I think a lot of it has to do with mental status, which can be concluded with one sentence -- "Are you happy with your life, and if not do you have a clear path to reach that?".
People who say no probably has a lot of trouble to get fit, get enough sleep -- sometimes NOT because they do not have the resources, but because they are not happy. They hate life, so why makes it better? I have observed this in myself so I wonder whether it is universally true.
I have observed that whenever I have a clear target in my life (e.g. I need to pursue this girl I like, or, I need to figure out Linux 1.0 VFS and I have a clear path before me), I immediately take care to do exercises, eat more healthy food, and try to get good sleep -- but if I cannot find an objective, or I have lost interests and are in the middle of finding a new one, I find myself a lot more obnoxious, and sometimes I "proactively" destroy my health because I don't care about it. Unfortunately I rarely find a clear path before me so the later status is more or less permanent while the former one is rare, maybe once per year -- but when I reach the first status it usually grabbed me for 2-3 months.
Mental stability is probably one of the reasons different people have vastly different productivity or achievements. It is mental stability that brings focus, not the other way around.
I agree. In my case I am physically very fit but sometimes neglect my health in other ways, including mentally and definitely including poor sleep habits.
Regarding what you said about focus, I think an ADHD diagnosis might help a lot of people here. I suggest asking for a full profile including WAIS testing, which assesses intelligence, because it is the "deficit" between various types of intelligence and attention that matters. Highly intelligent people sometimes are overlooked because their focus, working memory, etc. seem normal or even better than average, but the gap between those and their intellectual capacity creates a lot friction at least for some people.
I recently got diagnosed and am really looking forward to taking a low dose of stimulants in the mornings on work days, I hope it will help me "find a clear path" in my professional life.
My wife was diagnosed within last 2 years and thinks it has changed (and helped) her come to terms with a number of behaviors. And learn how to resolve/improve.
I wonder about me, too. Haven't done it. Is it the case (honest) that may we all have just a little bit anyways?
Most people who are not happy are not happy precisely because they can't find a clear path to reach happiness. It's the realization you are stuck in a shitty spot that makes the true feeling of unhappiness. A lot of people are also restricted by their own body and mind through mental and physical illness which makes pursuing basic goals frustrating not rewarding. Also a lot of people get rejected when they chase girls and fail when they take IQ tests or pursue high paying work.... I guess your worldview makes sense for smart winners but how does it work for the other half of the world?
I'm actually neither smart nor winning, at least from my perspective. The only winners are those who can do whatever they want and can say No to anything they don't enjoy. There are very few of them. The majority of the rest of us are similar, regardless of whether you are making 100K or 500K. Then there are the homeless/jobless people who are struggling with basic needs.
I'm not sure which half you are talking about, but I'm really bad at giving advice, especially to people in different situations. I do not have the authority or capacity to help others genuinely.
In my case, I often find life goals and enjoy the journey when I'm mentally healthy, not vice versa.
I can't control my mood, but when I am positive, I start a new hobby like dancing or playing an instrument, cook healthy, lift, sleep well, study new things, etc.
But when I'm depressed, I lose all interest in my life goals, eat junk food, skip exercise, and browse the Internet all night. I can't even enjoy my hobbies anymore.
It's always my mood that comes first, then I can find life goals and naturally do all healthy stuff.
Funnily, when I'm mentally healthy I also visit Hacker News frequently, but when I'm depressed all I do is infinite scrolling Reddit/TikTok.
It really is. Exercise and eating well was an activity I became capable of participating in as a result of the correct therapy and dramatically boosted its effects, not something I could persist at when already depressed.
When people claim the contrary it's feels more of a test to see if you can be perceived as responsible enough for your own actions to be worth helping. An individualistic mindset like that isn't very productive at alleviating depression.
I think we're soulmates. You articulated so well what I think about my own approach or lack of approach.
> Mental stability is probably one of the reasons different people have vastly different productivity or achievements. It is mental stability that brings focus, not the other way around.
Agree, at least in concept. I'm aware that some of my perceived or real lack of of progress in some life areas is due to mental instability. Various forms of it, some more active than others or present than others.
A lot of mine focuses on career things. I've got a bank of knowledge and skills that aren't easy to replicate and a career track circled around those things, but lack (I think) the passion for that career track.
But do I like the passion or do I just not have clear goals? What should they be?
In 2022 I was evaluating a senior position at a start-up and a friend asked: "what are your goals, or what are you solving for." My wife asks this question too.
And I tend to stare somewhat blank at the question. As an adult, the goals I'm sure I want have much less to do with career and much more with self. Be happy. Be productive. Be a warm and loving person. Be a responsible, fun, constructive parent.
That doesn't mean that I don't want a career or have aspirations, but there's so much less clarity. And so I've resorted over time to likely unproductive/destructive approaches - more argumentative than necessary, sometimes very responsive, sometimes unresponsive, substances and behavioral things that look like bad habits, addictions, etc.
> A lot of mine focuses on career things. I've got a bank of knowledge and skills that aren't easy to replicate and a career track circled around those things, but lack (I think) the passion for that career track.
I think maybe you can move into a managerial position that doesn't need to do much in the trench, or become a trainer in that field.
> That doesn't mean that I don't want a career or have aspirations, but there's so much less clarity.
Yeah. I figured there is a lot of ambiguity in life objectives, and there is no one there to help you. You just have yourself in this game.
> What do you do to work through these challenges?
TBH, I do not know what to do. I have a toolbox for the "down" time, but neither of them really solves it. Sometimes I listen to "Napoleon Hill" episodes to give me some motivation (this one I listened to today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u5jAzHpI3w). Sometimes I talked to myself and tried to sort out something. Sometimes I talked to ChatGPT and asked it to give me a list of something.
I kinda think there is no magic pills for such situations and one just has to grit through.
Work to live, not the other way around. Work produces income and is a means to an end.
Drill down a couple of levels on what it means to you to be happy, productive, warm, and loving. What do an ideal day and week look and feel like? What kind of life would you like your kids to have? Not abstractly. What would their ideal school situation be? How far from school? Any special opportunities like certain clubs, interest in playing an instrument, sports teams? Do you just do weekend warrior stuff, or does being a responsible, fun, constructive parent mean you’re picking them up after school regularly to go make memories?
Let’s say it’s something like the last bit for a moment. “Begin with the end in mind” is one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and in this case, the end is being a fun parent by going for ice cream or to the park or watch a movie or take guitar lessons together a couple of days a week after school. To make that happen, you’ll need to have flexible work hours and maybe a work location near their ideal school. Do the rare and valuable knowledge and skills that you’ve accumulated allow you do that? If so, great! You’re passionate about being a good parent; you don’t need that from your job. Your job is a means to an end. If the current conditions of your job get in the way of your goal of being a responsible, fun, constructive parent, how could you modify job parameters?
There’s no right answer. There’s your answer. What do you want for your kids? What do you want for you and your wife now and after they’ve left the nest? Walk around in a day, a week of that life in your head. There’s your end. Work backward from there.
This is the type of hen-egg dialectic that takes me straight to evolutionary theory. My guess is that the 'standard human tribe', ~200 strong, needs some people to be up at night. But since we don't have dedicated day/night humans, we all get this shared mess of a genome 'you need to be up at night sometimes'.
this mirrors my experience too. I’ll just add that some times taking a complete break from work is necessary to find the mental clarity to reach the state where learning, stability and happiness are possible.
I used to be able to do this but after having kids they always seem to reset the clock before you can make any headway. I still have not figured out how to regain the clarity. There is no substitute for unobstructed long stretches of time to focus on something. Being unexpectedly interrupted or put on a schedule just ruins it.
I have a kid and I get it. I'm actually a bit scared about long vacations and weekends nowadays. But I hope we will figure out a way when kid grows up a bit. Right now, it's all luck. I'm even thinking about getting rid of my hobbies and find new ones that match kid's education and activity, but not sure about that.
This comment is obviously true but uninteresting if you don't elaborate further on those causes
What I mean is, the comment you replied to isolated a specific cause and sparked a discussion; your comment, if taken at face value, is thought-terminating. How can we possibly comprehend all causes of complex phenomena before we are allowed to discuss them?
About the universally true thing, I understood it as whether people that's unhappy with life generally have trouble sleeping, not whether everyone that have trouble sleeping is unhappy with life. Still probably not an universal but is more reasonable sounding
The comment I replied to suggested that people who are not fit or suffer from sleep disturbances are willfully unhappy. I don't feel it requires much thought or experience with the subject matter to see that this is false. There are many easy counterexamples which I'm sure you can come up with even if you are only barely determined
No one is disallowing the parent, you, or anyone else from discussing or thinking about complex phenomena. If someone is not putting in the work to engage with the material, others are free to point it out, and they do so at their leisure.
I hold others to a higher standard when the stakes are higher. Specifically, the post I commented on was (likely unintentionally) not only factually wrong, but stigmatizing people with sleep disturbances. This is why my tone was dismissive and condescending. This was intentional.
I don't care to give examples because they are easy to find if you are asking in good faith. I even posted one in direct reply to TFA.
I’ve always envisioned those states as ‘swimming’ versus ‘treading water.’
The deal I have with myself is that it’s okay to tread water for a while - if you’re tired, if you need a break, if you’re not quite sure where to go next - but you can’t wait too long, because the current will move you wherever it wants. To get where you want, you’re always going to have to start swimming again.
Hm, no, non-24 is not just a severe version of DSPS.
I have it. What I've learned from my doc (a researcher in the field):
It's primarily a specific genetic mutation that affects many of they body's cyclic timers, but relevant here is that the circadian feedback loop is no longer able to lock to a 24 hour day/night cycle at all. You're perfectly sensitive to light/dark, but you're hitting a PLL with inputs faster than its ability to make meaningful adjustments.
Sleep apnea diagnosis is relevant here, because it also breaks the breathing reflex timer.
Imagine finding out at age 40 that you've not, in fact, slept more than a few minutes at a time your entire life, because you wake up just enough to take a breath every 3 minutes or so when a secondary suffocation reflex goes off.
How can I explain to my 6 months old girl that we all need to sleep :D
This is a bug in the universe! We need to sleep so that the levels of dopamine, and hormones of hunger and not hunger are at good levels, so that we can be healthy and strong, so that the immune system is stable and strong... And we need to get good sleep so that we can protect our children and be sane....
