salt

Isn’t the point of the “grain of Salt” to indicate that it is trivial? If so, then by saying “big grain of salt” aren’t you undermining the point of the original statement?

I see this regularly and wonder if I am missing something.

> Isn’t the point of the “grain of Salt” to indicate that it is trivial?

No, it's from an ancient adage about food being mmore easily swallowed when accompanied by salt. The “grain of salt” you take with a dubious statement with is to make it easier to swallow.

A “big grain of salt” is a suggestion that it needs more assistance to be swallowable than a typical target of the saying.

And then there are those statements that require a salt lick.

Thank you!

I interpret it as emphasizing the colloquialism. Also it seems to wave towards the perceived significance of the statement.

"I heard Marvel is releasing three movies in 2021"

"You should take that with a grain of salt"

"I heard Marvel and DC are doing a Justice League / X-Men crossover in 2021"

"You should take that with a big grain of salt"

The phrase means the same as "be sceptical".

Vaccine contains microchips? Yeah you're going to want to take that with a major grain (pinch in the UK!) of salt / be highly sceptical about it.

https://thesaurus.plus/related/pinch_of_salt/scepticism

> As a counterpoint to the amyloid hypothesis, we also see amyloid build ups in patients suffering from sleep apnea, and yet they don't show the hallmark signs of dementia or Alzheimers [1].

I feel like the article doesn’t imply that the amyloid buildup causes the dementia/altzheimers. Just that it makes the effects worse.

What does this mean for people with severe Delayed Phase Sleep Syndrome (DSPS)? I do not feel the need for sleep until usually about 2am, and I find it exceedingly difficult to wake up before 10am.

And yes, it's made it extremely difficult to live a "normal" life like your typical person who can wake up at 7am without issue. It's been a problem with relationships, poor performance in school, issues in promotions and work performance, etc.

I wasn't diagnosed with this but I had the symptoms and the consequences you mentioned.

It took a long time to fix. Here's some things I tried. Some may have helped or none may have helped.

* I bought blackout blinds and use a sleeping mask (sometimes earplugs)

* I bought a bright light (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FFJYMVS) and a smart plug. 15 mins before I wanted to wake up I would have a timer turn on the light.

* I eat healthier in all regards

* I started working out

* I started walking a lot more

* I stop drinking coffee at 11am (and drink tea after that)

* I stopped some doing some things late at night (after 23:30) (gaming, programming, eating, using my phone)

* I started listening to audiobooks

Reminds me of wozniaks advice: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Curing_DSPS_and_insomnia

Hey, thanks for posting that! It's exactly the information I've been looking for, all in one place.

Bookmarked for reading later, I think I suffer from this. I normally can’t fall asleep before 2-4am, even if my body is physically tired I often feel like I can’t turn off my brain, once I’m asleep I sleep well and wake up naturally after 6-8 hours. It does seem cutting off screens an hour or so before bed and melatonin sometimes helps.

I have a threshold that if I surpass quickly becomes a chase. My solution is to go to bed at around 8pm and read until I fall asleep, which is sometimes immediate but never usually much past 10pm. That way, I can wake up fully refreshed at 4am, or I can sleep until 7am if I need it.

I use melatonin to reset my sleep cycle if I mess up and end up staying up all night. A mg or two at around 5pm helps me back into my target range, and from there I usually don't need it.

Routines are important. If I didn't try to actively control it, I'd stay awake until the sun came up and then sleep until noon, and I much prefer working in solitude when I first wake up than when I'm mentally fatigued at the end of a day.

That's a great resource, thanks for sharing. Maybe I will start drinking in the morning :)

Can confirm that similar steps plus mindfulness meditation plus becoming father has dramatically changed my sleep patterns. - And I have had sleep disorder for decades. It took two years (and becoming father) and another two years until I adopted the new sleep pattern.

This year I found the most effective method, I have tried everything but wasn't enough: sunshine, flux, sleep hygiene, diet, exercise. Basically the method is as soon as you wake up you start working out, the longer and harder you work out the earlier you will get up the next day.

Have you tried melatonin? I had something similar to this and taking melatonin 1h before my desired bedtime has changed my life.

I have DSPS and 10 mg melatonin works very well for me too.

Does it make you drowsy in the morning? I typically take 7mg and it helps me fall asleep but I feel drowsy the next day.

It's quite high, you only really need 0.3mg for an effective dose and you get diminishing returns after that in the form of grogginess.

You're probably right, but it's annoying we need to apply this perfect regime just to fall asleep.

Why can't we just be tired in the evening? I have friends who would fall asleep on the couch while watching a movie if it went past 11pm. Meanwhile I have to do some bullshit ww2 pilot exercise just to fall asleep at 1am.

