Sleep duration, chronotype, health and lifestyle factors affect cognition [pdf]
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com
Stupid (cognitively easy) stereotypes, backed by "everybody's gotta drink!" machismo/insecurity/conformist culture, backed by "all the people I know" (who aren't silenced by stereotypes and peer pressure) experience, backed by decade after decade of massive advertising by the alcohol industry (and adjacent industries).
Obviously the study result is BS. Because if the the same people, drinkers with higher than their abstinent peers cognitive scores, didn't drink, their performance would be THE SAME.
But it's impossible to find out. They should totally continue to study all that, tho. Maybe at some point in the future we can cut people open alive and look properly inside, fuck around & find out, and then close them up and send them back to work again.
That liquor consumption part of the study result.
- there are tens of thousand drinks on the planet,
- all with their different nuances in how they alter mood and thinking patterns.
Not appealing just can't be true except if you 'score' low in novelty seeking/curiosity ... except if you were only exposed to bad drunks and pathetic alcoholics ...
Something like that. But it might also be because marketers see people like you as a challenge, a trophy to collect, and the non-marketing types just want to 'seduce' you.
They do the same to babies and minors all the time. "Say this or that, do this or that." And BAM, some brain cells practically useless forever.
This is honestly not true unless you are including absinthe. Ethanol is the only active ingredient and it has one of the most well understood dose-response curves and one of the most heavily studied effects. The rest is all in your head.
There just isn't that much to the alcohol, it's very one note, moreso than any psychedelic, moreso than even smoking (where dose control significantly varies the effects) or even cannabis which is also relatively one note.
I am quite certain that if you talked to a variety of people who like to drink, they will tell you that tequila hits different than a single barrel rye whiskey or champagne, for example. And it's more than just the amount of sugar. There are amounts of hints of various aromas in different liquor and these small differences do quite a bit in the brain, which you did propose yourself when you said
> The rest is all in your head.
Brains are incredible. The "sensitivity and specificity" of receptors goes way beyond what we understand for now, both hardware and software-wise, and that is true on the level of synapses as well as within any metabolism anywhere in their chains in the body and in how they work together to achieve their own objectives, as well as the ones they share.
Take any approach within the range of broken - buggy - normal - amplified and apply it to any sphere of single and networked mechanism. Wear and tear and age change all this even further and never forget that we are still evolving, over very long time spans in very small changes.
It's an insane ride from bio-chemistry to character in different states of mind and body/brain and that ride morphs quite a bit based on anything we consume via active and passive channels.
And that's just part of the story as it evolves in my head.
Personally, no. Statistically, yes, at least enough for the difference to affect a study like this. That's the point of those comments.
My body has a hard time with it. So it’s rare that I seek it out. A small container of sake early in the evening might be my indulgence from now on.
For me it seems to correlate with having had COVID back in 2021, where prior to that I could still have 2-3 drinks and feel okay the next day. My suspicion/intuition is that it has something to do with a shift in my gut microbiome - from what I understand, alcohol can very easily disrupt one’s microbiome, and the state of my microbiome seems to have a significant influence on my mood.
I haven’t missed the alcohol though. It’s actually been a blessing for my general health and wellbeing.
However, I've also heard mention of people drinking less in general which could suggest a link.
A change that came along with this is some kind of sensitivity to sugar. I love candy and baked goods. A short stack of pancakes with maple syrup and berries is the best, but that kind of carb bomb can leave me feeling almost hungover.
I was also in my early 40s when this happened for what that's worth.
Note that I largely resonate with the idea that aging reduces tolerance to alcohol. Love the Oatmeal's https://theoatmeal.com/comics/hungover. Hasn't quite hit me that hard, yet. Thankfully.
[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drastic-molecular...
Also kept a clear mind and mindful awareness throughout. Just euphoric & more social.
Then at 53, after some extreme stress, that completely changed. One drink slowly is usually fine. 2-3 drinks will upset my sleep. Any more and my next day suffers.
At 4-5 drinks my body feels like it has a slight fever over night. I feel overheated, whether I really am I don’t know. Just can’t process it efficiently.