BUT the nature decided that the kids will wake up 3-4 times per night, and you need to wake up and take care of them.
You sleep in best case, on pauses, not more than 4-6 hours, you feel miserable, and at the same time you are THE HAPPIEST PERSON IN THIS WORLD! :)
In my area there is a saying like "it takes a village to raise a child".
i believe that a good social network is not only important for the kid, but for the parents too.
it helps so much to have a partner, grandparents, aunts/uncles, who can look over the kid just for a hour or 2, so you can get your rest. And its usually fun for the kids too.
Now that i have 2 kids, a loving wife and 2 families around me, i have the highest respect for all the single moms/dads out there.
As immigrants with no local network, having kids is basically putting yourself under house arrest for a decade or so. You can post bail (pay a babysitter) for occasional reprieve. I mean sure you can go do outings with kids, but for most of them, do you really want to? I know mine aren't particularly enthralled by trips to the Rijksmuseum.
I don't think this is how humans usually raised kids...
We're in the same boat. Feels like mostly our society doesn't value having children - it's by and large not a very well supported activity. Even more so if you don't have immediate family to help support you.
If you go to the third world kids are all running in the streets while both parents work and grandparents not doing fuck all to watch them either. The most practical answer is to relax negligence laws back to a sane level where as long as you're not torturing them and they are fed, "society" stays the fuck out of the punishment process.
This is why people critique the nuclear family—the degenerate village around the children that just consists of the parents, maybe grandparents at holidays. It’s a recipe for overworked adults.
I've got a Mexican American friend that lives multi-generationally and loves it. He's a few years out of high school with a good job in management and a nice car, money in the bank. His older brother gets help parenting from Tio and the grandparents, and generally everyone gets along well. He's almost kept up with me in savings for property and I'm married (our pay is pretty similar, but I have dual income). American culture optimizes for wastefulness and puts too much of an emphasis on independence, especially when arrangements like this exist that actually can lead to greater individual freedom in the long run.
FWIW, and understanding that individual babies do differ, most babies can sleep through the night (10-12 hours) by 3-4 months old. Check out the books "Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old" or "Precious Little Sleep" for guidance.
In my case where n=2, naps during the day are/were not all that consistent but at night (unless they are very sick or something) the kids sleep.
3 for 3 sleeping through the night by 60 days. All we did was have a feeding schedule that we stuck to pretty closely, and around week 2 started intentionally delaying our response to night-time crying, gradually increasing how far we stretched it (start with maybe a minute, increase over time). They wake up at night and don’t know how to self-soothe back to sleep if you always jump in the second they make a sound, they don’t actually need night time feedings past the first few weeks, responding immediately trains them not to fall back asleep on their own if they stir at night (and everyone does). Down to one feeding at night by a month or so, none past two months.
Can’t say many other things worked equally well for all three kids, but that did.
I’m convinced that 1 of 100 babies sleeps miraculously, magically, the true sleep of the just, right out of the box. Some lucky parents of those genetic freaks think, “Our sleep technique works! We should write a book!”
In our case(s), it was something that required conscious effort. And when we did that... it worked. It honestly didn't seem like it would at first, but then it does.
Again, n=2 for me personally but as I mentioned in my reply to another comment we also had a friend with a "baby who won't sleep" and when they tried it also worked for them.
I don't make a habit of recommending this to people unless I'm close with them, bc I know that some people may take it personally or believe they are an exception. And I'd bet money that there are plenty of exceptions. But I also think they're exceptions rather than the rule. Whenever I've seen parents who believe that their baby can sleep through the night and work towards that goal, they seem to get there pretty quickly.
Edit to add: To put it in engineering terms, I think part of the problem is that you have to escape a local maximum of baby sleep. You may suffer several nights (possibly a couple weeks) that are worse than what you're used to in order to get to a place that's significantly better than what you're used to. When you're already sleep deprived, that can feel like a big hump to get over.
To be clear, they don't eat/feed at night either. The baby is in a separate room from us and we don't see or hear him most nights (95%+) between 7pm-6am. He's around 8.5 months old now and this has been the case for 3-4 months, although that percentage was a bit lower at the beginning.
I'm emphasizing it bc many people are surprised by this, but if you know it's possible, you can start to work towards it. My partner's coworker has a ~1 year old who was still waking up (maybe multiple times?) each night to eat. She introduced them to one of those books (the 12-by-12 one) and they were very grateful.
4 month old should eat every 3-4 hours. You mentioned sleeping for 10-12h and this sounds almost harmful for the baby. I don't think I'd like that.
Thanks for your recommendation anyway. I'm sure that there are many science-based techniques to "tame" children and make child care as atomic family bearable.
Is it? Couldn't it be a bug in our society/economy instead? What if nature wanted us to take some naps through the day and not just one period of sleep in the night? Waking up multiple times at night wouldn't hurt too much then.
Last month there was a heartbreaking news about a < 6 month old baby being snatched away by a leopard while the baby was sleeping next to the parent and the parent realized her baby was missing only much later.
I imagine the predator situation would have been much worse during the early human evolution years. I don't know if that was a beneficial trait or not in that environment.
Part of this is also our culture that somehow decided kids need their own bed, and it's easy to get baby formula.
So the kids are not sleeping in our beds, where they feel 100% secure, getting to the breast whenever they want (and they quickly will want it at a lesser frequency). The woman will feel this, but hardly has to wake up, me... I slept right through all that. Fwiw, we had a bed for the baby that attached to ours.
In our time everybody advised us: Give the bady a load of milk at 23:00 just before you go to bed! We never did, just stuck to about did 20:00, or just when baby cried, both babies took about 2 months to sleep for about 12 hours straight (although soon after the second one developed reflux which had me watch Rick and Morty in its entirety somewhere between 2 and 4 for some time).
Anyway, not saying everybody is that lucky, just saying sometimes it's good to questions things that are given in one's culture. Worst advice imho is "let the baby cry" which was common on our days. How nice to let a baby cry alone in a room, not understanding anything about what happens...
I coslept, but I had shit milk production. Without formula my kid would be dead. My friend breastfeeds, but is an active danger when asleep, so without a crib, she'd have crushed her child.
It turns out that safe sleep rules and the availability of formula exist for a reason. Safe sleep rules exist in the west because pur beds are fundamentally different (and more dangerous) than in places here cosleeping is more common. Tp cosleep you need a certain situation that many people are not prepared to deal with.
There's literally nothing you can do about low supply at all. It's not a matter of trying for me. My body never made more than an ounce even with weeks of attempts. This is even setting aside that some people would like assistance so they can sleep and breastfeeding means dad can't take on night feeds, which is what another friend is experiencing and the child is having a bad time from her severe sleep deprivation.
And even more complications of small child. It's not as simple as "let's go back to the old days". The great days when kids died at much higher rates remember.
Sorry, I did not mean it like that, formula is fine. We also hated the breastfeeding mob.
And you're right about the rules they exist for a reason, but I think we should as parents take our space to try what works for us and our kids and what feels right.
Sometimes I just can't grasp how cruel nature is. Imagine no formula -> baby starving and you just have to accept it. When the tribe grows in numbers the baby is safe. When the tribe grows in numbers like mankind, you get cheats like formula and polio vaccine.
We're just replaying the life game on easier mode.
The most important thing about sleep I learned is to fall asleep at the same moment of every day. Make it 22:00 or 23:00 or 00:00. Whatever is comfortable for you. But you have to stick to the chosen hour as hard as you can. Every day from now on it has to be that hour. After you get used to that you will notice a much better effect of the sleep.
I agree with how important this is, but for me, the most significant improvement in my sleep has been pushing my dinner very early, ~6 hrs before bed, and having it be my smallest meal of the day. I usually feel quite hungry about an hour before bed but if I get over that hump my resting heart rate is much lower at night and my appetite the next day is much lower. It was validating to see Bryan Johnson sharing the same findings on x.
I think one of the underrated things that Bryan does is he regularly emphasises how central sleep needs to be in your health. I haven't heard that consistant message drilled in by anyone else and it helped me realise how a lot of the things i found difficult to recruit energy/discipline/motivation were related to the low priority I placed on sleep.
I believe that routine in general helps a ton. Go to sleep at the same time, eat at the same time, go for a walk at the same time, etc. You will wake up at the same time as a side effect. At least that's what happened to me during covid, when there were no obligations outside of working hours. During normal times, I will stay up late one or two days a week for social events or have to get up early for travel. That messes with your rhythm, almost like being jet lagged.
Strongly disagree and you should refrain from trying to give universal advice on these matters. I never had a 24h circadian rhythm. The only way to fall asleep at the same moment every day for me would be to medicate myself. I am very happy and productive when I am allowed to "rotate around the clock" and the worst periods of my life were when I was forced to be on a strict schedule.
The most important thing with any health issue is to be aware of your own body.
The classic symptoms were unknown to me until this point when I researched them.
I had previously blamed psych medications for the symptoms, and while they may have exacerbated them, I guess diabetes was the real root cause.
One of the symptoms is frequent urination. And so, every night I wake up every 2 hours or so and crawl into the bathroom. It’s legitimately a huge curse.
I don’t get enough deep R.E.M. and I remain exhausted just from the physical effort of get-up-and-go.
It’s very frustrating and sad to think that even after I’ve got my blood glucose under control, I still have these lingering symptoms that impact my QoL.
IMO Type 2 diabetes is manageable. My father struggled with it for decades and his last few years were not great. Having those same genes, I've spent a lot of time reading and following the data. My take is that T2 is quite manageable. Even reversible, if you focus on it. "Reversible" doesn't mean a lifelong cure, but you can push out your health days by a decade.
There are all kinds of solutions that work. High Protein, Mediterranean, Atkins, or even High Carb (the "good" kind). The breakdown usually happens in the "cocktail" of foods. Our bodies are not hybrid engines; we can not switch fuels mid-stream and expect optimal health. You have to pick a poison, let's say, a protein-based diet—and stick to it. Then exercise and intermittent fasting (IF) are force multipliers. I did strict IF for a year, but I have fallen off the wagon lately, only manage 3-4 days of IF a week. The difference in how I feel is stark.
What worked for me was something called "Lalit Kapoor" diet — basically a WFPB/vegan approach with heavy green juicing and fasting. My failure was primarily due to social friction. My family eats very differently. Making a special effort for every single meal eventually made me start taking the easy way. I still follow it but I wish I could be 100% rather than 80% and which is where all diets fail.