They probably aren't getting healthy sleep, which is why they fall asleep so easy. They're actually starved of quality sleep

Anecdata: Have kids and a full time job. Play sports. Normal stuff. Problem solved

Before kids it was much much harder to fal asleep. Now i can fall asleep faster than them during sotry time.

Its like night and day. Pun intended

I think some of us genetically are more sensitive to the impact of light, caffeine, etc on the circadian rhythm. There's also other factors like work. Cortisol levels are higher coming off of work and it takes time to wind down.

Think of it this way: there's nothing special about a time zone, and yet we know that if we moved several time zones away, we'd shift. The differences are in light patterns, timing of work and social life, food intake, etc. Incidentally, many of these factors are within our control.

Daily gym is the only thing that really helped me, which makes the corona lockdown very hard for me, basically staying awake all nights since 6 months.

Thanks for the tip with the sleeping mask, I will try.

My wife seems to have this but nothing we've tried helps. She wasn't always like this, prior to my meeting her, she spent a few years working at her family's restaurant where her daily schedule would be something like: - Wake up at 10:00AM - Go to work by 11:00AM. - Get off work at 10:30PM. - Eat "dinner" at around midnight-1AM. - 1AM-2/3AM is free time. - Go to sleep at 3AM, rinse repeat.

She was not like this when she worked an office job (fashion designer), but now she can't get back to a "normal" schedule.

To add to this, I found something that seems to help when getting to bed - focusing on the visual artifacts that are there with the eyes closed and wondering what's there. Often I will soon not remember anything else, and other times I will be aware that the mind's eye has started creating vivid and detailed imagery, followed by not remembering anything beyond that.

Alas, poor aphantasiacs.

Have you tried biphasic sleep? A cycle with one 2-7am sleep and a significant afternoon sleep (don't call it a nap-- at least 90 minutes) would get you enough sleep. It's easier to carve out that 90 minutes than it is to change all the things you need to change to shift your natural cycle.

Maybe I should give this a try. I've never been a nap person unless I got <5-6h of sleep the previous day, but seems worth a try.

A lot of biphasic sleepers claim to do one 4.5h session and one 1.5h session, and that it's like a hack on getting less sleep. You might be one of those. I need 8 in either mode.

Earplugs and a sleep mask are helpful if you're having trouble in the second phase.

if you could allow yourself to get 4 hours of sleep at midday (14-15 to 18-19) then do it, and go to sleep at 2-3 am for the other, longer part

There's no literature I'm aware of studying links between DSPD and Alzheimer's. However, DSPD is characterized as delayed sleep...not less sleep. As long as you're getting sufficient sleep and feel rested when you do sleep, I don't think it matters when you do it as it relates to this issue.

As someone who's dealt with DSPD in his 20s, I'll refrain from advice. I got no end of people telling me to exercise more, drink less caffeine, or any number of things like I hadn't desperately tried everything. My personal experience was that it naturally got easier in my late 30s, but the less I fought it and the more I worked around it the better I felt. If you are looking for help, I encourage you to check out the DSPD subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DSPD/

>As long as you're getting sufficient sleep and feel rested when you do sleep, I don't think it matters when you do it as it relates to this issue.

I usually sleep 9-10 hours and feel very tired all day. If I sleep 11-11.5 hours, then I'll feel rested, but this rarely happens.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of days I have an early meeting morning and sleep for 6-7h, but I will feel even more tired than when I sleep "only" 9h. Frustrating because 9h is on the verge of "too much sleep" for most people.

You may have apnea. Do a sleep study or get a PC noise detector software that records nighttime noise changrs.

Ever get checked for sleep apnea or the like? It sounds like unrefreshing sleep, it's unlikely that you need more time in bed as usually this makes things worse leading to fragmented sleep / more awakenings.

As you know it's hard to get long refreshing sleep when you have DPSD need to be up by 8.

Well are you getting a full night's sleep? If so that seems fine. You can still get sufficient light exposure in the daytime to better anchor your circadian rhythm, and increased vitamin D3 intake helps to this end (in the day).

If you're intent on shifting your circadian rhythm backwards, you'd have to get up earlier in the morning at a consistent time and try to eschew what might delay your onset, i.e. blue light emitting electronics, before bed. You can use a blue light filter like flux for that in the evening to help. more on that here - https://insomniasos.net/

I'm curious if sleep aids, whether it's OTC like melatonin or Rx like trazodone and Ambien, can help this situation. Is it just the sleep that's beneficial or is it "natural" sleep (that term doesn't mean anything, but you get the point of it)? In other words, should people who have difficulty sleeping look to aids as a way of staving off dementia later in life.

The first line of treatment is CBT-I.

I wouldn't start CBT-I without first getting a sleep test, particulary for sleep apnea which can be present without obvious symptoms beyond insomnia or a delayed sleep phase. It's also much more common in young fit people than is often thought.

