What is REM sleep and why is it important?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I honestly do not understand why evolution gave us this harsh treatment.
My thinking, knowing the research around the area, but not having researched this specific case.
1) we are having children later in life. Evolution designed child rearing age to be 16-25. We have pushed that later and later as we've matured as a species, and in Australia (and Canada) from my experience we are now regularly in the 30+ for first children. I know of many mothers who's first child was born when they were 40 or later.
2) Sleep does not return to normal levels until the youngest child on average reaches 6 years old.
3) Our sleep naturally degrades as we age. Particularly in mid-30s. So if you have a child at 33, and you return to "normal sleep" at 39, you are expecting to return to your restful self, but your sleep has declined during that time.
I think in the past we didn't use to sleep 8 hours straight. Perhaps it was fine, we just changed and forgot to send babies the memo.
We're about to begin testing with our first users in the next few weeks.
To answer your question about evolution, I speculate...
1) the evolutionary element was likely only adapted to impact mothers, and still impacts mothers more than fathers. But fathers (I believe) are now more involved.
2) for mothers, less sleep may be linked to less memories of the pain of early child rearing, which may make them more likely to have more children.
Lastly, new mothers had a (if I recall correctly) 15% chance of dying during childbirth or shortly thereafter. From an evolutionary standpoint, the mother had mostly done their job, as long as a village was left to raise the young.
The priority for evolution was to get the child through the first year or so with the mother intact. Beyond that, mother nature didn't prioritize the mothers health over their offspring.
.85^4 = 52% chance of surviving 4 childbirths. Does that seem right?
The figure I've heard is 2%.
About half of children died before maturity, so each women had to have 4 children just to keep population stable.
Mortality during childbirth either 1 or 2%.
So somewhere in the 12-15% range that a woman would die of (one of her) childbirths.
So, yeah seems about right. What is .85 in your calculation?
> We're about to begin testing with our first users in the next few weeks
Ooh, would it be possible for me to become a tester? I don't have a typical sleep schedule though.
Having said that, I haven't looked closely at the protocols of those studies, but one of the researchers we collaborate with is strongly convinced that daytime sleepers is not a good target for us.
Imagine a baby chimp or gorilla waking up alone in the forest after having fallen asleep snuggled with its mother. Of course it would be terrified, of course it would cry for help.
Many modern cultures choose to make infants sleep alone. That doesn’t do away with the infant’s hard-wired responses, long-set in its genome.
I slept with my kid (I'm a father) for almost a year and trust me, you're still deeply aware of them when they're next to you.
Smothering does happen, statistically speaking, but the odds are so tiny and the benefits so great, it's basically a misinformation campaign based on bunk 1950's science.
When I read more into the numbers it seemed that where co-sleeping has a real risk is when it happens outside of the bed, when the caretaker falls asleep in a chair. All of the deaths get lumped together and we are just told that you need to X so you reduce the risk of SIDs. It kinda sucks because it is so hard being a new parent, it would be nice to better understand up front what the real risks are.
There is a lot of misinformation around SIDs and its relationship with co-sleeping. Co-sleeping is riskier than the baby sleeping in its own bed but generally not measurably so. Where a lot of co-sleeping deaths happen is when the caretaker falls sleep in a chair or a couch holding the baby and baby falls or gets into a bad breathing position. The number of deaths from smothering do exist but pale in comparison.
Of course every baby/person is different and you have to find what works for you as a parent.
There are known risk factors for infant smothering during sleep. E.g., parental drinking or smoking, infant low birth weight or respiratory issues (as a sibling comment said). Education and care control for these well.
https://www.pinterest.com/WalkingWomanCO/baby-bed-attachment...
Insisting that human babies cry themselves to sleep night after night, solidifying neuropathways of despair and terror before anything else is insane. Also, somehow culturally acceptable so it’s become the default.
Been a while since it was very bad, but I do have a low-level anxiety about time after 23:00. There are days when I stay up late to catch up with stuff, while my wife goes to sleep, and I recently realized that I'm no longer able to do much then, because starting 23:00, I keep expecting one of our kids to wake up and start the 30 to 90-minute cycle of trying to get them back to sleep. That waiting is terrible for focus.
In fact, I'm writing this comment in the middle of such cycle.
We adopted for our 3rd.
It's really simple (sleep during a fixed window at the same time everyday; use the bed for sleeping and sex; challenge negative thoughts associated with "getting bad sleep") but has completely changed my worldview on sleep and is, so far, making my insomnia extremely manageable.