I was experiencing similar symptoms in college, and self cured myself through:
- diet shift and adjustment, keto and then carnivore specifically
- shifting breathing to the nose: the sympathetic nervous system is activated through mouth-breathing, that leads to stress and anxiety all around bogging up everything from the digestive system, lymphatic system and more
- happy to share more, my sleep schedule works best by following the sun and guarding myself from artificial lights exposure after
The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.
The most frustrating effect is that even a few drinks in the evening (maybe over 2-3 units). Unsettles my sleep that if I'm in the process of learning something feels like it sets me back several days.
That's not even counting the slowed processing I feel, and lower productivity the next day.
I genuinely have to revisit old information.
A genuine hangover from a heavy night can put me out of action for half a week!
When I was younger I'm not sure I had many good nights sleep let alone noticed a bad one!
I've heard that small amounts of alcohol can actually improve learning interestingly by preventing interference from events later in the day.
>The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.
Back when I was 20 I had a drinking problem. One time I drank so much that I passed out sitting at a table. Woke up with friends having stripped my clothes and washed them.
I woke up at 9AM, feeling 100% sober, just anxious about my 20 missed calls from my mom.
I got a bit drunk at about 33 and next day I thought I was dying.
That's how I learnt what hangovers were.
Again, at around 25, I helped my brother in-law move bee hives all night, including some 8 hours of driving.
Went straight to work and in the evening I had dinner with my wife at a restaurant.
Now I crash in bed at 9PM and if I'm lucky, I also sleep (but quite often I wake up at 2AM).
Getting old(er) sucks, and I'm only 42 and I miss so much how nice being in my 20 something body felt all the time.
I’m 41 and my body is nicer to be in than when I was 25.
Like you, I have much less youthful buffer that shrugs off poor sleep or overindulgence, but I have much more knowledge and much better habits.
Daily habits: better nutrition (based on Bryan Johnson’s super veggie and nutty pudding), stretching, weak points warmup, proper oral hygiene, regular bedtime
Weekly habits: 4x gym, 3x run, 2x weighted walk
I have used ChatGPT to work out a program that is helping me to overcome injuries and niggles while building strength and cardio. I’m 3 months into my latest training schedule, and it’s unreasonably effective.
Reminder for anyone that doesn't know better: having good sleep is dependent on a few minor lifestyle adjustments. Like avoiding heavy (or any outside of fruit and vegetable) meals and exercise a few hours before going to bed. And avoiding caffeine after noon.
You don't need to be a health champion to have good sleep.
I’m 49 and have all but given up on drinking. It does nothing for me except make me tired and then, ironically, mess up my sleep. On fridays I grill cheeseburgers for the family and usually have one Half-Life tall boy from Manhattan Brewery because it’s my favorite of all time but that’s about it. Otherwise, I don’t drink at all. Being tired and not sleeping well is handled perfectly adequately by my job hah.
I'm pretty much the same as you. I really like beer and wine and cocktails, but the bad sleep and feeling shitty the next day after even one drink isn't worth it. Thirty years ago hangovers were rare and could usually be ended with a cup of coffee, tylenol, and lots of water.
The next thing I have to back off on is sugar. It doesn't seem to mess up my sleep like booze, but I definitely notice it the day after I have that big bowl of ice cream or giant slice of cake. A big enough sugar binge feels pretty close to a hangover for me now.
> The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.
Can relate.
> The most frustrating effect is that even a few drinks in the evening (maybe over 2-3 units). Unsettles my sleep that if I'm in the process of learning something feels like it sets me back several days.
I'm not noticing it unsettles my learning but can relate to a few drinks already upsetting my sleep. I wouldn't be surprised if my learning would be impaired by at least a bit.
> When I was younger I'm not sure I had many good nights sleep let alone noticed a bad one!
Being young is a blessing that way.
I'm +35 years old by the way.
> I've heard that small amounts of alcohol can actually improve learning interestingly by preventing interference from events later in the day.
Do you have a source? Would be curious to look some of it up.
Here is some research around the alcohol effect. What I found most surprising is the mean consumption was over 80g, since 8g of ethanol is a unit that's an astonishing mean of 10units.
I was of the impression that the effect was around 1 unit.
While there's no consistent standard, most countries appear to be using something in the 10-14g range for what they call a "standard drink"/"unit" of alcohol. (UK is 8g, but the rest of the EU typically uses 10g or 12g, US uses 14g).
I actually hadn't realized until I went looking that the "standard drink" isn't much of an international standard unit at all. Will have to keep that in mind when reading papers/recommendations from different health authorities in the future.
-----
Anyway, it's pretty interesting. I'm not sure I'm going to believe the effect just on one noisy study, but even if the reality is something lesser - like it just not harming memory formation of things you'd learned earlier in the day, the implications are still a bit interesting.
It certainly adds a bit to some of the historical social biases against "day drinking", and also does a bit to explain how plenty of high-performing young people seem to use alcohol pretty heavily after they're done learning (college students partying, etc) with limited direct impacts on their educational performance.
If my Oura ring can be trusted, alcohol doesn't interfere with my total amount of sleep or my REM sleep, but it reduces my deep sleep drastically and can even result in me getting zero deep sleep, which hasn't happened a single time without alcohol.
“Their brains… look like small walnuts inside their skull… There's so much atrophy that happens with an alcohol soaked brain chronically that I would say that's, you know, far and away, the most common source of brain damage” - Dr. Matthew Macdouglas head neurosurgeon at Neurolink on the Huberman podcast starting at 1:40:00
Those responses are very much valid responses to a topic that some share as a valid conversational topic on a thread about getting good sleep and learning, myself included.
Even better, the topic is visited on part 6.2[1] of the article you're replying to.
Mentioning drinking three times (effects of drinks in the evening, hangover, effects on learning) in a single response might give an impression you like to drink.
I mean, they sell alcohol in shops for money, and not force it on you in some government-mandated way. Which kinda tells that people in general like to drink.
The topic is drinking so they mentioned drinking, and usually people do what they like to do, and in other news water is wet - but do we judge water for being wet? So let's stop virtue signaling because it's definitely not a show of virtue. I see where religious fundamentalism is taking the world and damn if I like it.
I’m not religious at all, and it’s not religious fundamentalism to point out that alcohol disrupts sleep, and that this likely is the primary factor affecting the poster’s sleep.
Also not religious fundamentalism to point out that alcohol is a known carcinogen (: that’s just science. It’s a Group 1 carcinogen, the same group as tobacco and asbestos.
But sunlight is essential for the cutaneous conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol to vitamin D3, whereas ethanol serves no essential purpose, irrespective of whether one enjoys it or not.
Personally I don’t consume ethanol; but I don’t care if others do or not so long as they stay off the roads and are not piloting my flight.
I will say that when I did consume ethanol even in small quantities, my sleep was much worse than it is at baseline; and that effect only worsened as I got older.
Ethanol is food— you also don't need carbs, but they do keep you alive. More importantly, it fairly central to cultural vitality. Not essential but it plays a highly functional role. Maybe could be replaced by religion or other drugs, but short of that, the world is less vibrant without it.
> There is only one formula for healthy and refreshing sleep: Go to sleep only when you are very tired. Not earlier. Not later. Wake up naturally without an alarm clock.
This is very easy to say when you're not suffering from insomnia and other sleep disorders.
Advice like this turns almost everybody's normal state into a disorder.
"Go to sleep only when you are very tired" is a child's approach to sleep, it's what we all want to do, and by adulthood we learn that it's counterproductive. But we still want it so much that we regularly test it and are reminded why we don't operate that way.
It reminds me of the intuitive eating folks who say, "Ignore standard diet advice, just listen to your body and feed it what it knows you need," but then when you overeat, they say, "You aren't listening properly, you aren't in tune with your body." Then if you ask, "How will I know when I'm in tune with my body and listening to it properly?" they say, "When what it asks for matches standard diet advice."
I'm sure it is. It's difficult with a full time job though. Yes, in principle it can be made easier by going to bed earlier... but that's not simple either.
I have a somewhat rarely diagnosed circadian rhythm disorder called delayed sleep phase disorder. It is difficult to get diagnosed, especially as sleep clinics have been targets of private equity firms which convert them to CPAP shops which only diagnose sleep apnea and whose patients never interact with an MD. However it is likely to be underdiagnosed given the stigma around sleep challenges, at least in the sense that if you make any effort to get enough sleep with such a sleep disorder, you tend to be pegged as lazy, irresponsible, unreliable, etc
In any event, I agree with something implicit in the article, namely that most people have a degree of this, but the severity is variable. Mine has been fairly extreme, and while diagnosis enables disability accommodations, it is very fraught navigating most workplaces with this particular disability and you are essentially forced to choose between having any kind of upward mobility and getting enough sleep at night.
Thankfully the past two years or so I've been getting much more sleep since optimizing more for that. But anyway, if you are navigating sleep challenges you should get a sleep study, sure, but also be aware that your local sleep clinic is in all likelihood only nominally a sleep clinic. That is, it does not know how to diagnose and treat more complex sleep issues and probably doesn't want to.
If only I knew how to have full non-interrupted restorative sleep. It seems that my body started losing that skill about 20 years ago, and lost it altogether about 6 years ago. The falling asleep time is a lottery and I'm always waking up after the first stage, often a few more times after that.
Tried all kinds of sleep medication, but by now I've forgotten what it's like to not be half-asleep and unable to concentrate throughout the day (with loud tinnitus and a soupy feel in the brain to boot). Really sucks out any and all enjoyment from life, I can't even find the energy to watch TV shows anymore, let alone read books. I haven't learned anything fundamentally new at work for years too (inertia helps with daily routine).
I think nearly everyone should be screened for sleep apnea. The at-home test you wear on your finger is so cheap - it doesn't make sense not to do it for anyone who has any issues with sleep or tiredness in the day.
I always thought that due to being female and a healthy weight, it wasn't something I needed to think about. I also didn't think I snored more than anyone else, so it took me years of poor sleep before a Doctor finally recommended I get tested.