I would by virtue that CBTi isn't just sleep restriction, the most important component is CBT. At any rate restriction need not be very severe.

My point is that CBTi isn't what you need if you have sleep apnea or some other treatable disorder as the root of your sleeping issues.

CBT-I is psychotherapy targeted at treating one specific cause of insomnia. It does not address any of the physical ailments that may also lead to sleep disorders.

If you aren't careful, you'll lose your internet medical license with such bold medically unsound claims.

I think our friendly internet medical doctor was trying to say that there are some useful principles in CBT-I that could be helpful for a lot of people, which is probably true.

As someone who took way too long fussing with sleep hygiene and the like before finally getting a proper sleep test though, I see the potential danger of telling people what to do first. (Though in my defense, I did get a sleep test a while back and it ended up the sleep tech was trash and I should have gotten a second opinion)

CBTi is generally effective, and "physical ailments" are not generally suspect in the case of insomnia. You can get checked for ailments such as sleep apnea anyhow and CBTi doesn't somehow jeopardize that. It's not like it has to be either or.

Melatonin is a hormone that can assist you with falling asleep, but it has no capability to keep you asleep or allow you to reach the 4 stages of deep sleep. Ambien is worse, in that it can make you feel like you are going to sleep, but you will not get into the deep states of sleep required for the brain to detoxify itself. The same is true for weed. Some folks use weed to help themselves sleep, but they are actually depriving themselves of the 4 stages of deep sleep. Chronic use of Ambien, weed and other drugs can cause a person to have mild hallucinations, delirium tremens or worse.

This will be an unpopular opinion, but I believe the better method of improving sleep is to improve eating habits, go easy on caffeine, get exercise, get rid of artificial light hours before going to sleep and stay away from people and things that cause you stress. Easier said than done.

I think melatonin and ambien are longer-lasting in their neurological effects than THC. People use fat solubility and detection to counter that, but I don't buy it since that's separate from effect.

I was under the impression that melatonin regulates your sleep wake cycle, and so you take it to do a reset, not to just get to sleep one night

When you consume it as a supplement, you are inducing what your body would normally produce anyway if you are in normal cycles and in the dark. The only difference is dosage. Your body produces very small amounts. Stores sell pills that range from 1mg to 10mg and sometimes even higher. Even 1mg is a lot. That is why they suggest you stop taking it for a couple weeks, every few months. One use of melatonin is to attempt to reset a sleep cycle if your cycles have been thrown off by travel or other circumstances. Other uses are unrelated to sleep and have interactions with the gut. Hormones are almost always multipurpose. Melatonin has no ability to keep you asleep however.

Resetting your sleep cycles can take a day, a few days or weeks depending on your age, health, hormone levels and environment.

In terms of wake cycle, your body will metabolize the melatonin and then later start producing more adrenaline. As people get older and if damage has occurred to their adrenal glands, or a myriad of other problems, then they may start producing adrenaline too soon and wake up early, feeling anxiety. This can also be a result of too much Cortisol (stress response hormone). These hormones are a complex topic all by themselves, even leaving out confounding factors.

If you get the melatonin strips that dissolve on your tongue, you can cut them into 1/8ths and the dose becomes more reasonable (0.3ish instead of 3mg)

What you said about adrenaline in the morning - very interesting!

Thc is found to increase deep sleep and reduce rem, which isn't ideal but significantly better than RX drugs like ambien and benzos.

if you're interested on learning more about it, read Why We Sleep. It talks about sleep aids and the importance of quality sleep

Trazodone actually increases deep sleep and is associated with reduced risk of dementia.

From the paper Chi3l1/YKL-40 is controlled by the astrocyte circadian clock and regulates neuroinflammation and Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis [1]:

> Regulation of glial activation and neuroinflammation are critical factors in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). YKL-40, a primarily astrocytic protein encoded by the gene Chi3l1, is a widely studied cerebrospinal fluid biomarker that increases with aging and early in AD.

> Accordingly, Chi3l1 knockdown increased phagocytosis of zymosan particles and of β-amyloid peptide in both astrocytes and microglia in vitro. We further observed that expression of Chi3l1 is regulated by the circadian clock, as deletion of the core clock proteins BMAL1 or CLOCK/NPAS2 strongly suppresses basal Chi3l1 expression, whereas deletion of the negative clock regulators PER1/PER2 increased Chi3l1 expression. Basal Chi3l1 mRNA was nonrhythmic because of a long mRNA half-life in astrocytes. However, inflammatory induction of Chi3l1 was gated by the clock. Our findings reveal Chi3l1/YKL-40 as a modulator of glial phagocytic activation and AD pathogenesis in both mice and humans and suggest that the astrocyte circadian clock regulates inflammatory Chi3l1 induction.

The New Atlas title conflates "sleep cycles" with "circadian rhythm". The Washington University news release gets it right [2].

