Rethinking Sleep from First Principles
affectablesleep.com
affectablesleep.com
The point isn't SEO, we're trying to get people to change their thinking around how we approach sleep.
There is links to research in slow-wave enhancement on our website, but the entire post "could" links to references.
But I take your feedback, and I'll be more conscious of adding links to references in future posts.
General best practice is to link to the sources that you have used. You don’t have to wonder what people might or might not read.
If an article is telling me to throw out the rule book on sleep, it needs to offer new and actionable rules. Otherwise, I’m not sure what the point of this was, other than means to harvest email addresses.
I'm regularly answering questions from people on Reddit who are saying "I got 8 hours, but I still feel horrible", or "what's going to happen if I don't get 8 hours of sleep". We need to change this entire conversation.
I get the frustration around “where are the new rules", and I probably could have done a better job at recommending a focus on bio-markers, etc. What I’m trying to do is make space for a new direction focused on functional sleep health. That’s what we’re actively building toward.
I wrote this post to explain why we’re working on what we’re working on, and to engage with people who see the world as we do, or open their eyes to a new way of looking at the sleep.
I appreciate you taking the time to comment, is it safe to say the idea struck a nerve, but that you were wanting more?
Just so you know, this isn't a "let's throw up a web-page and see if we can harvest emails", we've been developing this technology for almost 5 years, and it is being used by researchers in clinical studies.
Even if all these markers are measured somehow, what can a person do with that information? I can’t work harder to do any of this stuff, it all happens automatically while sleeping. You mention alcohol can disturb certain systems, but that goes back to standard sleep hygiene rules, which the article was looking to dismiss and move beyond.
So I’m left wondering where all this is going? I’ve struggled with sleep my entire life. The start of the article seemed like it was going to make some big promises, and I’m left with nothing but questions. You’re looking to change the conversation, but I still don’t know what the intended destination looks like.
We have developed a headband that monitors sleep in real-time and increases restorative function. So less of a "what can I change", we ensure the sleep you get is as restorative as possible.
My next post (I think) is going to be about sleep hygiene, and where the current "rules" fit in.
The gist of my thinking here is that sleep hygiene rules don't define how restorative your sleep will be any more than your warm-up defines how good your workout will be. The current thinking around wind-down periods, diet recommendations, etc is the same as a warm-up or fueling yourself for a workout.
We're focused on the workout itself. What makes sleep actually restorative.
Does that make sense?
I've also struggled with sleep my entire life, which is how I got into this space. I'm sorry the article let you down, but I completely get what you're saying. I had the same concerns before I published it, "am I really saying anything", but I think it's important for us to open this conversation, even though we don't have a solution for YET! We're close, and part of this is to understand who our tribe are, who's looking for this solution, or are we off the mark with the language.
When I speak to many people about what we do, I often hear back "oh, you help people fall asleep", or "you make people get more sleep", it's REALLY hard to get people out of the mentality that more sleep means better sleep.
How is the headband going to increase restorative sleep? Is it expected to compensate for lifestyle issues that could be leading to many issues that people have? You mention you don’t have the solution yet, is the headband more of a hypothesis at this point?
When I said "I don't have the solution yet", I meant, we are not for sale in the market yet, so I don't have anything that can help you today.
If you're suggesting "lifestyle issues" are things like, "I've got young children, and the demands of parenthood disrupt my sleep", or "I'm over 40 and my sleep quality just isn't what it used to be", then yes, this is where our capabilities shine. There is currently an issue with our capabilities in the shift-work population, but we may be able to address that prior to launch.
I like to consider these "sleep issues related to lifestyle", than "lifestyle issues".
Is that the sort of thing you were thinking of?
One of the reasons we need to speak of "restorative function" rather than "sleep quality" is that in sleep medicine they refer to sleep quality based on time metrics.
On the sleep hygiene side of things, I don't want to suggest that sleep hygiene isn't important. I used to hate it and think it was over-stated, and I think it is, when you talk about restorative function. However, if you can't get to sleep, you don't have the opportunity for restorative function. Sleep hygiene is the bus that takes you to the gym, it's not the workout.
You could use far fewer words by just explaining what you know and are doing explicitly instead of obliquely.
People don’t need to “think differently”, they just need to know what you are doing and why in non-abstract terms.
I don’t know if this is a writing habit issue or a staged reveal issue, but I suggest just being direct.
> Sleep hygiene is the bus that takes you to the gym, it's not the workout.
What am I supposed to do with stuff like this? Nobody would disagree. All the abstract and indirect communication isn’t necessary. It’s just fluff. (IMHO)
However, like millions of other, I am very glad to hear of any activity like yours to find other ways to address sleep issues. I wish you great success.
If you look on our website, we describe the process of increasing the synchronous firing of neurons which are the defining feature of deep sleep and the foundation of health.
Unfortunately, we thought we'd have FDA regulatory approvals prior to launch, but we won't, which means we can't legally point to any specific biomarkers or physiological processes.
It's a bit of a strange rule, because if the person was conscious while we provided the stimulation, we can say whatever we want, but because they are unconscious, we have to kinda dance around it.