Turns out OSA also can be caused or aggravated by: the size and shape of your mouth, the position you sleep in (I have twice as many events on my back vs side), and whether you tuck your chin in near your test (soft cervical collar helped for that). There are devices that alter how your mouth rests when sleeping (easier to breathe if your front teeth are forward) but they're possibly not good for your bite. CPAP/APAP is still the gold standard for a reason.
The coolest thing about CPAP though, is a lot of them have amazing metrics recorded if you pop in an SD card. And there's a big community built around open source software to analyze those metrics and tune the settings to minimize apnea events overnight.
Also, a cpap with a humidifier is amazing if you're prone to nose pain / nose bleeds due to dry air.
The at-home test you wear on your finger is so cheap - it doesn't make sense not to do it for anyone who has any issues with sleep or tiredness in the day.
My comment is more of a complaint than a discussion so apologies, but I was disappointed recently because I did at an at home test and scored borderline. I was hopeful that it would be sleep apnea so I could go about solving my bad sleep, but a lab test showed conclusively that I didn’t have it.
I got checked out initially because I mentioned to my sister that I didn’t recall the last time I’d woken up and felt refreshed all day, even with 8+ hours, and she said “…that’s not good, get that checked out.”
Chronic tiredness can be such a hard thing to figure out, sorry you've been going through that! Is it sleepiness (as in can fall asleep at any point of the day), or fatigue (as in non-restorative sleep, brain fog, feeling exhausted, etc)? I've had chronic fatigue (non syndrome) for six years now, so I'm pretty familiar with how obnoxiously long it takes to get answers. Some things to look into:
Do a full polysomnogram with MSLT: this will check for sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, and idiopathic hypersomnia
Look into ME/CFS if you have post exertional malaise (pretty much you cross some invisible line in exertion followed by a delayed crash).
Look into MCAS if you also have strange allergy symptoms. I have MCAS, though tbh I didn't really have that many symptoms until I looked at Dr. Afrin's free chapter on MCAS.
Maybe fibromyalgia, but you didn't mention muscle pain, so it probably doesn't apply.
Obviously depression can cause somatic symptoms, so that's worth checking, but I think people jump to that conclusion too soon.
Note that a lot of these conditions don't really have tests, so it's really tricky to get a diagnosis. It takes finding a doctor who's willing to recognize them and give a diagnosis.
I got 4h of sleep last night which is about my normal average at this time of the year, and I have 0 regrets about it. I also don't sleep at a regular time every day. If I have no other obligations, I naturally let it shift forward (what the article calls "delayed sleep phase"). I am most unhappy when I HAVE TO use an alarm clock and break my own patterns. Last night, I naturally went to sleep right before sunrise and I woke up 4 hours later.
To pre-empt a few objections: I did not need an alarm clock to wake up. I am not taking heavy stimulants other than caffeine at this time. I am not stressed. I am not unhappy. I don't have memory issues (in fact, I am cursed with a very good memory and it is usually harder for me to forget than to remember). I can score above the Mensa bar on an IQ test. I can take an interview. I can give a demo. I can run 10km. I do not have "bipolar disorder" or any such nonsense. I don't need medication. I don't need therapy. I don't need a better mattress. I'm not already in a mental asylum. I'm married with kids, I work a high-paying job, I give to charity and I pay my taxes. In fact, today is tax day, I should probably take care of that instead of getting upset at hacker news comments.
I would suggest looking into the medical research on the downsides of getting little sleep. After a single night of low sleep (and 4 hours is low), even though you'll feel fine, your body will not process a lot of things the way it normally should (e.g. insulin response is significantly degraded).
Over time, it supposedly significantly increases the likelihood of certain diseases/conditions.
Peter Attia was one of those people who got by with little sleep, and for years, well into his medical career, was dismissive of those who preached the importance of 8 hours of sleep a day. He then looked into the research, and completely changed his mind:
When I was looking into the dual n back stuff a while back, I remember reading one report where the person would feel subjectively fine when sleep deprived, but his nback score would go way down.
In other words it's possible to "feel fine" on little sleep and yet be significantly cognitively impaired. Worth measuring that, if possible.
(It might have been Gwern, he's got a big page on the subject.)
That's totally fair, and I'll cross that bridge when I get there like everyone else :)
My philosophy is: either I'll live to benefit from technology that can repair the damage caused by aging, in which case health micro-optimizations early in life are not that important, OR this won't be achieved within my lifetime, in which case I prefer a short life with concentrated happiness, vitality and intensity in my youth.
There is some new scientific finding that in deep sleep, fluids from the brain drain out and if that flushing doesn't happen, it might lead to Alzheimer's disease.
You should at least monitor your deep sleep using a smartwatch. Less than 1.5 hours and I would be worried.
Thanks, I am aware of reduced cerebrospinal fluid flushing as well as the increased neural inflammation in general and I am trying to compensate for that as best as I can.
I am not too worried about Alzheimer's as it tends to start pretty late in life (I think average onset is around mid-60s?). If I get that and we don't have a reliable cure by then, I wouldn't really mind ending it quickly after getting the diagnosis. I'm a bit more worried about heart disease as that tends to hit earlier.
You are at one edge of the gaussian curve of the sleep requirements of the human species. The problem is that many think they belong there, but are not. Enjoy what you have and let the haters hate.
As a Spaniard I am trying to honor my ancestors and nap when I can, but man, it feels almost impossible most of the days. It could be that I am having too much anxiety/stress, too much coffee in the mornings, lack of practice, or maybe all of them. Any experiences related to learning to nap or what worked for you over here?
Fellow Spaniard here. Our ancestors were definitely onto something! I think the most important thing when it comes to napping is to show up: find a comfortable spot, use an eye mask, and set a timer for whatever time you have (I typically do something between 10 to 30 minutes). Just close your eyes and don’t open them until the alarm goes off.
I don’t always nap, but I make sure to do so if I haven’t had enough sleep or when I’m stressed or overworked. The more work I have, the more naps I take. Three back to back meetings? 15 minutes nap for your brain to organize and process the information dump. You get the gist. Doesn’t have to be after lunch, just a few minutes when you need/have them.
I used to do the Dali nap: find a comfortable spot, hold a spoon in your hand, and close your eyes. Once you fall asleep the spoon will fall from your hand and wake you up. That makes sure you go into hypnagogic state, great for problem solving as the brain is in a creativity sweet spot.
The technique I use now is not strictly a nap but a relaxation technique called NSDR: Non-Sleep Deep Rest. It’s kind of a guided meditation that deeply relaxes your body and nervous system. Just 10 minutes can feel as restorative as hours of sleep. You can check Andrew Huberman's scripts or Youtube videos for a more body-hacking, science-backed vive, or channels like are Ally Boothroyd's [0] for a more spiritual take on the concept, also known as Yoga Nidra.
I hope that helps. And best of luck with your napping, honor the ancestors!
Thank you so much for your detailed answer! I definitely try to show up, but I am an anxious person and sometimes trying to nap makes me even more anxious. However, it is true that even when I don't manage to sleep it helps relaxing me and giving me some extra energy.
I've also read about NSDR and wanted to try it, so having some sources is really helpful. Do you always practice it with some guided meditation or can you do it on your own? I kind of not like guided meditation. (No reason, it's just that kind of feel wrong. Probably I should just open my mind and try it more.) Thank you so much!
Practice makes perfect! Keep on showing up and it will most likely get easier :)
I currently do not do guided NSDR that much, but it helped a lot at the time learning how to calm my thoughts and become deeply relaxed, especially the Ally guided sessions (as everything else, takes practice) so I would recommend to try the guided ones even if it feels awkward, until you learn how to stop your mind from wandering. I find it helps both with quick reset/recharge naps and falling back asleep if I wake up in the middle of the night (happens often for me).
The relatively late dining hours (9pm or later) in Spain wouldn't work for me at all. I'm an early-to-bed-early-to-rise kind of person and if I eat within 3 or 4 hours of bed time my sleep suffers.
I learned recently that Spain uses the same timezone as Germany (GMT+2 currently, according to Google) despite the GMT line passing through Spain. I've visited Spain and did feel like we ate late, but the timezone being "wrong" has made me wonder if it would have felt as late if I knew about their timezone while I was there!
Set a timer for 20 minutes, lie down (or at least close your eyes) and force yourself to stay motionless until the timer rings. Try to let your thoughts float freely... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you should try at least a few times. (And yes, maybe limit yourself to just one coffee in the morning.)
I try, but apart from the coffee (I usually take two, probably the second one interferes with my nap), I think it's the lack of consistency/practice what's making my napping difficult.
I'm extremely sensitive to poor sleep. I also have nothing in my schedule that really prevents me from going to sleep early and sleeping late most of the time, and generally I at least achieve the former. The problem is that I have unbearable horrible nightmares every time I sleep. To the point where going to sleep is akin to going to hell itself, and I generally choose to forcibly wake myself up around like 6 a.m. just to get away from it all. I haven't really figured out a way around this.
I have as a kid. It might help you. As a kid, I instinctively (and later also consciously) have trained myself to become lucid while dreaming. When I become lucid, I gain some power. Then I trained myself to be more powerful in dreams.
For example, I can't fly, but I can (apparently) move the whole universe by a specific offset. I can also change the specific offset at a specific motion. So basically, I don't have flying powers, but I do have the powers of treating my dream like a Unity3D scene. And in that way, I can mimic flight.
I can also turn into a monster myself, usually into a worse monster than whatever I'm facing. I have become my nightmare's nightmare at certain points.
Nowadays though, whenever a nightmare hit I'm just unfazed. What also helps is that I let my nightmare and the creatures within it know that I am immortal. No matter what they do to me. In my dreams I am The Beginning and The End. I am all that will be there. They are there because of me. I'm essentially the only god that there is (I'm not religious but as far as my dreams are concerned, I am a god).
That throws off quite a lot of nightmares. The ones that persist, it's fine. They can test my immortality.
Can I just say that I agree with the other poster. I used to have a lot of nightmares. I didn't do it purposely, but I did figure out that lucid dreaming was the way to solve that issue.
I got interested in lucid dreaming for its own sake, and trained myself for it. I did all the common stuff in the guides, and eventually I had a habit of many times a day rubbing the back of my hand or something else tactile and asking myself if I was dreaming. After quite some time it did start to actually work in my dreams. I would frequently become "aware" in my dream and realise I was dreaming, and in my dream I would dream I would have control, but once I woke up it didn't even really feel like I had full control. It was not the experience I had been expecting, where everything becomes clearer, you can literally consciously control the dream. It was more like dreaming that I knew I was dreaming, and then controlling the dream, but I could never quite control it to the full extent I wanted to. No matter how much I practiced, this is all I achieved.