[1] https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/12/574/eaax3519

[2] https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/protein-involved-in-removing...

Thanks for posting this. Helps me springboard into the paper faster.

> We further observed that expression of Chi3l1 is regulated by the circadian clock, as deletion of the core clock proteins BMAL1 or CLOCK/NPAS2 strongly suppresses basal Chi3l1 expression, whereas deletion of the negative clock regulators PER1/PER2 increased Chi3l1 expression. Basal Chi3l1 mRNA was nonrhythmic because of a long mRNA half-life in astrocytes. However, inflammatory induction of Chi3l1 was gated by the clock

I'm struck by how much this description sounds like someone debugging or reverse-engineering some unknown microcontroller.

Do you (or anyone) know: has molecular bio always been like this? Or are there new tools that allow for selective inhibition of signals to observe effects?

They use CRISPR/Cas9 [1] techniques on animal models, mice in this case. They knock out the gene that transcribes the protein in question and observe the impact in the lab.

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

In this situation, what does disrupted circadian cycle refer to? Somebody who cannot sleep when they are tired and needs a lot of coffee in the morning? Or somebody who gets woken up a lot?

I'm currently reading the book, "Why We Sleep (Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)" right now and I'm stunned by all the new things we ignored when it comes to sleep. There are so many fascinating aspects of our life and body, all governed by Sleep.

I highly suggest reading the book to explore more about your sleep.

I got that book based upon a HN recommendation. It's fascinating reading and made me think carefully about how much sleep I was getting.

I used to think of sleep as something that I could put off on a whim and catch-up on over the weekend. I would stay up later to play video games or program if I felt like it. Now, I'm a lot more rigorous in keeping to my nighttime sleep schedule. Whatever I'm doing can normally wait until the next day.

Be warned, that book is riddled with scientific and factual errors: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

HN thread on guzey's article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

Walker has responded to some of this:

https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-...

Is this really Walker? I think that Alexey Guzey responded to this blog post though. It doesn't really counter any of Alexey's points.

Very interesting writing, I wonder if the people sleeping just 6 hours (who are in the best condition acc. to a later explanation) wouldn't be because they have a cause in their life? They have a purpose that is why they get up early and motivated enough to work on it. For people with more sleep might be less motivated in average?

Interesting topic nevertheless.

I find this to be true. I sleep in 90-minute sleep cycles. I time my morning alarm thus (adding 10-15 minutes for initial spindown).

When I wake up, even if it's 4.5hrs, my brain is typically going a mile-a-minute. There's so much I want to accomplish, it's hard to be mindful and go back to sleep (so I rarely do, especially if it's 'only' 6hrs vs. the 7.5 I seem to need).

I looked back at my sleep logs, and I've slept longer than 7.5 only a handful of times in 2020, and it's always correlated with several nights of 1.5, 3, or 4.5 hrs.

I wonder if there are other books on the topic that have nicer reviews

It's not a good book and was basically just used to get Matt Walker on daytime talk shows. It doesn't even attempt to answer the question in its title, and it has many cherry picked studies that don't actually prove what he's implying they do.

I'd argue that regardless of the author's motive, as a layperson, it's a good book because it's easy to read and started me down the path of exploring my sleep in-depth. My take away from the book is, like so many other biological functions, we still don't really know why we sleep but we know sleep is important. Learn more if you want to, learn about why this book could be considered controversial but for most people the takeaway of "sleep good" is what matters.

The book is great and Matt Walker is one of the leaders in the field of sleep study. There are numerous studies backing what he's written - even though there were some inaccuracies with some of the citations & ways he presented some facts, that is entirely expected in a book presenting thousands of such facts, and the author is planning on fixing all in the upcoming revised edition.

It's a great book for emphasizing the importance of sleep. The author's desired outcome is to get people interested in healthy sleep habits, and he hits a home run in that regard.

However, take some of the science positions in the book with a grain of salt. The author is notorious for being directionally correct in his opinions, but exaggerating a lot of the science for dramatic effect. This doesn't matter at all if you're reading the book to convince yourself to build better sleep habits, of course.

However, it does seem to leave some people with exaggerated worries or anxiety about dying early or developing serious disease conditions if they've ever gone through periods of life with short sleep (college, raising kids, video game addiction) or if they're in a life situation that limits their sleep. In that regard, it's worth noting that the author is really stretching some of the studies and cherry-picking results to support his argument. Getting 6 hours per sleep at night will not be the death of you, despite what the book suggests.

It's also commonly known that people get less sleep than they think they do. Someone might tell you they get 8 hours of sleep each night because they try to sleep from 11PM to 7AM, but in reality they stretch their bed time to midnight more often than not and then read their phone in bed for 15-30 minutes. Sleep advocates try to compensate by exaggerating target sleep times for adults to 8 hours. In reality, 7-ish hours of sleep appears to be just fine for most adults, with some requiring less and others requiring more. That said, most people will have to target 8 hours of dedicated bed time to really get those 7 hours of sleep in practice, hence the common exaggerations.