I used to take some form of sleep aid (melatonin, zzzquil, benadryl) for years before discovering this. I don't need anything to sleep now.
Absolutely brutal, but with solid CBT and sleep deprivation therapy, alongside a few sessions with a sleep psychologist, I knocked it on the head. It took a solid 9 months, but it’s now not even remotely an issue.
You get less sleep as you age, and that lack of sleep has been linked to the decline in health.
That doesn't mean you "need" less.
We're working on improving the neurological function of the brain during sleep at https://soundmind.co and very keen to see if we can have a long-term impact on health and longevity by increasing the depth of deep sleep.
Could this possibly help get longer sleep?
If so, no. We are currently not focused on increasing time asleep, the main reason being that I have not seen compelling evidence of a method to achieve that in any peer reviewed literature.
One day we hope to do more than just the slow wave enhancement work we are doing, but I just don't think the science is there yet, so we're going to stay focused on a solid body of research, and a use case we can solve for.
But as a life-long insomniac, I feel your pain.
yeah of course there's an optimum amount of exercise before it becomes more harmful than helpful. training for ultra distance races definitely sounds like pushing the limits of human capabilities, which means you're probably trading off other parts of your life to make it happen.
for anyone that doesn't obsess over exercise it's probably almost always a net positive, including for sleep (from personal, anecdotal experience).
Also, I read that when doing more demanding training, in particular very long distances, it's possible to get into a "hypermetabolic" state where one doesn't sleep as well. Anecdotally I've felt this way after doing what for me are longer runs, say > 30 km.
I haven't experienced inability to think hard, even when I was doing more intense running. The more plodding kind I do these days I find is great for brain work as it lets me clear my mind of distractions and think about problems I'm working on. But it sounds like you are training harder than me
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep
It would seem the Dimethyltryptamine is the last thing to be "topped up" in the brain then if what you say is true.
There is no reason to discredit his claims as "false", unless you believe he made the false claim intentionally - which I don't believe he did.
He took complicated research and tried to simplify it and make it digestible to a general audience, and was successful at that.
I had a similar reaction when I first read the book, that some of his conclusions didn't make sense, but I've since backed off as I hear him speak, and believe he is one of the better researchers in the sleep space.
Of note, I work in the sleep space, and there is a TON of crap "science" out there, so I like to give support to those I believe are doing good work.
It's all very much groupthink, but that's sort of how pop scientific consensus works- with popular narratives and groups of datapoints and conclusions seemingly overthrowing other narratives and groups of datapoints and conclusions. The average layman is too busy to read either the book or the meticulous critique; I've only listened to about fifteen minutes of one of Walker's hour-long podcast interviews.
The takedown gets nitpicky certainly, but the first sections are very much targeting the main thesis of the book, which is that people are not getting enough sleep and that this lack of sleep is causing significant harm. Walker makes claims about the effect of sleep on lifespan and risk of disease that are completely unsupported, and in some cases even contradicted by the sources he provides.
You're right that it's groupthink, but it's also basic economy of attention. If the most basic of scrutiny of the opening chapter reveals sweeping unsupported claims, contradictions, and apparent outright fabrications I don't think it's unreasonable to disregard the author as a charlatan, if only because no one has infinite time to dig down to the foundations of every piece of pop-sci in the world.
I'm just pointing out that he made false claims. I'm not concerned with whether it was intentional - many of the claims he made in the book was false. Some of the premises he attempts to support were supported with conflicting information.
I simply wouldn't trust anything he's written in that book unless he republishes it with the corrected information, and retracts the mistakes. Has he done so?
The fact that he allows the book to continue to be publish and circulated is enough for me.
Also, he's been found citing his own books in his research papers - nothing shockingly wrong with that, but poor practice as far as research goes.
There's a medication called trazodone which is used off-label for people with issues falling or staying asleep. It increases the total percentage of time spent in slow-wave sleep (stage 3).
Even though this comes at the expense of REM, in elderly people with cognitive or neurodegenerative issues, this appears to confer a protective benefit (the rate of deterioration is slowed comparatively).
That said, it would probably be ideal if they slept well without medication and altered sleep architectures.
If you quit weed, how will you measure whether there is any increase in REM sleep?
I also have great vivid dreams when high so, yeah I'd also be interested to see some more information too.
Perhaps prior to downvote access, a user should be educated and quizzed.