However, it wasn't nothing. It did let me start to realise I was dreaming in nightmares, and immediately just change them and become "in control" to the point where I could push back on whatever the nightmare was about, dictate on my terms. It still wasn't full lucid/awake control, but it was enough that I become the power in the dream, not the subject of the nightmare.
I really encourage you to keep trying. It took a lot of repetition during the day for the habit to finally enter my dreams. A lot more than I expected. But it did eventually work, to the extent I mentioned.
Is the author suggesting people to have to live with going through a phase of being nocturnal? In the free running algorithm, we're supposed to sleep 15 minutes later each day until we're falling asleep at like 9AM?
I once tried an extreme version of this. I became single and I already didn't have a fixed work schedule, so other than societal convention there was no reason for me to adhere to any regular day-night cycle.
So I tried sleeping when I was really tired, waking up without an alarm, eating when I was hungry, etc. I ignored watches, daylight and society. For context, my internal days have always been much longer than 24 hours, often finding myself going to sleep at sunrise; so I thought this was gonna be great, not having to spend an hour awake in bed.
It was horrible. And I mean HORRIBLE. I became a zombie, even though I was sleeping more than ever. I felt deeply depressed within two days. I lost all concept of the passage of time, and could never tell how long ago something had happened. I couldn't think properly or comunicate with other people. It affected me physically too, my weight, my stomach.
The experiment didn't last long. But I couldn't tell you how long.
That part didn't make any sense to me either. Yes, the natural circadian cycle in a vacuum is slightly over 24 hours, but exposure to light keeps it synced to the normal 24-hour day. If you free run sleep your cycle should stay locked to 24 hours, just like it has always been with our ancestors who lived without artificial light.
I believe Mathew Walker writes in 'Why we sleep' that people's natural circadian cycle varies but on average is 24h and 15 minutes. But yeah sounds pretty inconvenient for most people.
No wonder I sleep a lot but still wake up feeling tired and constantly sleepy. Maybe following proper REM sleep cycles could help solve this. I’ll give it a try.
Has someone found that they have better alcohol "recovery" if they are pursuing intense or at least regular(at least 3x a week) stamina building exercise like running/swimming?
Biphasic/polyphasic sleeper here (not by choice). Makes the work week a lot trickier. I will be reading through this article for insight on how to get the most out of my situation.
I really liked the idea of "Free running sleep". Not sure how feasable would be to make it part of my routine TBH. I need to adhere to external schedules (job, family). Maybe someday I'll give it a honest try!
The explanation of the memory consolidation process during sleep was surprising and made me rethink my habit of using alarms and cutting back on sleep for overtime work.
Best bullshit and industry cutting phrase for better sleep: Follow the sun. Follow the sun for a fixed reference point for when to wake up, and for when to sleep, and guard yourself from artificial lights like it's your professional job. Bryan Johnson says to treat sleep like a professional job, and I take it further: break the standard industrial-factory based paradigm around sleep, work and life and say no to the clock based wellbeing-adversarial system.
edit: hours and minutes cannot replace our natural light-based circadian rhythm that evolved for millions of years entraining our hormones and energy cycles around the sun's light.
I think a lot of it has to do with mental status, which can be concluded with one sentence -- "Are you happy with your life, and if not do you have a clear path to reach that?".
People who say no probably has a lot of trouble to get fit, get enough sleep -- sometimes NOT because they do not have the resources, but because they are not happy. They hate life, so why makes it better? I have observed this in myself so I wonder whether it is universally true.
I have observed that whenever I have a clear target in my life (e.g. I need to pursue this girl I like, or, I need to figure out Linux 1.0 VFS and I have a clear path before me), I immediately take care to do exercises, eat more healthy food, and try to get good sleep -- but if I cannot find an objective, or I have lost interests and are in the middle of finding a new one, I find myself a lot more obnoxious, and sometimes I "proactively" destroy my health because I don't care about it. Unfortunately I rarely find a clear path before me so the later status is more or less permanent while the former one is rare, maybe once per year -- but when I reach the first status it usually grabbed me for 2-3 months.
Mental stability is probably one of the reasons different people have vastly different productivity or achievements. It is mental stability that brings focus, not the other way around.
I agree. In my case I am physically very fit but sometimes neglect my health in other ways, including mentally and definitely including poor sleep habits.
Regarding what you said about focus, I think an ADHD diagnosis might help a lot of people here. I suggest asking for a full profile including WAIS testing, which assesses intelligence, because it is the "deficit" between various types of intelligence and attention that matters. Highly intelligent people sometimes are overlooked because their focus, working memory, etc. seem normal or even better than average, but the gap between those and their intellectual capacity creates a lot friction at least for some people.
I recently got diagnosed and am really looking forward to taking a low dose of stimulants in the mornings on work days, I hope it will help me "find a clear path" in my professional life.
What drove you to get the diagnosis?
My wife was diagnosed within last 2 years and thinks it has changed (and helped) her come to terms with a number of behaviors. And learn how to resolve/improve.
I wonder about me, too. Haven't done it. Is it the case (honest) that may we all have just a little bit anyways?
Most people who are not happy are not happy precisely because they can't find a clear path to reach happiness. It's the realization you are stuck in a shitty spot that makes the true feeling of unhappiness. A lot of people are also restricted by their own body and mind through mental and physical illness which makes pursuing basic goals frustrating not rewarding. Also a lot of people get rejected when they chase girls and fail when they take IQ tests or pursue high paying work.... I guess your worldview makes sense for smart winners but how does it work for the other half of the world?
I'm actually neither smart nor winning, at least from my perspective. The only winners are those who can do whatever they want and can say No to anything they don't enjoy. There are very few of them. The majority of the rest of us are similar, regardless of whether you are making 100K or 500K. Then there are the homeless/jobless people who are struggling with basic needs.
I'm not sure which half you are talking about, but I'm really bad at giving advice, especially to people in different situations. I do not have the authority or capacity to help others genuinely.
In my case, I often find life goals and enjoy the journey when I'm mentally healthy, not vice versa.
I can't control my mood, but when I am positive, I start a new hobby like dancing or playing an instrument, cook healthy, lift, sleep well, study new things, etc. But when I'm depressed, I lose all interest in my life goals, eat junk food, skip exercise, and browse the Internet all night. I can't even enjoy my hobbies anymore.
It's always my mood that comes first, then I can find life goals and naturally do all healthy stuff.
Funnily, when I'm mentally healthy I also visit Hacker News frequently, but when I'm depressed all I do is infinite scrolling Reddit/TikTok.
That could definitely the case. I can't really tell which one comes first, mood or objective.
It really is. Exercise and eating well was an activity I became capable of participating in as a result of the correct therapy and dramatically boosted its effects, not something I could persist at when already depressed.
When people claim the contrary it's feels more of a test to see if you can be perceived as responsible enough for your own actions to be worth helping. An individualistic mindset like that isn't very productive at alleviating depression.
I think we're soulmates. You articulated so well what I think about my own approach or lack of approach.
> Mental stability is probably one of the reasons different people have vastly different productivity or achievements. It is mental stability that brings focus, not the other way around.
Agree, at least in concept. I'm aware that some of my perceived or real lack of of progress in some life areas is due to mental instability. Various forms of it, some more active than others or present than others.
A lot of mine focuses on career things. I've got a bank of knowledge and skills that aren't easy to replicate and a career track circled around those things, but lack (I think) the passion for that career track.
But do I like the passion or do I just not have clear goals? What should they be?
In 2022 I was evaluating a senior position at a start-up and a friend asked: "what are your goals, or what are you solving for." My wife asks this question too.
And I tend to stare somewhat blank at the question. As an adult, the goals I'm sure I want have much less to do with career and much more with self. Be happy. Be productive. Be a warm and loving person. Be a responsible, fun, constructive parent.
That doesn't mean that I don't want a career or have aspirations, but there's so much less clarity. And so I've resorted over time to likely unproductive/destructive approaches - more argumentative than necessary, sometimes very responsive, sometimes unresponsive, substances and behavioral things that look like bad habits, addictions, etc.
What do you do to work through these challenges?
> A lot of mine focuses on career things. I've got a bank of knowledge and skills that aren't easy to replicate and a career track circled around those things, but lack (I think) the passion for that career track.
I think maybe you can move into a managerial position that doesn't need to do much in the trench, or become a trainer in that field.
> That doesn't mean that I don't want a career or have aspirations, but there's so much less clarity.
Yeah. I figured there is a lot of ambiguity in life objectives, and there is no one there to help you. You just have yourself in this game.
> What do you do to work through these challenges?
TBH, I do not know what to do. I have a toolbox for the "down" time, but neither of them really solves it. Sometimes I listen to "Napoleon Hill" episodes to give me some motivation (this one I listened to today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u5jAzHpI3w). Sometimes I talked to myself and tried to sort out something. Sometimes I talked to ChatGPT and asked it to give me a list of something.
I kinda think there is no magic pills for such situations and one just has to grit through.
Work to live, not the other way around. Work produces income and is a means to an end.
Drill down a couple of levels on what it means to you to be happy, productive, warm, and loving. What do an ideal day and week look and feel like? What kind of life would you like your kids to have? Not abstractly. What would their ideal school situation be? How far from school? Any special opportunities like certain clubs, interest in playing an instrument, sports teams? Do you just do weekend warrior stuff, or does being a responsible, fun, constructive parent mean you’re picking them up after school regularly to go make memories?
Let’s say it’s something like the last bit for a moment. “Begin with the end in mind” is one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and in this case, the end is being a fun parent by going for ice cream or to the park or watch a movie or take guitar lessons together a couple of days a week after school. To make that happen, you’ll need to have flexible work hours and maybe a work location near their ideal school. Do the rare and valuable knowledge and skills that you’ve accumulated allow you do that? If so, great! You’re passionate about being a good parent; you don’t need that from your job. Your job is a means to an end. If the current conditions of your job get in the way of your goal of being a responsible, fun, constructive parent, how could you modify job parameters?
There’s no right answer. There’s your answer. What do you want for your kids? What do you want for you and your wife now and after they’ve left the nest? Walk around in a day, a week of that life in your head. There’s your end. Work backward from there.
