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Comment by cassianoleal | Hacker News Reader

This is spot on. These things are a delicate balance as well. When I sleep well, I can control my feeding patterns much better. When I eat well, I tend to sleep better. Exercise affects both of those, and is affected back.

Work is constantly nudging this balance in the wrong direction, putting us into a vicious cycle of accelerated death and suffering.

I may be making this sound worse than it feels though, probably because I'm writing this in between bouts of high fever. I honestly can't complain all that much from the life I lead but I do wish I could make it work much better around my physiological needs.

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Saw a video few days ago from someone saying that two people with the same diet but one having a bad sleep regime would make the low sleep person gain weight and lose muscle.

Sleep (specifically recovery) is also an important part of building muscle mass

You might find some of my previous comments useful too;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40978488

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41538322

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38445883

Thanks. I upvoted you because this is all great advice. I'm politely going to decline it though. Not because I don't think it's valuable but mostly because I already have alternatives to achieve those results that I know work better for myself.

Unfortunately right now I don't have the time to follow through with most of it. Life happens, and right now it just happens to be happening more or less all at once. Urgency trumps priority.

Furthermore, I'm a night owl. I have at different times in my life tried to change it. I followed all the advice I could find (including a lot of the things you mention). Ultimately, if I have to wake up early in the morning for work, I might end up with a cycle of 8h on the first night, with some luck another 8h, then it goes down to 6-5h, 2h and in some occasions an all nighter to top if off.

My current sleep deprived cycle is one of relatively regular 5-6h per night. It's not very good but mostly because of the time I have to be awake.

If I could wake up at 9:30-10:00 every day, I would be able to sleep those 5-6h per night and be in top shape. I know because I've done it for a few months in the past. I was at top physical and mental shape, consistently.

Waking up at 7:00-8:00, even if I could sustain 7-8h per night, I'd still be sleepy, tired and unfocused for the most part. My brain suffers and so does my body.

At this point I just decided to accept light sleep deprivation vs. the worse alternatives.

I suggest you watch Dr. Satchin Panda's (he is the Circadian Rhythms researcher) videos (they are short TEDx ones) at the minimum. He gives a simple 6-step process which you might find very relevant.

Thanks, I'll try to find the time.

You seem to have a pretty reserved attitude about this. And I hope you are doing okay.

Advice from morning people about sleep is usually as useful as cancer advice from homeopathics. I can understand his lack of interest here.

And it's not how I hadn't already said I tried many things with invariably similar results. I might watch the videos if I find the time but it's definitely not in my list of priorities as I'm really skeptical that there will be anything there that I haven't already done or is similar in nature - mainly because outside of changing the world or CRISPR I'm not sure there is a way to "fix" this.

I've now read a summary. It's just the same light, eating, and exercise changes, mixed with some night-owl denialism. All stuff I've tried dozens of times, which maybe moves my sleep by 15 minutes.

Thanks for taking one for the team!

No, you are needlessly trivializing it and maybe doing a disservice to others to whom it might be of great value.

I am not sure what you read, but Dr. Satchin Panda's research is not the "same light, eating, and exercise changes, mixed with some night-owl denialism." You can watch his(and other circadian researchers) longer videos on Youtube for more knowledge. Also two books i can recommend are a) The Circadian Code by Satchin Panda and b) When : The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink.

Circadian research is holistic since it studies how our body clocks (there are a set of them) are synchronized with Nature and thus when is the optimum time to do something with maximal benefit. Eg. When is the best time to take medicines for maximal efficacy, When is the best time to do exercise for maximum benefit etc. In the context of this thread, he doesn't talk about morning larks/night owls but merely allowing Natural Sunlight to tune us to its rhythms. So it doesn't matter what time you do get up in the morning (5/8/10AM etc.) but if you go and stand in the sunlight immediately after (or even better take a walk) your body adjusts itself so eventually you do get sleepy with sunset and awake at sunrise (within limits and control of other factors like exposure to other light sources). Similarly Exercise is most efficacious when done after 4PM etc.

Most of these practices are zero-cost and risk-free and easily adjustable to individual variations and much better than popping Melatonin pills etc.

I have done all that, so IMO GP is really not trivialising anything. This is about the same we've been hearing for years.

If you want to know the effect of those "fixes" on the wrong person, re-read my big text. I've done it all. The "fix" only makes me sleepy early enough for the first or second night of a roughly weekly cycle. It also means a night with enough hours but not enough quality of sleep.

> Most of these practices are zero-cost and risk-free

They are really not. I went through a lot of issues for trying them. I nearly lost a job once, and I have missed social gatherings as I had to recover sleep in the weekend.