Or if you're sufficiently intoxicated to cause a problem, it doesn't matter if weed is legal, you are still in trouble.
Correct. In the U.S., you can report to a police officer that, "yeah man, I'm high out my mind. Stoned as fuck, bro." As long as you aren't driving or causing a disturbance, they legally can't do anything other than search your person for the substance.
WARNING: I DO NOT RECOMMEND DOING THIS
There have been cases in UAE and especially Singapore[0] where travelers are drug tested on arrival and the presence of banned substances in blood or other bodily fluids is against the law.
[0] - https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/saliva-test-drugs-...
Of course I was not able to notice this when I was younger. Only now at 32 and a family these measurements are starting to actually be noticeable.
If you look at the app and see that it says "better sleep" before starting the day and then notice that you had a good mood or felt better after that could be a placebo effect.
You could check that by not looking at the app until after your day is done and you have noted if you had a good mood or felt better. If the app and your day's mood still correlate then it probably is something real.
On the other hand checking if it is real risks making it no longer work, and a good mood is a good mood even if it was caused by a placebo. I'm not sure I'd check.
The placebo effect doesn't go away if you know it's a placebo: if it's worked in the past because you thought it did, it will continue to work if you think it will. https://xkcd.com/1526/
Especially if you're wondering all day if you're in a good mood or not.
It might not even be placebo! Perhaps the combination of (well rested) + (optimistic) means you have a good day, and the experiment changes those conditions enough that you get different results. Heck, you might end up having better days more often. You never know if you don't try.
"To address this question, Feinberg, et al. (1975) compared the sleep patterns of experienced marijuana users on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and a placebo. Feinberg, et al. (1975) reported reduced eye movement activity and less REM sleep in the THC condition. They also reported a REM rebound effect, which is more REM activity, on withdrawal from THC. So, there exists some scientific evidence that marijuana interferes with REM sleep." [1]
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-teenage-mind/200...
“Somebody dosed four people for a couple weeks, 50 years ago, and wrote about it. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/164314/ “
Studies don’t tell you facts about your own experience, especially weak studies. Studies only tell you about statistical patterns in whatever population they represent. Here, the study is so poor that it doesn’t actually say anything reliable at all. Check your references, folks!
I'm not even sure how to respond to this. Personal experience not based in science is something that should never be regarded as factual or can be broadly attributed to others biological effects. This is just one study. There have been others, but enjoy your experience.
Good luck on your continued journey.
G.Maté's "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" was very helpful for me, in moving past some childhood trauma.
1. Remembering some dreams in the morning. Especially that I dreamt right before waking up.
2. Calmer mood, less jittery, harder to irritate.
3. Easier to maintain focus on things that are not fun, easier to resist distractions.
How I tell the level of cannabinoids/alcohol in the body fell enough to allow good sleep with both deep and REM phases: - The first night you sleep with a proper REM phase you get a REM sleep rebound. It's characterized by lot of vivid, intense, often rare dreams. Easy to notice after a period in which you pretty much don't remember any dreams. Happens because there is much pressure in the body to catch up for lost REM sleep, but rebounds are not enough to catch up.
The sad and deeply diabolical thing about cannabis is that it's half time in body is quite long (though adapted bodies metabolize it faster), so smoking/consuming chronicly (defined in Huberman Lab as 2 times per week or more often) is enough to pretty much completely rob you of REM sleep. You can't remember any dreams and even worse, you loose your everyday free emotional therapist that is REM sleep. If you add some other negative experiences or just a difficult period in life, you're in for depression or at least sad/tired/boring days. And what you might escape into in these days? Often more weed.
x: anecdotal, most likely influenced by huberman lab's episodes on marijuana and on sleep. They describe what roles both deep sleep and REM sleep perform. Episode on weed is a must - listen for people consuming cannabis in any form, even sporadically, because lot of things around cannabis are counter intuitive (f.ex. that it doesn't help with sleep). If you thing problems with sleep affect you or that your sleep quality suffers because of drug (including alcohol) use, consider listening to these Huberman Lab episodes or talking to a specialist if that's available to you.
I go with 2 months cycle with THC. On and then off. Toward the end of the ON period I can’t stand weed anymore and I’m often grumpy as fuck.
Then I rediscover it 2 month later and it’s great. Yah. Not great.
Going to listen to that now.
Sleep well, or "sleep enough hours"/"don't have insomnia"?
Because sleeping well and REM sleep can't be deduced from the latter, it needs to be measured.