More than that & I get socially sloppy. Not bad, but not welcome either.
But my very petite daughter in her mid 20’s inherited my relevant genes. Since high school she has to down two hard cocktails within ten minutes to start an evening of (more paced, but still steady) drinking with friends just to feel the effects, like I did most of my life.
She can out drink companions 2x her weight.
Also in common, neither of us is at alcohol addiction risk. Drinking is completely social/situational, no cravings or problems with abstention. We both enjoy the taste of alcohol. Scotch, neat, tastes like candy to me.
Drinking has always been at least as much about the gourmand exploration of flavors and varieties as the psychological effect.
I got my DNA analysis and one chromosome is 68% Caribbean pirate, 32% Viking, the other is split equally Russian/Irish.
Joking - but would be interested if relevant genes could be identified. I would happily sign up for gene or epigenetic therapy to resume my old life of refined epicureanism in excess.
Drinking mixed with lots of sparkling water, diet sodas, and a powder mixture of creatine, minerals, protein & fiber, before & after, reliably helps a bit.
Also, liver health remains excellent.
Genes!
I used to like wine, but the older I got, the more I started noticing having a terrible hangover the next day, even if it wasn't enough to get actually drunk or even buzzed. Type/brand of wine didn't seem to matter. But whiskey or vodka mixed with soda, no problem.
I can’t recall the last time I was asked “why” after telling someone I don’t drink. All in all, I was fortunate that during university a close friend of mine also didn’t drink. Being the “odd one out” seems harder than being the “odd pair out” lol.
edit: culture plays a role as well in how acceptable it is. I’m from a country that is heavy on alcohol usage though (Belgium).
However, in society at large, social influence (excuse the bit of circularity) is an extremely powerful force driving people's lifestyle.
Alcohol is one of the most boring psychoactive experiences there is, it's the safest, the most predictable and the most repeatable. There's nothing challenging about it - happy drunks are going to be happy drunks, angry/emotional drunks are going to be angry/emotional drunks, people who use the context of alcohol to excuse behaviors that they feel they would otherwise be judged for (promiscuity, "I love you guys! no I really do!", etc. etc.) are doing just that. The only drug with more predictability than alcohol is caffeine, with the common opiates being next in line for being absolutely predictable - do X get Y.
Alcohol is boring. Even pot or tobacco are more interesting, but they lack the social context that provides behavioral permissibility which is really what drives the ritual-lite use - going drinking on the weekend.
For one, to claim that most developed countries have purged ritual feels more like you are referring to some specific rituals. Or have amusing cuts on what you consider developed countries.
You also sort of undercut yourself by noting that alcohol hits people in different, if repeatable ways; but you seem to think that will not be true for other drugs? From my experience, I would expect the same for pot. Tobacco, I confess I never really saw it impact anyone. Outside of getting them addicted.
Simply stated, why do you think you would not see such variability of how other items impact people?
They most likely mean all kinds of overt rituals societies used to have and some non-western societies still have.
What kind of rituals do we have that you have in mind that we still have, and that are not either very peripheral to everyday life or have not been diminishing in importance and attendance year by year?
Do we still do the same rituals as we did in the past? Of course not. Which is why I would largely agree. I suspect the evidence will be such that there are still more rituals than folks admit to. Graduation ceremonies. Weddings. Etc.
The predictability is a FEATURE. And btw, it's not boring at all.
You are conflating boring with predictable.
meanwhile 2-3 beers with friends I haven't seen in a while is a good time, good convo, and we can chill out and sip water for 30 min to make sure we're safe to drive. like, I'm looking to have a pint with the lads and have nice conversation, not undergo ego death.
Setting aside alcohol addiction, the costs of alcohol abuse to your health (e.g., brain damage, liver disease, etc.), and the risk of killing yourself by drinking too much in a sitting, there's also the way it drastically increases the risk of drunk driving and domestic violence.
I'm not saying we should ban it or anything, but we should not be underplaying the very real risks and costs associated with it.
Think of alcohol as ancient painkiller/antidepressant that helped people to get through the challenges of their lifes and make it through the life without walking out of the window
Yeah, no. According to CDC data, more than 150,000 people die from excessive alcohol consumption per year [1], which is about how many people died of heroin overdoses in the past 20 years [2].