I have a weird relationship with sleep.

If I sleep LESS (5, 6 hours) I feel better. More energy, lighter on my feet, less depressed.

That lack of sleep always catches up with me though, and after 4-5 days of that I'll have a day where I just feel EXHAUSTED and end up sleeping like 10 hours that night.

For me it seems like the earlier I start the less is required.

> If I sleep LESS (5, 6 hours) I feel better. More energy, lighter on my feet, less depressed.

This is a well-known phenomenon, believe it or not. Acute sleep deprivation has a strong anti-depressant effect in people suffering from depression. It can even trigger hypomanic or manic episodes in people who have bipolar disorder. Scientific American wrote a nice article about it several years ago: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-sleep-depriva...

As you noticed, the effect is completely unsustainable. Chronic sleep deprivation will worsen depression, not improve it.

There has been some research into using acute sleep deprivation to kick-start treatment with traditional antidepressant medication. Results are mixed, but it can help some patients cope until the antidepressants start working.

There is also some [very] weak evidence that advancing your sleep phase (going to bed earlier, waking up earlier) can stabilize the acute antidepressant effects for a couple of days: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12799743/

Long term, treating the underlying depression with traditional methods (CBT, bright light therapy, exercise, antidepressant medications) is the only sustainable solution for most people.

In studies on wake therapy I've seen, there is a percentage that have long-lasting positive improvement from just one night of sleep deprivation.

I started to notice the lack of sleep mood boost once it was pointed out. Occasionally I’ll wake up 3 hours earlier than normal for no apparent reason and generally feel energetic and productive.

Long lasting improvement compared to a control group?

Depression studies are basically useless without a control group. In any given depression cohort, a number of patients will spontaneously improve even if they receive placebo or no treatment at all. For many (lucky) people, depressive episodes simply resolve after some time, so capturing them in studies without control groups can produce misleading results.

To me that mark is 6 hours. The more I sleep past that the more lethargic I become. Likewise if I sleep between 5 and 6 hours I’m fine but will catch up with me

> and end up sleeping like 10 hours that night

Paraphrased from the book - basically once you get passed the number of REM cycles needed all of the sleep after that is worthless and ends up just making you groggy. In other words the idea of "catching up on sleep" is BS.

I do find it curious that the body seems to need to sleep longer after long bouts of insomnia (or a week of 18hr work days). I think the hypothesis "You need an extra hour of sleep for every hour missed" is disproven, but the body clearly needs a single dose of extra recovery time after exhaustion.

Does the book give sources for this? And do those sources actually support this claim? It doesn't sound completely correct.

For this specific notion - I can't remember honestly. But most of the book is backed up by sources / studies.

As I noted in this thread - I don't think 100% of what author communicates in the book is factual or conclusive, but he does a great job of collecting multiple perspectives and studies to combine it into one thought provoking read. Like any book that has an agenda/angle, a healthy dose of skepticism is always required.

My biggest criticism of the book is that it didn't address oversleep. Where did you find that bit of info?

Wake therapy is a well known treatment for depression, but I have a theory that for some people this sort of thing is a sign of sleep apnea. The reason being sleep breathing is more likely to be disturbed during REM which is more predominant in the later hours of sleep. So skipping those last 1 or 2 REM cycles could be skipping out on, for sleep apneacs, the most stressful parts of the sleep.

If I may ask, how old are you? As I age I find that I can handle a little less sleep, but my ability to handle swings in amounts of sleep is way less; even if I can get by with :30 less per night than 5 years ago, 1:00 less on one night affects me WAY more than it did 5 years ago.

I'm in my 50's, FWIW.

> However, take some of the science positions in the book with a grain of salt. The author is notorious for being directionally correct in his opinions,

I've read it and I agree. Although he does admit in the beginning that there basically is not much conclusive facts about sleep, hence his motivation for writing the book. It's implied that what he is saying is fact, and its a lot more correlation than I think panacea.

> It's also commonly known that people get less sleep than they think they do.

A few things IIRC from the book:

- The specific number is irrelevant as long as its "around 7~9"

- If you're lying down / resting this still "counts" (its not as impactful, but still beneficial)

If people don't want to read the book, the JRE podcast is actually pretty good at summarizing whats in the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig

Good high level points about what to do to get to sleep (5 things):

https://youtu.be/pwaWilO_Pig?t=3011

> the JRE podcast is actually pretty good at summarizing whats in the book

Anyone who expects to learn something from a Joe Rogan podcast should understand that it is for the most part, a podcast where people go to have their ideas go unchallenged: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kv9qd/the-joe-rogan-experie...