Not even self-reporting is enough - because chronic bad sleep becomes the baseline, so people used it to just consider their mental clarity/energy levels when they wake up normal (like a person with shortsightedness, who doesn't know he has it -- they're then suprised when they finally get glasses and see that, no, it wasn't normal actually).
> Anecdotally, there are people who smoke weed every day and still sleep well at night.
First, as far as I know, smoking weed would only affect your sleep if you consumed it a couple of hours or so before sleep (exact numbers vary per person, but you get the idea). If someone consumed some weed during lunch, I would expect theit nighttime sleep to be pretty much unaffected.
Second, what do you mean by "sleep well"? They might fall asleep faster and stay asleep throughout the night. But how good was their sleep quality in reality? We are talking in terms of measuring REM cycle length and such.
From anecdotal experience, I also thought that my sleep shortly after consuming was "good", as I would fall asleep easier. However, I can confirm that it wasn't high quality sleep at all for me, my REM cycle was very short, and I definitely noticed extra groginess after waking up (along with the rest of the things mentioned in sibling comments, like lack of dreams and such). Doing some more A/B testing on my sleep in regards to consumption of weed pretty much made it clear that it makes my sleep quality worse, but makes it easier to fall asleep.
So if someone has evidence that they are missing REM sleep (i.e. a tracker or a noted lack of dreams) and are also consuming THC, there are good reasons to suspect THC is the culprit over other possible causes.
It's likely that you'll experience a period of very vivid dreams and increased energy. It's good to put that energy into something that will get you tired (and sleepy!), e.g. sport.
So you have a lot more REM sleep for a while because you need it, and REM sleep normally goes along with vivid dreams.
Am I like the only person that gets that on weed?
I still dream most nights when using cannabis, and I have no idea why.
I'm sure it's not 100% scientific but it correlates well enough that I'm convinced. Even a couple drinks will knock me down to 15-45 minutes of deep sleep in a night, vs. 90+ that I get during the week.
Once I stopped both alcohol & pot I found that I felt much better, the way I expected to feel after I quit drinking.
Based on fitbit data and morning grogginess, over two to four hours before sleep seems to be a good window, but it definitely depends on the strength, quantity, and how you're consuming it.
It wouldn't surprise me though if most of the negative associations with weed usage (laziness, lack of motivation, depression, etc.) are really just the results of a lack of REM sleep.
It seems to be a pretty important process as far as I can tell.
From Benadryl to Ambien and alcohol, marijuana, etc they help induce sleep (fall asleep faster) but generally the actual quality of sleep is worse.
I always take pause when I hear people talk about the “benefit” of having a drink or using marijuana (typically “Indica strain”) before bed to help sleep.
We’re all unique but generally I wonder how they would view their restfulness compared to ideal sleep strategies like diet, exercise, screen usage/stimulation, routine, etc.
(In reasonable doses anyway.)
From what little I’ve read and understand it does seem to be very individualized, dosage dependent, etc.
https://hubermanlab.com/sleep-toolkit-tools-for-optimizing-s...
So in my case, one drink improves my sleep quality! However I don’t think alcohol is healthy, so I don’t regularly imbibe, but it would be nice to find something healthy that would make that trade off for me.
[1] Roehrs and Roth. Sleep, Sleepiness, and Alcohol Use. Alcohol Res Health. 2001; 25(2): 101–109. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707127/
In my experience the daytime effects of sleep medication are much more severe than any issues with sleep quality (at least the worst of these seem much more likely to be direct effects than effects of poor sleep quality due to the timinv vs the half life of the medication). Tolerance seems like a bigger issue with long term use than sleep architecture as such, you end up with all negatives because you are mostly or entirely back to how you would be without the sleep medication but still getting the side effects and quitting causes sleep to get worse.
In general I agree that avoiding medication generally as much as possible is a good idea, but sleep medication can in the short term have quite positive effects if you are sufficiently sleep deprived. In my case (various severe sleep issues), non-medication strategies don't have nearly the positive effect as medication. For somewhat longer use I've found it helpful to alternate sleep medications, although I'm not aware of any actual studies doing that and it is always possible that it could cause damage. I'm doubtful that current methods of evaluating long term effects related to sleep are effective so it is best to be careful if possible. But with enough sleep deprevation it is extremely obvious that the immediate effects of short term sleep medication use can be quite positive.