By and large, the labels "safe" or "dangerous" are subjective and highly cultural, at least when it comes to substances.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/heroin.html
Easy, everyone drinks, almost nobody shoots up. There you go, explained.
People often don't understand that not everyone experiences a thing the same way. That what it's like for you isn't the same as what it's like for me.
People think you experience alcoholic beverages exactly the same as they do and don't understand why you dislike them as a result.
I grew up in a blue-collar rural area where alcoholism wasn't just common, it was flat-out normal. Anyone who could get away with nursing a beer or 12 the whole day long and not get fired, usually did. My dad drank a lot and it caused a ton of problems with his marriage (leading to divorce) but at least he wasn't abusive.
I am also somewhat lucky in that I never could acquire a taste for beer. Based on my family history and upbringing, I could have very easily slid into alcoholism otherwise. I'll never know for sure, but to keep even the possibility at bay, I have two hard rules: no drinking during the day and no drinking the night before work or having to be somewhere the next day.
Because it does appear to appeal to 90% of the population
> The regression highlighted a positive association between normal sleep duration (7–9 hours) and cognitive scores... while extended sleep duration negatively impacted scores across both cohorts
> intermediate and evening types, were linked to superior cognitive function
propaganda by big insomnia ;)
> Individuals who abstained from alcohol showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed alcohol, conflicting with previous research that has connected moderate drinking with cognitive impairment. Weekly and monthly alcohol consumption, as opposed to daily drinking, was found to somewhat correlate with lower cognitive scores.
> Fillmore was concerned about possible misleading variables in the studies: To start, they included ex-drinkers in the category of “abstainers,” which meant they were failing to account for the possibility that some people had stopped drinking specifically because of illness. The moderate drinkers looked healthy by comparison, creating the illusion that a moderate amount of alcohol was beneficial.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/magazine/alcohol-health-r...
I'm more inclined to think intelligence often times comes with a good dose of social anxiety and alcohol helps with managing it.
Back then I knew the problem was the *quality* of the alcohol/drinks.
Now, some years later. "My homie Jamal's" liquor costs 5-10 times that much and he puts effort into the mixtures, trying recipes, playing around with accent ingredients and modifiers and stuff. If we drink--we still drink quite a bit. But there's no month long binges no more and the immediate negative side effects on cognition are *GONE*.
Personally I don't drink alcohol, but I would never say that I am abstaining from drinking alcohol. I just don't do it. Same as eating green olives.
Meanwhile, as you're pointing it out, people who say that they are abstaining from alcohol are likely to be former alcoholics.
And say, people who's faith forbid them from drinking alcohol would probably fit in both : some just don't do it, others have to make a conscious effort to not do it.
The Ballmer Peak: An Empirical Search – https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10002 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40062892)
and that need grows exponentially with your understanding of the world until a certain point.
That need can be reduced to a healthy "Mom said everything is fine in moderate amounts" once you choose to not live by conflicting standards, or rather: when you choose to not support implicitly AND explicitly conflicting causes ( many on the left, finboys & fingirls, law enforcement, ... but unemployed who don't work on themselves or their environment as well )
Alcohol is one of the worst ones, you just blunt yourself while still realizing all failures, just temporarily a bit downtuned, next morning back to misery. No solution or even improvement is happening, just basically giving up (or a bit of complaining which is just group psychological therapy).
Sports, meditation, maybe even occasional psychedelics steered in right direction, active vacations, good food, good sleep. Life is much easier in such mode.
That is California sobriety at a level I’ve never seen before.
There are studies that show alcohol consumption is associated with greater novelty seeking, learning capacity, etc.
However, the studies that make more of an effort to control for those confounding factors have generally found that there are no health benefits, so right now the evidence seems to favor the idea that there are no health benefits to alcohol and in the studies that show otherwise it is due to confounding factors.
This study doesn't seem to have particularly attempted to control for these factors (it just controlled for specific cardiovascular diseases, etc.) so it's not surprising that the results match older studies that showed positive effects from small amounts of alcohol.