I'm still working on how we can clearly say what we do, while staying within the regulatory limitations.
It's a big part of why I'm putting stuff like this out now. Your feedback has been really helpful, and I appreciate it.
I just took a look at more of the site. I’m not sure if changes were made based on feedback, or if the site has remained the same, but it mentions tones being used to single the brain to adjust. This was what I was looking for, but you seemed to dance around it in the comments (or maybe I somehow missed it in the blog post and comments?). If you can mention it on the website, I’m assuming it’s not part of the FDA restriction.
Having learned that, I’d have a follow up question. I sleep with a white noise machine. Others may live in a city with street noise at all hours of the night. Will something like a white noise machine, or street noise, mask (or interfere with) the tones the headband is making, or dampen the impact it has? I wouldn’t want to give the white noise up, as it has helped me a lot, especially in unfamiliar environments. It gives my brain something neutral to focus on while trying to fall asleep, instead of activating at every little house or street noise that might be going on.
One of my biggest issues is going to bed and then falling asleep. If I fail to do that effectively, I wouldn’t even get to the part where the headband could do its thing. If it takes longer to fall asleep using this, does the effectiveness mean a person can feel as rested, with similar performance (memory, etc) on less sleep? The blog stressed how time sleeping is the wrong metric, but would this cut the amount of sleep a person needs, or would they still sleep for a similar duration, just with better quality? I don’t think sleep duration can be thrown out, as people need to organize their life around sleep.
The current website is not regulatory safe, but because we aren't selling yet, we're at little risk. So you're seeing our old website. The new one unfortunately can't talk about deep-sleep, slow-waves, etc. We can talk about timing to brain activity, and that sort of "talking around what we're doing".
If falling asleep is your biggest issue, than what we are currently offering is not for you. We're talking to other researchers (there is a bunch of neuro in our office), but the "fall asleep faster" stuff I've seen is mostly nonsense. BTW, I'm a life-long insomniac, that's how I got into this.
We try to stay away from the "sleep less" terminology. Yes, your brain functions better as a result of stimulation. This has been shown in multiple studies, but the position we like to take is that I'm not the police of your sleep time. You decide the time you have and how sleep fits into your life, we ensure that time is as restorative as possible. This fits with young parents, shift-workers, etc. Some insomniacs will decide that this is how they want to deal with the lack of sleep, but I'm not putting insomnia as a primary target because we can't answer the primary complaint of not being able to fall asleep.
As far as white-noise machine, it shouldn't affect the stimulation at all. People often ask us "what does it sound like" but the sound itself is only 1/10th of a second or less. The volume is important. Not loud enough, and your brain will ignore it, too loud, and it will wake you up, so we are constantly adjusting the volume based on the brain activity we are reading in real-time. The sound would/should be perceived as louder than your white-noise maker. It's possible if your white-noise maker is REALLY loud, the speaker just might not have enough power to overcome that, but I think that's unlikely.
Internally we're talking about having noise, podcasts, etc being available to be played while you're trying to fall asleep, and once we've detected you are asleep, we turn that off, and move into stimulation mode, however, we have to be aware of battery consumption (bone-conduction uses a not insignificant amount of power), and that Apple doesn't expose BLE Audio to devices other than AirPods, which adds to the battery drain. We have some solutions to this, but it may be a post-launch update.
If this isn’t the take away, then I’m not sure why you spent so much time trying to dunk on sleep duration being the enemy and needing to move the conversation away from it.
It really sounds like what you’re trying to build compliments sleep duration and proper sleep hygiene. The way it’s been talked about makes it sound like someone can replace a full night’s sleep with a 20 minute power nap. That may not have been your intent, and you didn’t explicitly state that, but that’s sure what it seems like you’re trying to place in reader’s minds by dismissing sleep duration and hygiene as old and irrelevant ideas.
I'll continue working on this. Looking at the language that I'm prepping for the new website (and the old), I don't think this would be the take-away, I think my blog posts veer more towards this, but I'll make sure I am more clear.
If you look on our website, we describe the process of increasing the synchronous firing of neurons which are the defining feature of deep sleep and the foundation of health.
Unfortunately, we thought we'd have FDA regulatory approvals prior to launch, but we won't, which means we can't legally point to any specific biomarkers or physiological processes.
It's a bit of a strange rule, because if the person was conscious while we provided the stimulation, we can say whatever we want, but because they are unconscious, we have to kinda dance around it.
I'm still working on how we can clearly say what we do, while staying within the regulatory limitations.
Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?
Or maybe you are correct that it is my writing style that is the issue. I find for many people giving them a simple analogy they can latch on to makes it fairly simple.
I don't think most people do understand that sleep hygiene isn't the activity that improves sleep. Most people think sleep is when they're brain and body are inactive, it's "rest", but in fact, it is anything but.
1. Lots of people are doing obvious things that clearly prevent them from getting good sleep: Alcohol, no exercise, or exercise to close to bedtime, bright screen time right before bed, drinking too much water and waking up, no regular bed time so body is always confused, not actively doing something with stress they take to bed with them, bedroom too warm, ... on and on.