Moreover, where I live now, I don't have the option of morning sunlight for a few months each year as there is none. In fact, there are whole days with so much grey and darkness that my body basically thinks it's always time to sleep so not easily adjustable either.

I did read all your detailed comments. They only mentioned time cycles but no other details. The reason i linked to couple of my previous comments is because i listed more details there to think about and investigate.

For example, i list Diet and separately also Gut Health to consider. One of the key neurotransmitters affecting sleep is Serotonin which we now know to be mostly produced in the intestines. The Gut and Enteric Nervous System are known as "The Second Brain" (see book of the same name by Michael Gershon) and can act independently of the central nervous system. So one cause might be your gut is not producing enough Serotonin. On the Diet side Serotonin is made from Tryptophan so another cause might be your diet does not contain enough Tryptophan. For the lack of natural sunlight (SAD is well known) you might want to consider Vitamin-D and Melatonin supplements (but only after consulting with a doctor) and use one of those fancy lamps that mimic sunlight frequency ranges.

As i pointed out, Circadian science is holistic so you need to take various factors into account both individually and in combinations to narrow down the problem. There are various scenarios to try out and see what makes a significant difference. While the science is solid the nuances are very important to consider.

I trivialized your comment because it was already trivial. You mentioned some video, but were too lazy to even link to it, much less summarize the main ideas so we could know if it was worth watching or not.

I take vitamin-d and melatonin already, and have messed with lamps, early sun, exercise, and tryptophan (and magnesium, and theanine, and dozens of other stuff). All these things together affect my sleep and wake times by maybe 30 minutes. If you really did know about something I haven't read before dozens of times, then at least you could have written a sentence or two about what it is.

You have completely missed what i was talking about. If you couldn't find some video i mentioned, you should have had the sense to infer that it was maybe linked to in a previous comment in the same chain which is what i had done. Or you could have simply asked for it when i would have readily pointed you to it. As it is you did neither but made a silly comment which is what i called out.

All that you mention in your second para are symptomatic treatments but Circadian Research is big picture systems thinking giving you a framework within which you learn to slot your life/treatments. A medicine taken at the wrong time may lose its efficacy. The references given in my previous comments and other comments linked to from some of those give you the Science. Whether you want to read/study those to get more insight into your condition and perhaps work constructively towards a solution is up to you.

Let me stop for a second. Let's assume for a minute that the information you're linking us to is in fact excellent and if I peruse the whole protocol I'll eventually adapt myself to a morning routine.

Why?

Why do I have to do all that? Why do I have to go through all this trouble, spend so much time, and energy and money figuring all this out? What happens until I do eventually figure it all out?

Why am I being required to adapt? All I need is to be left alone for maybe another couple hours each morning. That's all.

Imagine if the situation was reversed, and you had to work 1h past your bed time. Would you then be looking for multi-intervention protocols to shift your circadian clock forward so you wouldn't be falling asleep during some of your work hours? Would you happily and willingly spend all this time, energy and cash into adapting yourself to this madness?

Back to the original problem, I don't think any of this will make a difference. Maybe it will marginally improve the quality of my sleep, but at what cost? My genes are what bias my circadian rhythm that way. Will these interventions permanently alter my gene expression so I don't "fall back" into being a night person again? I doubt so. Which means these interventions will need to become a permanent fixture, causing more stress and giving me yet more work and routines to follow.

I really don't see how this can be considered a solution to anything, even if it works - and I honestly cannot see how it would. I would appreciate it if the gaslighting would just stop and we could discuss real ways to deal with the issue - like having more flexible work and life arrangements so different people could exist the way they're meant to.

I will just make a few final observations and sign off this chain.

1) Nobody is forcing you to do anything you don't want to.

2) I was merely sharing some useful Science which IMO has as yet not seen widespread adoption.

3) Our immediate environment will not change to accommodate our specific needs due to economic concerns. Due to globalized nature of work people are working longer hours and all times whether night or day. If my job which i need for survival needs me to stay awake at night i need to find means to adapt myself to it without ruining my Health. Research is showing more and more that Sleep is foundational to everything else and hence i need to treat it seriously and with high priority.

4) You are making a lot of assumptions/conclusions without having looked into the Science which i think is wrong. While DSPD is a thing it is not fully clear whether there is a genetic component to it. Also Epigenetics is a thing.

5) Finally, if the situation were reversed and i were suffering, i would do everything in my power to study as much as possible on available Science, Traditional Methods of healing etc. to come up with some plan to manage it with/without a doctor. You will find accounts in the popular press of people suffering from something which the doctors could not diagnose properly but they never gave up and kept researching by themselves and trying out new things until something worked for them (usually after consulting with a doctor on it).

“I can control my feeding patterns”

I find this to be a disturbing way to describe eating

You're free to not use it, I guess.

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