This is the type of hen-egg dialectic that takes me straight to evolutionary theory. My guess is that the 'standard human tribe', ~200 strong, needs some people to be up at night. But since we don't have dedicated day/night humans, we all get this shared mess of a genome 'you need to be up at night sometimes'.
> But since we don't have dedicated day/night humans
Yeah we absolutely do. The night-owls and larks are pretty well established at this point.
this mirrors my experience too. I’ll just add that some times taking a complete break from work is necessary to find the mental clarity to reach the state where learning, stability and happiness are possible.
Yeah I think that helps, too. Unfortunately most of us cannot do that. I found a few days is not enough. At least 2 weeks.
I used to be able to do this but after having kids they always seem to reset the clock before you can make any headway. I still have not figured out how to regain the clarity. There is no substitute for unobstructed long stretches of time to focus on something. Being unexpectedly interrupted or put on a schedule just ruins it.
I have a kid and I get it. I'm actually a bit scared about long vacations and weekends nowadays. But I hope we will figure out a way when kid grows up a bit. Right now, it's all luck. I'm even thinking about getting rid of my hobbies and find new ones that match kid's education and activity, but not sure about that.
The reasons people do not get enough sleep or aren't fit are vastly more varied and complex compared with what you propose here.
> I have observed this in myself so I wonder whether it is universally true
Growing up is realizing how infinitesimally narrow your particular slice of reality is.
This comment is obviously true but uninteresting if you don't elaborate further on those causes
What I mean is, the comment you replied to isolated a specific cause and sparked a discussion; your comment, if taken at face value, is thought-terminating. How can we possibly comprehend all causes of complex phenomena before we are allowed to discuss them?
About the universally true thing, I understood it as whether people that's unhappy with life generally have trouble sleeping, not whether everyone that have trouble sleeping is unhappy with life. Still probably not an universal but is more reasonable sounding
The comment I replied to suggested that people who are not fit or suffer from sleep disturbances are willfully unhappy. I don't feel it requires much thought or experience with the subject matter to see that this is false. There are many easy counterexamples which I'm sure you can come up with even if you are only barely determined
No one is disallowing the parent, you, or anyone else from discussing or thinking about complex phenomena. If someone is not putting in the work to engage with the material, others are free to point it out, and they do so at their leisure.
I hold others to a higher standard when the stakes are higher. Specifically, the post I commented on was (likely unintentionally) not only factually wrong, but stigmatizing people with sleep disturbances. This is why my tone was dismissive and condescending. This was intentional.
I don't care to give examples because they are easy to find if you are asking in good faith. I even posted one in direct reply to TFA.
I’ve always envisioned those states as ‘swimming’ versus ‘treading water.’
The deal I have with myself is that it’s okay to tread water for a while - if you’re tired, if you need a break, if you’re not quite sure where to go next - but you can’t wait too long, because the current will move you wherever it wants. To get where you want, you’re always going to have to start swimming again.
Hm, no, non-24 is not just a severe version of DSPS.
I have it. What I've learned from my doc (a researcher in the field):
It's primarily a specific genetic mutation that affects many of they body's cyclic timers, but relevant here is that the circadian feedback loop is no longer able to lock to a 24 hour day/night cycle at all. You're perfectly sensitive to light/dark, but you're hitting a PLL with inputs faster than its ability to make meaningful adjustments.
Sleep apnea diagnosis is relevant here, because it also breaks the breathing reflex timer. Imagine finding out at age 40 that you've not, in fact, slept more than a few minutes at a time your entire life, because you wake up just enough to take a breath every 3 minutes or so when a secondary suffocation reflex goes off.
How can I explain to my 6 months old girl that we all need to sleep :D
This is a bug in the universe! We need to sleep so that the levels of dopamine, and hormones of hunger and not hunger are at good levels, so that we can be healthy and strong, so that the immune system is stable and strong... And we need to get good sleep so that we can protect our children and be sane....
BUT the nature decided that the kids will wake up 3-4 times per night, and you need to wake up and take care of them.
You sleep in best case, on pauses, not more than 4-6 hours, you feel miserable, and at the same time you are THE HAPPIEST PERSON IN THIS WORLD! :)
In my area there is a saying like "it takes a village to raise a child". i believe that a good social network is not only important for the kid, but for the parents too. it helps so much to have a partner, grandparents, aunts/uncles, who can look over the kid just for a hour or 2, so you can get your rest. And its usually fun for the kids too. Now that i have 2 kids, a loving wife and 2 families around me, i have the highest respect for all the single moms/dads out there.
As immigrants with no local network, having kids is basically putting yourself under house arrest for a decade or so. You can post bail (pay a babysitter) for occasional reprieve. I mean sure you can go do outings with kids, but for most of them, do you really want to? I know mine aren't particularly enthralled by trips to the Rijksmuseum.
I don't think this is how humans usually raised kids...
We're in the same boat. Feels like mostly our society doesn't value having children - it's by and large not a very well supported activity. Even more so if you don't have immediate family to help support you.
Where’d you go? We were told Ireland values children but that didn’t match our experience (we moved to the Netherlands which has been better at least)
If you go to the third world kids are all running in the streets while both parents work and grandparents not doing fuck all to watch them either. The most practical answer is to relax negligence laws back to a sane level where as long as you're not torturing them and they are fed, "society" stays the fuck out of the punishment process.
I’d rather they not get run over… but generally agree with you
There is no nuclear family required anymore,
My parents are the village, and the village is the law.
https://youtu.be/skUUVejxDZc?si=unPgT-01QLAQ-lZB
This is why people critique the nuclear family—the degenerate village around the children that just consists of the parents, maybe grandparents at holidays. It’s a recipe for overworked adults.
I've got a Mexican American friend that lives multi-generationally and loves it. He's a few years out of high school with a good job in management and a nice car, money in the bank. His older brother gets help parenting from Tio and the grandparents, and generally everyone gets along well. He's almost kept up with me in savings for property and I'm married (our pay is pretty similar, but I have dual income). American culture optimizes for wastefulness and puts too much of an emphasis on independence, especially when arrangements like this exist that actually can lead to greater individual freedom in the long run.
> and generally everyone gets along well
That's a very important statement
I couldn't live with my grandma and couldn't live with my mom anymore. I needed space.
FWIW, and understanding that individual babies do differ, most babies can sleep through the night (10-12 hours) by 3-4 months old. Check out the books "Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old" or "Precious Little Sleep" for guidance.
In my case where n=2, naps during the day are/were not all that consistent but at night (unless they are very sick or something) the kids sleep.
3 for 3 sleeping through the night by 60 days. All we did was have a feeding schedule that we stuck to pretty closely, and around week 2 started intentionally delaying our response to night-time crying, gradually increasing how far we stretched it (start with maybe a minute, increase over time). They wake up at night and don’t know how to self-soothe back to sleep if you always jump in the second they make a sound, they don’t actually need night time feedings past the first few weeks, responding immediately trains them not to fall back asleep on their own if they stir at night (and everyone does). Down to one feeding at night by a month or so, none past two months.
Can’t say many other things worked equally well for all three kids, but that did.
I’m convinced that 1 of 100 babies sleeps miraculously, magically, the true sleep of the just, right out of the box. Some lucky parents of those genetic freaks think, “Our sleep technique works! We should write a book!”
In our case(s), it was something that required conscious effort. And when we did that... it worked. It honestly didn't seem like it would at first, but then it does.
Again, n=2 for me personally but as I mentioned in my reply to another comment we also had a friend with a "baby who won't sleep" and when they tried it also worked for them.
I don't make a habit of recommending this to people unless I'm close with them, bc I know that some people may take it personally or believe they are an exception. And I'd bet money that there are plenty of exceptions. But I also think they're exceptions rather than the rule. Whenever I've seen parents who believe that their baby can sleep through the night and work towards that goal, they seem to get there pretty quickly.
Edit to add: To put it in engineering terms, I think part of the problem is that you have to escape a local maximum of baby sleep. You may suffer several nights (possibly a couple weeks) that are worse than what you're used to in order to get to a place that's significantly better than what you're used to. When you're already sleep deprived, that can feel like a big hump to get over.
Yeah. My wife was breastfeeding and she could do that half-asleep. Barely any sleep was lost.
Half asleep definitely doesn't sound like good quality, restorative sleep.
To be clear, they don't eat/feed at night either. The baby is in a separate room from us and we don't see or hear him most nights (95%+) between 7pm-6am. He's around 8.5 months old now and this has been the case for 3-4 months, although that percentage was a bit lower at the beginning.
I'm emphasizing it bc many people are surprised by this, but if you know it's possible, you can start to work towards it. My partner's coworker has a ~1 year old who was still waking up (maybe multiple times?) each night to eat. She introduced them to one of those books (the 12-by-12 one) and they were very grateful.
4 month old should eat every 3-4 hours. You mentioned sleeping for 10-12h and this sounds almost harmful for the baby. I don't think I'd like that.
Thanks for your recommendation anyway. I'm sure that there are many science-based techniques to "tame" children and make child care as atomic family bearable.
> This is a bug in the universe!
Is it? Couldn't it be a bug in our society/economy instead? What if nature wanted us to take some naps through the day and not just one period of sleep in the night? Waking up multiple times at night wouldn't hurt too much then.
Last month there was a heartbreaking news about a < 6 month old baby being snatched away by a leopard while the baby was sleeping next to the parent and the parent realized her baby was missing only much later.
I imagine the predator situation would have been much worse during the early human evolution years. I don't know if that was a beneficial trait or not in that environment.
As a parent, I just wonder what-if.
How do I explain this to 15yo teenager?..
Wait 10 years. Minimum.
Part of this is also our culture that somehow decided kids need their own bed, and it's easy to get baby formula.
So the kids are not sleeping in our beds, where they feel 100% secure, getting to the breast whenever they want (and they quickly will want it at a lesser frequency). The woman will feel this, but hardly has to wake up, me... I slept right through all that. Fwiw, we had a bed for the baby that attached to ours.
In our time everybody advised us: Give the bady a load of milk at 23:00 just before you go to bed! We never did, just stuck to about did 20:00, or just when baby cried, both babies took about 2 months to sleep for about 12 hours straight (although soon after the second one developed reflux which had me watch Rick and Morty in its entirety somewhere between 2 and 4 for some time).
