Comment by vba616 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vba616 | Hacker News Reader

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>recent research indicates that a chronic lack of sleep can cause Alzheimer’s

Why on earth do people (you're not alone, I know) prefer to assume that direction of causation, rather than that the underlying condition that leads to Alzheimer's causes sleep disorders too?

It's well known that sleep disorders are associated with other neurological or mental disorders.

I think there is a pervasive disease of thinking where people associate science and smart people with counterintuitive statements, so every obvious relationship gets inverted.

And can you answer the basic question of why sleep is even necessary at all?

Lack of sleep is eventually lethal, and I read a very interesting study a couple years ago that seemed to have a plausible mechanism and stunningly reasonable methodology, but I haven't heard anything about it since then. So I still don't know if it was fake or something, because it seemed like it should get a Nobel Prize. Although it used fruit flies so perhaps it didn't generalize.

While you may be right (FFI fatal familial insomnia, not foreign function interface) is an amyloid disease and the amyloid seems to cause insomnia, not vice versa -- there are some real proposed mechanisms suggesting that lack of sleep prevents clearance of junk in the brain, that then cause the cell death associated with Alzheimer's.

It's generally known that after 3 or 4 days of total sleeplessness there is permanent psychological damage which is probably physiological in nature. IIRC There was a radio show host who hosted his show for several days straight as a stunt and it really messed him up.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tripp

Had to Google that, though it does sound temporary?

You're basically just reinforcing parents comment (correlation does not imply causation) because those studies mention the same problem with their design thus they can't come to a valid conclusion.

A valid conclusion can come from studies for which, in this case, there was no funding because of poor rhetoric like this. Correllations which merely suggest causation are indeed sufficient as the focus of hypotheses. Scientists too often forget that a hypothesis is a valid part of the scientific process, and the aversion to adoption of one without an attempt to gather further data about it is shoddy, unprofessional, and more reminiscent of dogmatic orthodoxy than of science. The next time you think to say "correllation does not imply causation", maybe think to ask if anything more can or should be learned about either the correllation or the cause being investigated, and consider that such obstruction of efforts to collect more evidence is precisely why the present data is inconclusive. The fact here, from TFA, is that there was no such problem with the studies' design, but rather with the myopic cognition of those who obstructed them.

>The next time you think to say "correllation does not imply causation"

I didn't write that phrase precisely because people turn off their brains and learn nothing from it! It's become worthless.

The alternative to A -> B is B -> A, or C -> A and B.

You seriously think that running through those possibilities in your head is "dogmatism"?

Who then is the authority on which one of those is privileged and which require further research to validate, when they are all consistent with the evidence so far?

The arrow of time really does help an inference of causation. However with Alzheimer's patients we're not generally taking brain biopsies of old people to surveil for Alzheimer's plaques, so we don't have the arrow of time in either direction.

So our current economic system causes mass mental disorders and sleep disorders, causes alzheimers. Got it. Does the paper recommend revolting?

Do you have an example of a different economic system where people don't have any of those issues?

One possible explanation would be glymphatic system dysfunction (failure to clear “junk” during sleep): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34025481/

Pure speculation of course, but it seems possible that low quality sleep would impair this system.

Where is the proof that sleep loss does not cause Alzheimer’s and only reverse is true?

For the sake of argument, let's say that we're not allowed to question the claim that "sleep loss causes Alzheimer's".

How is that an explanation? Something has to drive the sleep disorder. It's too vague to be blaming for anything. It's not a thing.

We should question and find proof. But should not dismiss the possibility without looking.

May be there are multiple thing that drives sleep disorder and and then that causes Alzheimer.

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