2. Lots of people have benefited from not doing these unhelpful things.
You might frame things as:
-----
Poor sleep undermines almost everything we do, reducing motivation, lowering cognitive performance, and interfering with our social and professional lives. Poor sleep contributes significantly to both mental and physical health issues, and reduce lifespans.
It is fair to say, that widespread sleep problems not only hold millions of individuals back, but society as a whole.
Current wisdom is useful, as far as it goes. But it hasn't been enough.
Sleep hygiene is great at removing barriers to good sleep, but our modern world bears little resemblance to the habitats and habits our bodies evolved to thrive in. All that complexity makes perfect hygiene impossible. And even with great hygiene, many people still have trouble getting quality sleep.
But our team has had a profound insight, that we couldn't walk away from. There are other ways to help sleep than simply avoiding sleep disrupters or sleeping in late.
Our team's unique vision is to pro-actively assist the body as it sleeps. To improve sleep quality, independent of sleep duration problems or other issues.
This is a promising new, and complementary, approach to improving sleep.
Our team has been engaged in fascinating work, developing a better understanding of the practicalities our brains deal with as they perform their vital sleep duties. But we are even more excited that those revelations are helping us design potential therapeutic interventions that can actively assist our brain to help us.
And most of all, we are thrilled that those potential interventions in sleep quality, already in the works, may benefit individuals and society so profoundly.
Are we being audacious or too earnest to say we have a dream? Well we do! We have a dream.
-----
So, being complementary to sleep hygiene is a plus, not a minus. Two pronged attacks on problems are MUCH more powerful and promising, if they are complementary, than solutions that are just substitutions.
Also, downplaying established wisdom is a flashing red sign pointing at cooks and scams.
Einstein didn't downplay Newton's theory of gravity when he replaced it. Newton's theory was a great improvement over what existed before. Einstein wouldn't have had is own insights without it. All wisdom is a stepping stone to new wisdom, not an impediment.
Knowing that sleep hygiene, despite being helpful, is widely recognized as not enough was surely and impetus for you own insights. It wasn't competition, it helped you, and it will still help people, as far as it goes. You may find the certain kinds of hygiene magnify the benefits of your work.
I don't think that is downplaying, I think it is clearly stating where and how it is beneficial, and where we pick up where sleep hygiene leaves off.
Updated: Now I see, you're saying the original post made sleep hygiene the enemy, I didn't intend it that way. Measuring sleep time is an antiquated idea, but that isn't sleep hygiene, unless you're suggesting sleep hygiene is responsible for our 8 hour a day mentality. Which I'd say it is probably lumped in with.
I don’t think making an issue of that helps either.
In fact, if your approach works, and people with problems achieve great sleep, it will be interesting to see if shorter time sleepers are able to revert to longer times naturally, or shorter times. Some frustrated short sleepers may achieve the bliss of a longer night’s sleep. Some longer sleepers may naturally wake rested earlier!
You could frame that as the jury is out on that one. Not that aiming for enough time is wrong. But that sleep assist may alter the simple recommended time approach.
And your hopes are to benefit everyone, including those who for practical reasons can’t allocate the recommended time, with the time deficit being less of a problem, or in the best case scenario, no longer a problem at all.
I think remaining positive but flexible about current wisdom helps. It is the result of a huge amount of effort and observation - no matter how imperfect the results.
Otherwise you are in danger of both claiming too much, and making claims that really are completely unnecessary.
It is also a bad look. People are always hearing “everything you have been told is wrong”, without evidence to back that up, only to hear the opposite a month or year later. It gives the impression of clickbait, a scam, or vaporware.
Until there are studies from major sleep research labs demonstrating you really do have a strong impact on sleep times, you are in danger of promising something you can’t deliver.
The simple message of higher quality of sleep for everyone is the only one you need. It is the only thing people want.
Demand for that is insane.
Stay on that simple message.
The story is a new approach, understanding practical work the brain does, creating sleep assist.
Simple gets more attention. Simple is remembered. Don’t publically fight phantoms in your mind, that are not in your customers’ minds.
You already have a good story. A major new angle on the problem.
Sticking with a simple message is especially important before revealing something people cannot yet buy.
And any real impact on hygiene, validated by credible independent studies, would make fantastic follow up post-availability PR.
You might ask yourself, why are you already “selling” something you can’t sell yet? It’s not always wrong to attempt to pre-emptively stoke demand. But your demand is already there and already enormous. It is easy to seriously undermine your reputation if your message gets ahead of reality in any way. Avoid any complication, and avoid frustrating people with unsupportable (today) claims.
You are going to genuinely have 1000 interesting viewpoints on this. Your customers rarely need more than one or zero before you ship.
There is significant research (a decade worth, and over 50 published peer-reviewed), for the majority of people we don't show a significant impact on sleep architecture (sleeping longer). There is a slight change in sleep maintenance, but not enough that I'd put that as a selling feature.
Thanks again. I'm going to reach out via email if that's ok.
Feels like a tldr is “Hi I read some stuff about sleep please give me your e-mail”