Anyway, not saying everybody is that lucky, just saying sometimes it's good to questions things that are given in one's culture. Worst advice imho is "let the baby cry" which was common on our days. How nice to let a baby cry alone in a room, not understanding anything about what happens...
I coslept, but I had shit milk production. Without formula my kid would be dead. My friend breastfeeds, but is an active danger when asleep, so without a crib, she'd have crushed her child.
It turns out that safe sleep rules and the availability of formula exist for a reason. Safe sleep rules exist in the west because pur beds are fundamentally different (and more dangerous) than in places here cosleeping is more common. Tp cosleep you need a certain situation that many people are not prepared to deal with.
There's literally nothing you can do about low supply at all. It's not a matter of trying for me. My body never made more than an ounce even with weeks of attempts. This is even setting aside that some people would like assistance so they can sleep and breastfeeding means dad can't take on night feeds, which is what another friend is experiencing and the child is having a bad time from her severe sleep deprivation.
And even more complications of small child. It's not as simple as "let's go back to the old days". The great days when kids died at much higher rates remember.
Sorry, I did not mean it like that, formula is fine. We also hated the breastfeeding mob.
And you're right about the rules they exist for a reason, but I think we should as parents take our space to try what works for us and our kids and what feels right.
Sometimes I just can't grasp how cruel nature is. Imagine no formula -> baby starving and you just have to accept it. When the tribe grows in numbers the baby is safe. When the tribe grows in numbers like mankind, you get cheats like formula and polio vaccine.
We're just replaying the life game on easier mode.
I can relate to this. Got two kids and I must say if someone told me that it will be this hard I wouldn't believe it.
Raising kids is the hardest and most fulfilling job.
Same for me and I just got the one. It's so incredibly hard, I was not ready for it at all.
The most important thing about sleep I learned is to fall asleep at the same moment of every day. Make it 22:00 or 23:00 or 00:00. Whatever is comfortable for you. But you have to stick to the chosen hour as hard as you can. Every day from now on it has to be that hour. After you get used to that you will notice a much better effect of the sleep.
I agree with how important this is, but for me, the most significant improvement in my sleep has been pushing my dinner very early, ~6 hrs before bed, and having it be my smallest meal of the day. I usually feel quite hungry about an hour before bed but if I get over that hump my resting heart rate is much lower at night and my appetite the next day is much lower. It was validating to see Bryan Johnson sharing the same findings on x.
I think one of the underrated things that Bryan does is he regularly emphasises how central sleep needs to be in your health. I haven't heard that consistant message drilled in by anyone else and it helped me realise how a lot of the things i found difficult to recruit energy/discipline/motivation were related to the low priority I placed on sleep.
Peter Attia is also big on sleep. But it sits alongside 3-4 other things of similar importance in his messaging.
I believe that routine in general helps a ton. Go to sleep at the same time, eat at the same time, go for a walk at the same time, etc. You will wake up at the same time as a side effect. At least that's what happened to me during covid, when there were no obligations outside of working hours. During normal times, I will stay up late one or two days a week for social events or have to get up early for travel. That messes with your rhythm, almost like being jet lagged.
Strongly disagree and you should refrain from trying to give universal advice on these matters. I never had a 24h circadian rhythm. The only way to fall asleep at the same moment every day for me would be to medicate myself. I am very happy and productive when I am allowed to "rotate around the clock" and the worst periods of my life were when I was forced to be on a strict schedule.
The most important thing with any health issue is to be aware of your own body.
I am recently diagnosed with Type II Diabetes.
The classic symptoms were unknown to me until this point when I researched them.
I had previously blamed psych medications for the symptoms, and while they may have exacerbated them, I guess diabetes was the real root cause.
One of the symptoms is frequent urination. And so, every night I wake up every 2 hours or so and crawl into the bathroom. It’s legitimately a huge curse.
I don’t get enough deep R.E.M. and I remain exhausted just from the physical effort of get-up-and-go.
It’s very frustrating and sad to think that even after I’ve got my blood glucose under control, I still have these lingering symptoms that impact my QoL.
Eat right, kids; eat well or be cursed for life!
Wow I can’t believe ButlerianJihad wasn’t already taken on HN!!
IMO Type 2 diabetes is manageable. My father struggled with it for decades and his last few years were not great. Having those same genes, I've spent a lot of time reading and following the data. My take is that T2 is quite manageable. Even reversible, if you focus on it. "Reversible" doesn't mean a lifelong cure, but you can push out your health days by a decade.
There are all kinds of solutions that work. High Protein, Mediterranean, Atkins, or even High Carb (the "good" kind). The breakdown usually happens in the "cocktail" of foods. Our bodies are not hybrid engines; we can not switch fuels mid-stream and expect optimal health. You have to pick a poison, let's say, a protein-based diet—and stick to it. Then exercise and intermittent fasting (IF) are force multipliers. I did strict IF for a year, but I have fallen off the wagon lately, only manage 3-4 days of IF a week. The difference in how I feel is stark.
What worked for me was something called "Lalit Kapoor" diet — basically a WFPB/vegan approach with heavy green juicing and fasting. My failure was primarily due to social friction. My family eats very differently. Making a special effort for every single meal eventually made me start taking the easy way. I still follow it but I wish I could be 100% rather than 80% and which is where all diets fail.
Hope you find some relief.
I was experiencing similar symptoms in college, and self cured myself through: - diet shift and adjustment, keto and then carnivore specifically - shifting breathing to the nose: the sympathetic nervous system is activated through mouth-breathing, that leads to stress and anxiety all around bogging up everything from the digestive system, lymphatic system and more - happy to share more, my sleep schedule works best by following the sun and guarding myself from artificial lights exposure after
happy to share more as stated.
The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.
The most frustrating effect is that even a few drinks in the evening (maybe over 2-3 units). Unsettles my sleep that if I'm in the process of learning something feels like it sets me back several days.
That's not even counting the slowed processing I feel, and lower productivity the next day.
I genuinely have to revisit old information.
A genuine hangover from a heavy night can put me out of action for half a week!
When I was younger I'm not sure I had many good nights sleep let alone noticed a bad one!
I've heard that small amounts of alcohol can actually improve learning interestingly by preventing interference from events later in the day.
>The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.
Back when I was 20 I had a drinking problem. One time I drank so much that I passed out sitting at a table. Woke up with friends having stripped my clothes and washed them. I woke up at 9AM, feeling 100% sober, just anxious about my 20 missed calls from my mom. I got a bit drunk at about 33 and next day I thought I was dying.
That's how I learnt what hangovers were.
Again, at around 25, I helped my brother in-law move bee hives all night, including some 8 hours of driving.
Went straight to work and in the evening I had dinner with my wife at a restaurant.
Now I crash in bed at 9PM and if I'm lucky, I also sleep (but quite often I wake up at 2AM).
Getting old(er) sucks, and I'm only 42 and I miss so much how nice being in my 20 something body felt all the time.
I’m 41 and my body is nicer to be in than when I was 25.
Like you, I have much less youthful buffer that shrugs off poor sleep or overindulgence, but I have much more knowledge and much better habits.
Daily habits: better nutrition (based on Bryan Johnson’s super veggie and nutty pudding), stretching, weak points warmup, proper oral hygiene, regular bedtime
Weekly habits: 4x gym, 3x run, 2x weighted walk
I have used ChatGPT to work out a program that is helping me to overcome injuries and niggles while building strength and cardio. I’m 3 months into my latest training schedule, and it’s unreasonably effective.
Reminder for anyone that doesn't know better: having good sleep is dependent on a few minor lifestyle adjustments. Like avoiding heavy (or any outside of fruit and vegetable) meals and exercise a few hours before going to bed. And avoiding caffeine after noon.
You don't need to be a health champion to have good sleep.
do you exercise?
I’m 49 and have all but given up on drinking. It does nothing for me except make me tired and then, ironically, mess up my sleep. On fridays I grill cheeseburgers for the family and usually have one Half-Life tall boy from Manhattan Brewery because it’s my favorite of all time but that’s about it. Otherwise, I don’t drink at all. Being tired and not sleeping well is handled perfectly adequately by my job hah.
I'm pretty much the same as you. I really like beer and wine and cocktails, but the bad sleep and feeling shitty the next day after even one drink isn't worth it. Thirty years ago hangovers were rare and could usually be ended with a cup of coffee, tylenol, and lots of water.
The next thing I have to back off on is sugar. It doesn't seem to mess up my sleep like booze, but I definitely notice it the day after I have that big bowl of ice cream or giant slice of cake. A big enough sugar binge feels pretty close to a hangover for me now.
This must be a marketing campaign bit
> The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.
Can relate.
> The most frustrating effect is that even a few drinks in the evening (maybe over 2-3 units). Unsettles my sleep that if I'm in the process of learning something feels like it sets me back several days.
I'm not noticing it unsettles my learning but can relate to a few drinks already upsetting my sleep. I wouldn't be surprised if my learning would be impaired by at least a bit.
> When I was younger I'm not sure I had many good nights sleep let alone noticed a bad one!
Being young is a blessing that way.
I'm +35 years old by the way.
> I've heard that small amounts of alcohol can actually improve learning interestingly by preventing interference from events later in the day.
Do you have a source? Would be curious to look some of it up.
I'm in a similar age bracket.
Here is some research around the alcohol effect. What I found most surprising is the mean consumption was over 80g, since 8g of ethanol is a unit that's an astonishing mean of 10units.
I was of the impression that the effect was around 1 unit.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5524957/
While there's no consistent standard, most countries appear to be using something in the 10-14g range for what they call a "standard drink"/"unit" of alcohol. (UK is 8g, but the rest of the EU typically uses 10g or 12g, US uses 14g).
I actually hadn't realized until I went looking that the "standard drink" isn't much of an international standard unit at all. Will have to keep that in mind when reading papers/recommendations from different health authorities in the future.
-----
Anyway, it's pretty interesting. I'm not sure I'm going to believe the effect just on one noisy study, but even if the reality is something lesser - like it just not harming memory formation of things you'd learned earlier in the day, the implications are still a bit interesting.
It certainly adds a bit to some of the historical social biases against "day drinking", and also does a bit to explain how plenty of high-performing young people seem to use alcohol pretty heavily after they're done learning (college students partying, etc) with limited direct impacts on their educational performance.