So let me get this straight. The entire basis for "we should understand that ideas go unchallenged" is because a Vice article told you that? An article that doesn't do anything other than cite a few instances where JR lets interviewees go unchallenged? Honestly, that article is terrible. I would expect something more conclusive to say something like "we fact checked 100 of JRE's guests and found 47 of them to be factually incorrect in what they were saying"

I mean I generally agree that he doesn't necessarily challenge his interviewees but to say you don't learn something from JRE is kind of off IMO.

Anyway, that's besides the point because I've both read the book and watched the podcast. Additionally I've checked some of the sources and they're consistent with what the author has communicated. In a world of sound bites, I'm simply offering that this soundbite is better than single sentence headliners but not as good as reading a whole book or even further, reading a book and every source.

I hope the irony here -- citing a Vice article when complaining about ideas going unchallenged -- is not lost on anyone.

I read it less as exaggeration and more as... art? The book is really well-written. It emphasizes things with a rhetorical tone that I thought was completely appropriate given how much our culture abuses sleep.

He also specifically and thoroughly goes over the sleep window thing, unless I'm remembering another book.

That’s not surprising at all. From a paper on circadian expression:

> We found 43% of all protein coding genes showed circadian rhythms in transcription somewhere in the body, largely in an organ-specific manner.

Assuming they looked at more than one protein biomarker, it’s highly likely that one of them would have circadian expression.

https://www.pnas.org/content/111/45/16219

It seems like a lot of papers (the ones I end up seeing the headlines of in places like this) like to try and link Alzheimers to sleep. I think these just get attention because everyone sleeps and almost everyone seems to like to complain about their sleep.

My mother has dementia, and I know 5 other close friends that are starting to deal with it as well. This is becoming an epidemic and what people don’t realize is that it is extremely expensive and exceedingly cruel. Most health care systems, including Canada and the US, do not handle dementia well at all. You have the choice of becoming financially destitute keeping your parents in a dignified setting, or you can let them essentially rot in a public facility which is basically a hospital. It’s terrible and needs a better solution.

My mother was purposely financially destitute when she died post dementia. It was the only way for the state to help pay for services without collecting everything (house, car, pension, etc). Later we were able to put her on hospice and that offered much more assistance.

I cannot describe the stress in trying to figure out financials as a loved one is dying. It led to many sleepless nights...

We're just going through this with my dad, far fewer resources for the middle class when it come to getting assistance at home. Becoming "purposely financially destitute" sounds like a good strategy but I'm sure it has its own risks.

At least in the UK attempts to gift money to relatives or sell a house to prevent it being sold to pay for social care is seen as "deprivation of assets" in a financial assessment.

I think in a lot of jurisdictions this is possible, but there are timing considerations. I know families who have moved significant majority of assets to children much earlier than any medical issues, partially as a hedge against this.

There are laws in the U.S. which prevents someone from qualifying for full medicare benefits of, let's say for example, nursing home care. There is a 5 year look-back period to verify you haven't liquidated assets or you will be penalized.

Lost both my parents over the years. For my mom I sunk all available income paying for in-home care. For my dad I... couldn't, so we had to go the purposeful route.

Condolences on the financial stresses, it truly is a burden that arrives at the worst of times.

It's a real kick in the balls isn't it. We've been spared having to sell my parents' house for now because my mom died last week of Alzheimers. Now facing the prospect of having to think about it all over again for my father. I need to start living better.

I believe in 100 years we'll look back in horror at our society's casual indifference to routinely waking adolescents, a group with the latest shifted circadian rhythms, wake up before dawn. Much the same way that we look back at horror with the past's casual indifference to smoking.

only 100 years ago most would be waking up before dawn to milk the cows.

most in 1920?

I’m directionally correct.

You’re right though.

Point stands if I make it 200 years ago and more importantly for most of human history.

And in bed at sundown.

I don't think so, especially not 100 years ago. There were too many good radio programs and before that there were other people to talk to and even alone, there were the stars.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many...

I don't find a convincing argument to use people living in traditional societies in Tanzania to illuminate the sleeping cycles of people in industrialized Western societies 100 years ago for people who had to be at a factory or office by 8am.

And only a few hundred years ago jaw size supposedly started shrinking leading to increased sleep disordered breathing, at least that's what some researchers claim.

Also, hunter-gatherer societies may get less sleep than the recommended. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many... And the San and Tsimane may not have a word for insomnia because they have bigger airways?

I think jaw size is probably related to the foods we eat. (Less reason to develop a strong jaw if you aren’t eating tough stuff) At least, that’s what I read on HN some months back. It’s why our teeth need more alignment too. Not enough space.

It's also related to how long breastfeeding is continued and to whether you have allergies (or other reasons to start mouth breathing).

I think we have it backwards, the problem is going to sleep late.

