Hacker News Reader

Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

Why We Sleep has some issues, but for a primer, it's a good intro.

I read that before I got into working in the neurotech/sleeptech space.

The Cambridge textbook The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams[1] I found surprisingly approachable. I've long had an interest in neuroscience, so it wasn't a completely new subject to me, but it wasn't a bad read.

I'm a life-long insomniac, you didn't go into the details of your sleep problems, and I initially read Why We Sleep because I was trying to understand sleep and fix my own problem. Unfortunately, I it's still all the same CBT-I stuff, sleep hygiene, etc etc.

We're not working in insomnia, I haven't found anything in the peer-reviewed literature which is convincing that anyone is near a solution in this space.

[1](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/neuroscience-of-sleep-a...)

View on HN

My understanding is that scientific understanding of sleep is relatively limited and tenuous at that, compared to other medical topics. A professor at a sleep lab once joked to me that in fifty (or whenever) years, knowledgeable people will find today’s sleep science wrong. As such, I never seriously consider applying recommendations from “sleep science” to my personal life. (Though, to be fair, I’ve no problems sleeping.)

Is that an overly cynical perspective?

Understanding of sleep science is a rather different topic than applying known beneficial advice

Yes, that is overly cyncial. The last 10 years or so has seen big leaps in our understanding of the fundamentals of sleep mechanisms. I think there's a long way to go, but we know enough that genuinely science-based advice can help a lot of people.

This is what I say all the time. Our understanding of sleep is at the same point our understanding of fitness and diet was in the 70s. I lived through that age, we understood it was important, but didn't know how it works, and are still discovering.

We've been building a consumer level sleep eeg headband, and are looking forward to learning more about brain function with huge volumes of sleep eeg data. Just looking at sleep stages isn't enough.

Of course, our goal isn't to get people to sleep with an eeg device, but we can't stimulate deep sleep without directly monitoring brain activity. We're https://affectablesleep.com

Have you looked into how the light you get affects your sleep cycle? It's not a cure-all but definitely has a very strong effect on circadian rythm.

Yes, I put this in the bucket with sleep hygiene.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com