Deep sleep may be the best defense against Alzheimer’s

A novel idea

My grandma had dementia, she was “gone” way before she actually “died”.

I've become extremely caffeine sensitive over the last few years -- anything more than about 80mg has me off the walls for the entire day. But ensuring I get L-Theanine along with it essentially blunts the response quite significantly and allows me to function normally.

I'd recommend checking out your CYP2D6 too. Proper recommendations haven't yet reached the clinic, so if you want personalized medicine then you'll have to educate yourself. Caveat, for dozens of reasons, differing genotypes won't necessarily affect drug pharmacokinetics, even if the metabolic pathway suggests it should.

Liver enzymes are cool.

I have a friend psychiatrist who told that she had given the standard first question and advice for over decade for sleep problems: "How much you drink caffeinated beverages? Maybe you should drink less" before she took the advice herself.

She was amazed how well she slept without caffeine even when she didn't think she had sleeping problems or difficulties. She just didn't remember what it was to sleep really well anymore.

It could be that it's more complex than a toggle on/off, and more like a polygenic trait.

Of the times that I have lost significant weight, both have been times when I quit caffeine completely.

I understand - it's hard to tease out whether it was the caffeine impeding the weight loss I get it.

It could be just as simple as I sleep better without caffeine and the better sleep quality improves hormonal balance, satiety, etc.

I used to drink caffeinated soda throughout the day, quitting around 5 hours before bedtime, and I had constant sleep issues. I stopped that around 10 years ago and switched to my one-cup-per-day system. Now I sleep fine.

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME, the result is the same: high blood pressure, bad sleep, constant lethargy (which can only be fixed by consuming more coffee), frequent headaches... all goes away after one week of detox.

Of course, everyone is different and maybe there’s a reason you may benefit from more.

But I wonder if sleeping more than ~8 hours is a symptom of something else (and possibly contributing to why your parents don’t like it).

Curious if someone else more knowledgeable than I weighs in.

Also, it probably wouldn’t hurt to bring up with your doctor (e.g. annual evaluation). I usually bring up anything that I feel is considered “not normal” (whatever that is).

But again, I could be way off.

I guess things are what they are, though. Good that we uncover knowledge like this.

A modern family man is also no use dead or when performing badly due to lack of good sleep.

Unless you're grinding away at a once in a lifetime opportunity, you shouldn't be sacrificing years of your life to poor sleep to work 16 hour days or something. Make sleep a priority and learn how to set boundaries.

I was sleeping 6-7 hours through highschool and I can vividly remember it being the worst period of my life, standing in the shower each morning overwhelmed by the thought "I want to sleep so bad I wish I was dead, because that's like, an infinite satisfaction of the desire to sleep." Don't misread this it wasn't a dark thought at all, I was just THAT tired.

Am I the only one making the hard choice- choosing good sleep forever?

It can also track sleep stages, etc. This has been on sale for < $75, which is way less than a wearable, etc.

https://ai.googleblog.com/2021/03/contactless-sleep-sensing-...

https://ai.googleblog.com/2021/11/enhanced-sleep-sensing-in-...

Its basically a reusable EEG device connected to your phone, aka a sleep study every night, but maybe slightly lower quality

I'm sure with persistence and ingenuity there should be a way to get it

I don't think that's true. This is what Huberman and Matt Walker has to say about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwrrKlII4XA

(I'm aware that Matt Walker is controversial, but I don't think the contents of this clip are)

Still the other most important thing is to just go to bed on time. If I jump on my computer before bed I almost always get stuck and go to bed way too late. Hard habit to change but essential.

Wearables aren't known for their accuracy (unless it's an EEG headband)

That said, 60 minutes of true deep sleep would actually be normal. Deep sleep isn't something you can, or should, be getting all night. It's a sleep phase that normally occupies about 1/8 to 1/4 of your sleep time.

Given the poor accuracy of wearables, I wouldn't worry about anything. It's more important that you get the appropriate duration of sleep (7-9 hours depending on what you need), avoid alcohol (this one is big), avoid caffeine too late in the afternoon or altogether, and get some physical activity mid-day. Everything else will fall into place.

Since deep sleep tends to dominantly occur early in the night (within the first two hours of falling asleep), you’ll basically lose out on it anytime you go to bed abnormally late.