The problem is not listening to our body requests. If you are tired, you should you sleep, and then avoid alarms to wake up.

I have found discipline to be better.

I think that sometimes it takes a bit more than discipline, if you are going to really do it right. Sometimes there is an underlying medical issues keeping you from quality sleep (and leading to a delayed sleep phase) and other times it might actually be that, given your genetics or what not, you just don't sleep until later.

I am a fan of "early to bed, early to rise." But for me it's got to be with a PAP machine.

It’s as if the millions of people with insomnia all cried out all at once and condemned this post.

People who seek treatment for insomnia are often told to institute some form of sleep hygiene. My immediate thought was the comment was made by someone who found the advice worked for him/her.

My immediate thought was it was someone that looks at the clock at 11:30 and goes "alright, it's time to go to bed" and goes to bed, even if they're really enjoying that video game or whatever and that they think it's that easy to sleep, afterward.

> The problem is not listening to our body requests.

I learned in my late 20's when you constantly burn the candle at both ends, your body will eventually make that decision for you and just shut down on its own.

The problem with avoiding alarms is that perpetually sleeping in will shift forward your circadian rhythm.

Some people aren't tired just because the clock says 9pm or even 12a. Some people are more awake and energetic in the evening, and less so in the AM, and other vice-versa.

The early rising == good thing is an old moralism that can't die quickly enough, since it's not fair to people who for whatever genetic reason don't have bodies that behave like that.

I thought this too then I lived in a room without shades for months. Amazing how I started to wake up earlier and earlier and get tired earlier and earlier.

People with the night owl genetics wouldn't care about sunlight.

They do. Light still has a massive regulatory effect on the circadian rhythm, whether it's shifted slightly forward or back. Before the advent of the industrial revolution and electricity in homes no one was staying up all night unless they had to work through it.

Take a night owl and move them several time zones away, they'll end up shifting forward again in a week's time.

People with night owl genetics might have a low production of sleep hormone. Or have autism which is linked with a low production of sleep hormone.

I agree, I'm a night owl myself, but I don't think it's natural or healthy. In hunter-gatherer societies the last one to go to sleep was at midnight (youngsters) and by 8 am everyone was awake.

Go out and look at the some for a couple of minutes whem it rises, it will make the body set the max() brightness to know what is low() and when to start with sleep hormones..

I suspect the same will be true about artificial light. Our sleep cycles changed dramatically with the introduction of electric light.

A few years back I built an automated lighting system [1] for my apartment that was basically a scaled-up version of a light-based alarm clock [2]. I got the expected benefit, getting up more easily in the morning. But it turned out the bigger benefit was going to sleep at a more regular hour thanks to lights that dimmed in the evening. It turned out that previously I just wasn't a responsible lightswitch user: if the lights were on and I was doing something interesting, I'd blow my sleep schedule out. Now, though, that almost never happens. I think it's had significant mood and health benefits.

For those interested, the history podcast BackStory had a great set of stories on how time and sleep have changed in the industrial era. [3] I expect we'll be undoing a lot of that over coming decades.

[1] https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise

[2] an older version of this: https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Simulation-Headspace-Subscrip...

[3] https://www.backstoryradio.org/shows/on-the-clock-4/

I think Hue bulbs can do that out of the box.

Indeed, and after setting up the auto wake up / sleep cycle, I had to turn it off because it was leading me to want to fall asleep at night when I still had a ton of work to get through

As great as it would be to keep a more natural "lighting" cycle around the house, the truth is my modern obligations won't allow for that, so I have the lights on at full blast until midnight quite frequently

I look forward to my retirement but I wonder what brain and body damage I will have accrued until then

I think it's worth asking how much more time spent equals more productivity. For me, that's only true for very short periods. I find I'm way more productive for the long haul if I'm getting plenty of sleep.

The thing that convinced me to try was this presentation from game developers on the limits of crunch time: https://lostgarden.home.blog/2008/09/28/rules-of-productivit...

I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, deadlines often have a way of making it impossible to have a full night of sleep.

They mostly can now, 6 years later. Although they still don't do two things I really like: 1) long, slow changes in light (my lights dim from 7 to 10 pm, but I think the app is limited to 1 hour), 2) color temperature shifts as part of that (my lights go from very warm at "dawn" to very cool at noon and back to very warm at "dusk".

Mine is also more opinionated; I can turn on the lights manually, but they'll go back in sync to the schedule after a bit. Whereas with the Hue app, if I change the lighting during an automatic cycle, it stops the automation until the next trigger point.

I'd say artificial light might have had the same effect internet has on us. Prior to it, we had to follow nature's cycle, then we made our own schedule. Internet allows to choose ad infinitum .. we're unregulated by the slow capped technologies of the past, the burden is on us to stop.