"Long total sleep time may suggest prior sleep deprivation, medical conditions, or effects of medications."[1]
Show me one employed person with a life that manages to get 8 hours sleep on average. Most commuters would have to go to bed at 2100 to get a breakfast and enough time to get to work. I only get 8 hours when I know I am sleep deprived and go to bed at 2100. However, this is not "normal", and I bet it isn't normal for most. So why do we call it normal, then?
I get at least 8 hours every night. My “must be home and in bed” time on a weeknight is by 12:30AM, and I sleep in until 8:45AM. I am normally woken by my alarm.
Weekends I simply set an alarm for 9 hours after I get in bed, which sometimes means sleeping until 2PM.
I don’t eat breakfast, and I basically never commute in the morning, but if I do, my office is about 15 minutes away.
More than lack of time, I'm usually too tired after a full day of work (8 or 9 till 6 or 6:30) to do anything else.
The EU records this for pretty much all member states, and Ireland shows an average of 28 minutes.[0]
> In 2019, more than half (61.3%) of employed people in the EU traveled less than 30 minutes from home to work.
You are correct that Ireland is part of the group of countries which has a larger subset of people with long commutes, but hovering around 10% is not what I'd call "normal".
> The largest shares of the longest commuting times were observed in Latvia (13.5%), Ireland (11.2%), Belgium (10.7%) and Hungary (10.6%), where more than 10% of employed people had to travel from home to work for 60 minutes or more.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...
Meanwhile in the real world...
People travelling daily longest for work are usually living in the (poorer) rural side, where yes, they have to get up early and take the (limited) public transport available, sometimes having only 2 buses per day.
Now, does my body do that?... no, usually it wakes me up after 6-7, but whatever.
It doesn't matter what time I go to bed, my eyes pop open at 05:30 and I have to get up (a) to micturate (did I mention I'm over 60?) and (2) feed the cats. The latter have trained me using medieval methods. When I was younger I would sleep as late as I could: my record was sleeping in until 16:00, and boys oh boys did that cause me to feel wretched.
So I go to sleep around 12:30 AM each night (sometimes even after 1 AM), and I wake up at 5:50 AM.
That's not enough sleep at all. I do sleep till very late during the weekend.
I've been doing this for 20 years now, and some day it's probably going to catch up on me.
("Normal" also depends on age: babies sleep a lot more than 8 hours a day, teenagers also typically need more sleep than they actually get.)
This "8 hours of sleep" is just a made up number.
Most adults (with responsibilities) don't sleep for 8 hours daily. They sleep far less.
And sleeping less than that is enough to live a very healthy life. If you feel your body/mind didn't rest well because you didn't get your 8 hour sleep, it's likely because you've been exposed to, and came to believe all these articles saying you do need 8 hrs min sleep. It's simply not the case. You can function very well on 6.5/7 hrs of sleep. I'm nearing 40 and I do.
2 worthy links:
https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ - debunks the popular "why we sleep" book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqlzQMB1fN8 - this guy is a S&C coach who's 30 and strong. He too believes sleep is overstated.
I admit tho, that I never checked if there are studies like that. If only I could travel backwards in time .......
I do have a fitness watch though that can (supposedly) measure SpO2, and while that showed the occasional dip, it seemed more like a measurement error, and generally the values were in the normal range.
I also have had a finger pulse oximeter which logs and exports to an app via USB. If I sleep with that on it seems to be very reliable at recording the levels, the data certainly looks good and feels much more reliable than the Sense.
I have somewhat of a deviated septum, and even had surgery done half a year ago, but it didn't really change much unfortunately. I always need >=9 hours of sleep to feel good. I've slept on average 7 hours the past 2 weeks & I feel horrible (completely different reason for the reduced sleep). I did a sleep study a few years ago because I suspected sleep apnea, but because of anxiety or sleeping in a new place, I only ended up sleeping 1-2 hours that night. They didn't find anything, but I wonder if I should try again.
I have headaches but they are related to other sinus issues, though the doctor seems to think the CPAP should help. I’m not so sure but open to the possibility!