What I do know from VERY occasional use of these sleep aids (< 5 times/yr) there is a trade-off for wakefulness and cognitive performance the next day. As you note Benadryl especially has a certain hangover groggy/fuzzy feel to it. I attributed that to reduction in sleep quality but it could certainly be due to Benadry half-life (or something). However, from a quick search it appears the max half-life for Benadryl is 9.2 hours, which given the recommendation of only taking it when you are able (ideally) to get ~8 hours of sleep makes sense.
I also notice this in my friends who (as I mentioned) use alcohol and/or marijuana as sleep aids. You can definitely see the cognitive decline.
Your comments about long-term use are helpful as well. I think it's pretty well established that they can be "habit forming" with an effectiveness drop-off relatively quickly - for some as soon as a few days of consistent use. For things like Ambien there are also the "Ambien zombie" stories which, while seemingly rare, can be pretty scary. But, from what I remember, prescribing physicians generally recommend no more than two weeks of consistent use?
Not having sleep issues personally I certainly don't judge those who do and are trying to balance the significant quality of life reductions experienced with chronic sleep deprivation vs negatives in the use of sleep aids. There's a reason sleep deprivation is used for torture and if you look at new parents (especially the "two under two" crowd) they often seem very vacant and generally out of it to the point where it seems pretty dangerous.
I suppose I'm lucky in that I only experience minor sleep issues very occasionally when my diet and exercise routine is thrown off.
I often get weeks of < 5 hours of sleep a night most nights where the effects of sleep deprevation are huge and all of the sleep medications I've tried that let me sleep longer all have a positive effect on that functioning (I stay away from the GABA-A receptor agonists due to the various negatives and addiction potential, however I've heard a number of others say the same thing about them; I have tried a bunch of unusual stuff). The effect of the sleep deprevation also feels different from the direct medication effect and at least I would expect that sleep quality issues would feel more like sleep deprevation.
Diphenhydramine is one of the better ones for me, but remember the half life is only the half life (except that it doesn't necessarily decay fully regularly like radiation, there is often a point where it gets fully cleared fairly quickly). I've noticed that even balofen (helps me stay asleep), which has a shorter half life, will loose its effectiveness much faster if I take it every day vs. every other day and two days off is better. Taking it for more days at a time requires more days off to recover effectiveness. Again hard to tell what is causing that (part of it for sure is "resetting" the adaptation) but it does often seem to have some positive residual effect the next night (particularly when taking it multiple days in a row).
On the other side, low dose doxepin has a long half life and completely wipes me out during the day (although so do some second generation antihistamines so it is possible there is some unusal indirect effect). When I stoped taking it after most of a month of daily use I felt much better than usual during the day for a few days (I'm guessing this is what pitolisant (Wakix) feels like) even though I wasn't sleeping much at night (the reason I haven't tried pitolisant :/). During that month I took doxepin it gradually had less effect but I generally got better sleep than usual and the tiredness felt different from the sleep deprevation tiredness.
Diphenhydramine if anything affects me in the morning and more with higher doses (the commonly recommended dose for sleep is way to high IMO, half of a fresh 25mg tablet works well for me, a full tablet even fairly old has the groggy effect the next morning; I do generally seem to have a very slow metabolism, though). I try not to take it too often since it has some widespread effects and may not be all that healthy.
Two weeks of consistent use max is what I've seen recommended as well, although in my experience it is much better to avoid taking anything consecutive days if you can help it. Also, the lowest effective dose is best, often the recommended dose is higher than needed.
Sleep issues can cause cognitive decline (it has for me certainly) so that also is hard to tell what is causing what. It is hard to really acknowledge cognitive decline (to yourself even) and I suspect trying to improve sleep in some way is an instinctive response. Alcohol and marijuana both potentially have some short term positive effects on sleep but may be damaging in various ways long term (particularly alcohol) and more so with heavier use. I think marijuana could potentially have some legit sleep use but it is often very pesticide heavy at this point and it also seems fairly addictive. For alcohol, in addition to being addictive it has quite the negative liver effect and I think the liver and kidneys are underappreciated when it comes to sleep quality (actually doxpein seems to be not that great on the liver either :( ).
That is my thinking anyway, thanks for the discussion.
If you already know about sleep architecture this article wont tell you anything new. But as an intro it’s good.
Yeah, right. As if the widely sympathized image of the morning zombie had no basis in reality.
My original comment is not up to standard, I'm not trying to deny that.
So basically the "morning zombie" case makes the point you think it refutes!