(In the Hindu medicine system there is an adage… “an hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours, after midnight it is worth one hour, after sunrise it is worth zero hours.” I suspect the circadian anchoring of deep sleep is the prime determinant in this heuristic’s truthfulness.)

What’s worked for me:

- A good memory foam pillow and a new mattress

- Using light as well as sound for my alarm clock. I have my smart lights gradually turn on in my room over a 15-minute period in the morning and have an alarm set on my watch.

- Counterintuitively, having a TV in my room.

So my night routine now is that I’ll retire to my room, get ready for the next day (put clothes out, go over my reminders/notes if I feel like it, etc), then lay in bed and watch a video or two, then dim my lights to a setting I only use for the last part of the night (bedside lamp only at minimum brightness). It’s turned out to be a surprisingly-good sleep hygiene cue for me. I’ll usually then wind down with some more videos but I’ll inevitably start feeling drowsy and then it’s lights-out and the TV gets switched off.

I also switched showering from the morning to the evening and I also make sure to change out of my work clothes when I get home.

This means that in the morning I have very little to think about. I have to just plant my feet on the floor and get moving. Since everything’s already prepared I can do this pretty mindlessly. I don’t drink a coffee until I get into the office.

After a few days of forcing myself to get up like this consistently, it actually started feeling weird not getting up when I first wake up with the morning lights on. I love travelling in to work before the crowds and having quiet time in the office to get work done. Another awesome benefit is that I can relax the routine a bit on the weekend and yet still get up at a reasonable time to have the whole day to do stuff, while at the same time still feeling like I ‘slept in’.

I always considered myself a ‘night owl’ but this experience has made me reconsider. If I don’t have a good routine my sleep pattern will drift later and later and I’ll feel crap all day, whereas keeping this routine I’m getting up earlier and my energy levels feel way more consistent throughout the day, so I don’t know, maybe I’m an early bird that had poor sleep or something.

Make your bedroom the most comfortable place in the entire world for you. I recently bought a new mattress and blankets and I no longer struggle to keep a good temperature (freezing cold vs sweating all night)... can finally side sleep without my shoulders being sore, and can sleep on my stomach without destroying my back. There are tons of mattresses out there, and there's no single one that is good for everybody. I slept with sore shoulders and back for so long... and for no good reason really.

I put an air purifier in my bedroom. It is now my sanctuary that I can go to where there is no dust, no pollen... or at least it's significantly reduced. I also started taking Flonase, and it helps open up my sinuses. For years I've had swollen sinuses due to allergies, but I've felt otherwise fine. I've woken up freaked out a number of times feeling out of breath, I thought I was dreaming it, or just not awake. But with the allergies, my nose swells shut a lot, and I didn't realize that you don't always just automatically breathe through your mouth when you're asleep.

I also started going to bed an hour or so earlier. Not so much with the intention of going directly to sleep, but I kinda spend some time preparing for sleep. It gets me away from the computer, and gets my thoughts away from work. I tend to take my time making my bed, picking out clothes for the next day, etc.

Also having an extra hour reduces the anxiety that I need to fall sleep right now, or I'm gonna feel like shit tomorrow. Getting into bed early, and not trying to sleep seems to make me feel sleepier much quicker. It's almost like I try to bore myself to sleep a bit... Or when you wake up at 3am, you realize that's okay.

And a big one for me is exercise. I am like a wound up dog. And if I don't burn off some energy during the day, I apparently try to burn it off by tossing and turning all night. I have been doing only 30 minutes a day about 4-5 times a week. Nothing super strenuous. I fucking hate exercise. But it helps me sleep much deeper.

What seems to work for me is immediate sunlight exposure right when I wake up, 5 - 10 mins of being outside, 16 oz of cold water right around that time, 2-5 mins of an activity that gets my heart rate up (jumping jacks, burpees, jump rope). If I can muster it, a cold shower also helps.

There are other things like getting exercise, avoiding caffeine after a certain time, avoiding light exposure prior to bed, avoiding alcohol, sleeping in a cool room that I think also help. But for me it's the making myself super alert right when I wake up that has the biggest bang for my buck.

This is anecdotal, n = 1 kind of stuff though. And I don't do it every day, and it doesn't work 100% of the time. But I definitely notice that I am far more likely to get a lot of deep sleep when I do those things than when I don't. Hope it helps you in some way.