A few weeks ago, I tried Nasal Strips again, and for some reason, they are helping now and the difference is like day and night. I can only assume that it's because I got older and my life style changed, including nutrition, which was really bad when I was young. So dry mucous had too much effect for me to notice the benefits of the nasal strips or it's really just the bigger size of my nose :P
But the biggest change, compared to my young years, is that I am much more resilient to unhealthy stress and not continuously stressed as I was back then, when I was also regularly exposed to stress amplifications without time to recover.
And being able to breathe properly through my nose now amplifies everything for the much much better: mood, psychological resilience, performance --both cognitive and athletic-- time to fall asleep, sleep, with the latter two coming with their own boosts for the next day.
Most notable was the effect on my facial muscles. With the loss of those specific tensions came a direct effect on focus and concentration and self-control, which is all, to a great extent, mediated by the prefrontal cortex.
But frequency doesn't mean much unless we know amounts. For example, small amounts weekly could be benefiting social relations and regulating things like anxiety. Binging monthly might not give these benefits.
Weirdly, BMI seems to have almost zero effect.
Seeing how chubby Jon von Neumann was, this should be trivial. ;)
Would seem to potentially imply more routine social activity / community.
"The relationship between cognitive function and lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption and smoking proved complex. Individuals who abstained from alcohol showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed alcohol, conflicting with previous research[1] that has connected moderate drinking with cognitive impairment"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story
[1] Topiwala A, Allan CL, Valkanova V, et al. Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study. BMJ 2017;357:j2353.
I guess where you live there are no homeless people.
Again I don't know this dataset well...but I'd really suspect that few of the UK's homeless would have passed this study's selection criteria.
It is interesting that fundamentalists tend to be anti-alcohol across religions with different attitudes in mainstream believers (say Christianity that commonly uses alcohol in religious rites and hose founder's first miracle was to give people alcohol, Buddhism, and Islam which is clearly anti-alcohol).
I think that means you are onto something in that there is an important correlation there. Not sure it is as simple as lower income (there are lots of rich fundamentalists of all religions) or cognition. Personality traits or associated cultural factors more likely?
It seems you are pointing to second largest religion in the world - islam. It covers over 2 billions of people. They largely don't drink not because they are fundamentalists, they just follow basic premises of their religion. And my various travels to various countries with them being either majority or minority its extremely common, even when they resettle ie to Europe. There are also completely dry countries in North africa for example, they are not full of religious fundamentalists.
Please educate yourself about the world a bit before making such harsh and discriminating statements, they have no place on this forum.
The alcohol taboo is equally strong in mainstream Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism (depending on region).
Also, in a lot of the developing world, prohibitionism is a fairly mainstream Feminist opinion, due to the sadly very common issue of domestic abuse.
All this shows is that there are various confounding variables in this study, and that more studies are needed.
[1]: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/exercise-alcohol-resear...
• people who sleep normal amounts (7–9 hours)
• night owls
when you don't have people calling, texting, slacking, zooming you, environmental noises (car, neighbours, other people, dogs), when you don't have personal life distractions (wife, kids, personal email, social media etc) - you can be in a flow state for prolonged time and be quite productive.
even such a small thing as lunch break, and other snack breaks - divides your day into two killing the flow.
Regardless of what’s occurred before hand, my brain seems to kick into some higher gear at around 9-10pm. Like there is a noticeable change in my energy/cognitive capabilities.
Ironically, the only time this has ever deviated was two months I spent in Russia where for the first time in my life, I adapted almost instantly to what one might call a “normal” sleep schedule. As soon as I returned to my own time zone, it reverted back to me being a night owl again.
I’ve given up attempting to work around it and simply moved to a role that can accomodate it. It’s been huge for my physical and mental health to end the 30 odd years I’ve spent fighting what seems to be a natural schedule for me.
And before someone chimes in with sleep advice, please don’t. I’ve tried it all. Some rings help a bit but at the end of the day nothing makes enough of a difference. I just need those two hours my feet to the point when I can sleep.
Also no, going to bed before everyone else is not an option. I’m not giving up having a social life.