I spent a summer in Thailand on a small island living in a remote shack with no power. I was totally beholden to the natural light other than an oil lamp and I tiny pen torch I had. I had the best sleep I've ever had, but I'd wake super early with the sun rise and actually feel like getting up and doing stuff.

I have zero doubts about everything you said.

Anecdotally, the last time electricity went down in the whole neighborhood we were forced to use candles and it was .. magical. Stupidly magical.. the light warmth, the decay, the flicker.. my mind went into creative mode right away. It's the opposite of distraction we can get 24/7 these days.

yes, same thing here

in the early morning, having it still be dark was a wonderful feeling, and then when power was restored and all the lights came back on outside, i was quite shocked how my good feelings went away...

after that, i started to wonder what the whole effect of endless light polution is having on societey...

everything has a dosage, even modernity

When you are young - your cells work better in all aspects.

Even if children / adolescents have poor sleeping, protocols for mitigating alzheimer’s would be better spent at ages middle age and up. This is when the body’s repair mechanism start failing to keep up and diseases start to progress faster.

I wonder if there are studies linking this disease to occupations which routinely disturb ones circadian rhythm like air travel.

Certainly been ones looking at effects of lack of sleep and this jumped out: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sleep-d...

Like most thinks, they have an effect and increase the odds, don't guarantee that lack of sleep during your life will assure you get it, just increases the chances as does age, which maybe a factor with such occupations you mention.

I'd imagine shift workers would be a source of study about sleep impact.

How do they find if actually that Alzheimers progression isnt the cause of bad sleep?

This is particularly reassuring for those of us with years of crunch projects and jolt cola under our belts (literally).

It's time to reset the culture of crunch. That could start at University, where professors still delight in giving projects due at the same time. This year they seem to give more projects to compensate for lower weight on the exam. Yay covid helps you concentrate!

It's time for engineers to embrace bedtime.

Taking bets that caffeine consumption will be found to be a comorbidity.

There’s some research that actually found the opposite (also for parkinsons)

Studies suggest it might be neutral or even protective in Alzheimer's: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20182054/

> In the CAIDE study, coffee drinking of 3-5 cups per day at midlife was associated with a decreased risk of dementia/AD by about 65% at late-life. In conclusion, coffee drinking may be associated with a decreased risk of dementia/AD. This may be mediated by caffeine and/or other mechanisms like antioxidant capacity and increased insulin sensitivity.

Not all studies are this positive. Note that sleep deprivation is still a risk factor, with or without the aid of caffeine.

I sure hope not. I increased my caffeine consumption intentionally 5x in the past decade because alzheimer's runs in both sides of the family.

I'm not a doctor, just a person who also has Alzheimer's in his family, so I've thought and read a lot about it. My recipe is basically:

Sleep enough, exercise (especially outside), eat right, make sure your brain is active and engaged on a regular basis (read real books, challenge yourself by getting out of your intellectual comfort zone). Studies show that coffee is good for Alzheimer's, so as long as you're not using it to stay awake when you need sleep, it's probably fine.

Is it coffee? Or is it caffeine (i.e. tea, etc.)?

I consume around 500-1000mg of caffeine a day (very carefully timed so as not to get jitters). I can't handle a higher dose of Adderall XR, so I've embraced my higher caffeine intakes as a way to soothe the mind. That said, I don't care for the flavor of coffee, so I typically consume it via Red Bull/5hr/tablet form.

This is a separate in-vitro study that seems to suggest it's not the caffeine that is helping https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.0073...

Thank you!

Or parenting for that matter.

What do you think about this incredible site about sleep: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SuperMemo_Guru#Sleep

From the author of first Spaced Repetition software. There's too much info to digest.

Well.

I'm fucked.

Yeah my first thought as well :/

This article is relevant to people who nap. (And I think napping, over nighttime sleep fragmentation or other sleep stuff, going off the supplementary materials of the original study)

And we also know people who have Alzheimer nap more. Which they are not sure quite yet on correlation or causation related to this study.

Am I starting to understand that people with Alzheimer were all part of "hustle culture" when they were younger?

Guess we should teach discipline in a different way, or just acknowledge that our socioeconomic circumstances will never materially change - or at least have a real ceiling - outside of complete luck.

What is the logic that is holding your reasoning together? A lot of "hustling" culture actually ephasizes good habits including hardcore sleep scheduling, good nutrition and excercise?

And a lot of it doesn't.

So it sounds like a null hypothesis at best?

That seems like a pretty sweeping and flimsy generalization off of a single study that found correlation between accelerated amyloid plaque build and lack of sleep.

You might be starting to have that understanding but whether it's correct is a completely separate question. Even if this study were proof that poor sleep is 100% causal of Alzheimer's (it's not even close), that would neither be proof that all Alzheimer's is caused by poor sleep nor proof that members of "hustle culture" sleep less. You've made about three or four unsupported inferences.

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