I am extremely fortunate to have a career where I can sleep my natural hours of somewhere around 4:30 AM until after noon. But I had to fight for it, and set boundaries. I would encourage everyone with a late chronotype to seriously consider spending some time finding such work, as finally getting good sleep will be a major unlock for your life and happiness.
I'm very much a night owl. My whole childhood, I've been told by people that I can't choose to get out of bed late once I start working. Their message was clear: "Quit this lazy and childish behavior."
Nowadays, I sleep at 0:00-1:00 and get up at 7.30. I hate it. The world lacks empathy for us.
Now in my thirties, it turned around. I fall dead asleep at 9-10 PM and wake up at 4-5 AM, not being able to sleep further. The change coincides with me getting kids, but I don't think it alone can explain this.
In my 30s I went from wanting to stay up until 2am or later, and getting up at 9-10am, to wanting to be asleep by 10pm and getting up before 6am, every day of the week, including weekends - staying out late socialising is now weirdly hard work, and I'm basically done with work by 4:30-5pm and ready to start winding down.
I don't have kids, something just flipped over the course of a year or two.
I've noticed that when I'm flipped to be awake in early morning, I get tired really fast. It's like a cutoff hour - I have missed some concerts just because they started at 7-8 PM which was around bed time for me at the time. When I'm in the evening/night mode, I can be much more flexible.
It seems much harder to flip out of morning mode than to flip into it, even though I really don't like how I'm feeling across the day. It requires conscious effort to beat the cutoff, while flipping out of evening mode just happens on its own eventually if I'm not careful enough.
I was never a morning person whenever I had to follow a schedule.
Some weekdays at a certain time, it's time to go for a run. Saturday afternoons are side projects or spending time doing something with friends and family. Weekday evenings have a broad pattern to them (you won't see me in a cinema on a Friday night, or in the pub on a Monday...)
This structure seems to help regulate a ton of stuff, including eating, sleeping and so on. Some people "don't like routine", which I get, but you can basically block out sleep (plus an hour either side), and then riff in the middle, the key is try and get your head down around the same time, 7 nights a week, and try and learn the military sleep method [1] to get some consistency if you need it.
Good luck with settling it down, if that's what you want/need!
[1] https://www.dreams.co.uk/sleep-matters-club/what-is-the-mili...
But only (any one of) three things have proven to reliably get me all the way to being able to sleep like a normal person every day (while sustained):
1) Being totally exhausted by my day. This requires a lot of physical activity. Basically impossible on a work day or if I have significant amounts of anything not-very-active to do. I rarely achieve this one on except on vacation.
2) Zero electronics, including electric lights, after sundown (or at least for a full two or more hours before I want to be asleep).
3) 5mg of weed gummy
Only the third one is compatible with normal modern life with an office job.
Now I can almost do a 9-5 if I get up at 9 to be at work for 10. It's a vast improvement!
So seeing the other comments disagreeing maybe what you’re describing is a different kind of night owl…
At my worst I procrastinate my whole day away at home and not enter deep work until late at night where I become feverishly productive.
“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.”
One theory is that sleep, is a time when the brain cleans itself. If the theory is correct, maybe missing one cleaning is not detrimental. But continued, it will lead to performance decreases. Not just sports. But mental ability.
Missing a lot of sleep for successive days is almost guaranteed to lead to injury when you're training very hard. The effect on your cardio performance (even just average BPM) can be stark. I don't know how some resident doctors, for example, can also be very good marathon runners. Just managing that sleep schedule must be crazy.
The obvious conclusion to me is that there is no strong effect. Or that at some portions of the year, or parts of the globe, certain chronotypes have advantages, this certainly matches my anecdotal experience.
Irony apart, my idea (borrowed somewhere I can't remember) is that body functions are too intertwined to just isolate a single variable, or determine a single cause.
People, consume what you want, sleep how you want, and assess what it is that you "want" individually. It's not hard too see if alcohol, sleep deprivation, etc. causes you harm or not.
As for long-range damage or good: look at people who lived long (and healthy).
Alas, being of a certain age means that any kind of liquid before bed will result in an early-hours wakeup to relieve the bladder - negating any potential sleep benefits :(