If my Oura ring can be trusted, alcohol doesn't interfere with my total amount of sleep or my REM sleep, but it reduces my deep sleep drastically and can even result in me getting zero deep sleep, which hasn't happened a single time without alcohol.
For a long time with sleep studies they would give participants a single unit of alcohol. Alcohol has always trashed sleep, even when younger.
I went sober dor this precise reason. It's a quality of life thing.
“Their brains… look like small walnuts inside their skull… There's so much atrophy that happens with an alcohol soaked brain chronically that I would say that's, you know, far and away, the most common source of brain damage” - Dr. Matthew Macdouglas head neurosurgeon at Neurolink on the Huberman podcast starting at 1:40:00
Weird responses from those two users. Ignore them
Those responses are very much valid responses to a topic that some share as a valid conversational topic on a thread about getting good sleep and learning, myself included.
Even better, the topic is visited on part 6.2[1] of the article you're replying to.
1 https://super-memory.com/articles/sleep.htm#Alcohol
This type of response on the other hand, is not helpful at all and for a 14 day old account with this only post...Some might say you are the one worth ignoring.
Sounds like you have a problem with alcohol, not with sleeping.
What makes you say that?
Mentioning drinking three times (effects of drinks in the evening, hangover, effects on learning) in a single response might give an impression you like to drink.
I mean, they sell alcohol in shops for money, and not force it on you in some government-mandated way. Which kinda tells that people in general like to drink.
> Which kinda tells that people in general like to drink.
No, it just tells you there is enough demand for alcohol selling to be a profitable business, not that people in general like to drink.
There are bars everywhere
There are also gambling machines everywhere around me yet I don't know a single person who uses them.
I looked up numbers for the USA and 2025 54% said they consume alcohol. So it's most people but millions don't.
"Most". Kinda proves the general point: alcohol consumption is common.
The topic is drinking so they mentioned drinking, and usually people do what they like to do, and in other news water is wet - but do we judge water for being wet? So let's stop virtue signaling because it's definitely not a show of virtue. I see where religious fundamentalism is taking the world and damn if I like it.
I’m not religious at all, and it’s not religious fundamentalism to point out that alcohol disrupts sleep, and that this likely is the primary factor affecting the poster’s sleep.
Also not religious fundamentalism to point out that alcohol is a known carcinogen (: that’s just science. It’s a Group 1 carcinogen, the same group as tobacco and asbestos.
Sunlight is a carcinogen
> Sunlight is a carcinogen
But sunlight is essential for the cutaneous conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol to vitamin D3, whereas ethanol serves no essential purpose, irrespective of whether one enjoys it or not.
Personally I don’t consume ethanol; but I don’t care if others do or not so long as they stay off the roads and are not piloting my flight.
I will say that when I did consume ethanol even in small quantities, my sleep was much worse than it is at baseline; and that effect only worsened as I got older.
Ethanol is food— you also don't need carbs, but they do keep you alive. More importantly, it fairly central to cultural vitality. Not essential but it plays a highly functional role. Maybe could be replaced by religion or other drugs, but short of that, the world is less vibrant without it.
> "The topic is drinking"
The topic is sleeping.
> There is only one formula for healthy and refreshing sleep: Go to sleep only when you are very tired. Not earlier. Not later. Wake up naturally without an alarm clock.
This is very easy to say when you're not suffering from insomnia and other sleep disorders.
Advice like this turns almost everybody's normal state into a disorder.
"Go to sleep only when you are very tired" is a child's approach to sleep, it's what we all want to do, and by adulthood we learn that it's counterproductive. But we still want it so much that we regularly test it and are reminded why we don't operate that way.
It reminds me of the intuitive eating folks who say, "Ignore standard diet advice, just listen to your body and feed it what it knows you need," but then when you overeat, they say, "You aren't listening properly, you aren't in tune with your body." Then if you ask, "How will I know when I'm in tune with my body and listening to it properly?" they say, "When what it asks for matches standard diet advice."
>> sleep only when you are very tired
This flies in the face of all sleep research done at the Stanford Health Care’s Sleep Medicine Center.
You're confusing treatment for insomnia with recommendations for general sleep hygiene.
Wake up without an alarm clock is surely beneficial regardless of when you go to sleep?
I'm sure it is. It's difficult with a full time job though. Yes, in principle it can be made easier by going to bed earlier... but that's not simple either.
or have even a single obligation in the morning
I have a somewhat rarely diagnosed circadian rhythm disorder called delayed sleep phase disorder. It is difficult to get diagnosed, especially as sleep clinics have been targets of private equity firms which convert them to CPAP shops which only diagnose sleep apnea and whose patients never interact with an MD. However it is likely to be underdiagnosed given the stigma around sleep challenges, at least in the sense that if you make any effort to get enough sleep with such a sleep disorder, you tend to be pegged as lazy, irresponsible, unreliable, etc
In any event, I agree with something implicit in the article, namely that most people have a degree of this, but the severity is variable. Mine has been fairly extreme, and while diagnosis enables disability accommodations, it is very fraught navigating most workplaces with this particular disability and you are essentially forced to choose between having any kind of upward mobility and getting enough sleep at night.
Thankfully the past two years or so I've been getting much more sleep since optimizing more for that. But anyway, if you are navigating sleep challenges you should get a sleep study, sure, but also be aware that your local sleep clinic is in all likelihood only nominally a sleep clinic. That is, it does not know how to diagnose and treat more complex sleep issues and probably doesn't want to.
If only I knew how to have full non-interrupted restorative sleep. It seems that my body started losing that skill about 20 years ago, and lost it altogether about 6 years ago. The falling asleep time is a lottery and I'm always waking up after the first stage, often a few more times after that.
Tried all kinds of sleep medication, but by now I've forgotten what it's like to not be half-asleep and unable to concentrate throughout the day (with loud tinnitus and a soupy feel in the brain to boot). Really sucks out any and all enjoyment from life, I can't even find the energy to watch TV shows anymore, let alone read books. I haven't learned anything fundamentally new at work for years too (inertia helps with daily routine).
I think nearly everyone should be screened for sleep apnea. The at-home test you wear on your finger is so cheap - it doesn't make sense not to do it for anyone who has any issues with sleep or tiredness in the day.
I always thought that due to being female and a healthy weight, it wasn't something I needed to think about. I also didn't think I snored more than anyone else, so it took me years of poor sleep before a Doctor finally recommended I get tested.
Turns out OSA also can be caused or aggravated by: the size and shape of your mouth, the position you sleep in (I have twice as many events on my back vs side), and whether you tuck your chin in near your test (soft cervical collar helped for that). There are devices that alter how your mouth rests when sleeping (easier to breathe if your front teeth are forward) but they're possibly not good for your bite. CPAP/APAP is still the gold standard for a reason.
The coolest thing about CPAP though, is a lot of them have amazing metrics recorded if you pop in an SD card. And there's a big community built around open source software to analyze those metrics and tune the settings to minimize apnea events overnight.
Also, a cpap with a humidifier is amazing if you're prone to nose pain / nose bleeds due to dry air.
The at-home test you wear on your finger is so cheap - it doesn't make sense not to do it for anyone who has any issues with sleep or tiredness in the day.
What is name of the product?
My comment is more of a complaint than a discussion so apologies, but I was disappointed recently because I did at an at home test and scored borderline. I was hopeful that it would be sleep apnea so I could go about solving my bad sleep, but a lab test showed conclusively that I didn’t have it.
I got checked out initially because I mentioned to my sister that I didn’t recall the last time I’d woken up and felt refreshed all day, even with 8+ hours, and she said “…that’s not good, get that checked out.”
Back to the drawing board :(
Chronic tiredness can be such a hard thing to figure out, sorry you've been going through that! Is it sleepiness (as in can fall asleep at any point of the day), or fatigue (as in non-restorative sleep, brain fog, feeling exhausted, etc)? I've had chronic fatigue (non syndrome) for six years now, so I'm pretty familiar with how obnoxiously long it takes to get answers. Some things to look into:
Do a full polysomnogram with MSLT: this will check for sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, and idiopathic hypersomnia
Look into ME/CFS if you have post exertional malaise (pretty much you cross some invisible line in exertion followed by a delayed crash).
Look into MCAS if you also have strange allergy symptoms. I have MCAS, though tbh I didn't really have that many symptoms until I looked at Dr. Afrin's free chapter on MCAS.
Maybe fibromyalgia, but you didn't mention muscle pain, so it probably doesn't apply.
Obviously depression can cause somatic symptoms, so that's worth checking, but I think people jump to that conclusion too soon.
Note that a lot of these conditions don't really have tests, so it's really tricky to get a diagnosis. It takes finding a doctor who's willing to recognize them and give a diagnosis.
Got a link for some of those open source CPAP hackers?
The software is OSCAR, and apneaboard (a forum) is a good place for that stuff. You should be able to find it from there :)
I got 4h of sleep last night which is about my normal average at this time of the year, and I have 0 regrets about it. I also don't sleep at a regular time every day. If I have no other obligations, I naturally let it shift forward (what the article calls "delayed sleep phase"). I am most unhappy when I HAVE TO use an alarm clock and break my own patterns. Last night, I naturally went to sleep right before sunrise and I woke up 4 hours later.
To pre-empt a few objections: I did not need an alarm clock to wake up. I am not taking heavy stimulants other than caffeine at this time. I am not stressed. I am not unhappy. I don't have memory issues (in fact, I am cursed with a very good memory and it is usually harder for me to forget than to remember). I can score above the Mensa bar on an IQ test. I can take an interview. I can give a demo. I can run 10km. I do not have "bipolar disorder" or any such nonsense. I don't need medication. I don't need therapy. I don't need a better mattress. I'm not already in a mental asylum. I'm married with kids, I work a high-paying job, I give to charity and I pay my taxes. In fact, today is tax day, I should probably take care of that instead of getting upset at hacker news comments.
I would suggest looking into the medical research on the downsides of getting little sleep. After a single night of low sleep (and 4 hours is low), even though you'll feel fine, your body will not process a lot of things the way it normally should (e.g. insulin response is significantly degraded).
Over time, it supposedly significantly increases the likelihood of certain diseases/conditions.
Peter Attia was one of those people who got by with little sleep, and for years, well into his medical career, was dismissive of those who preached the importance of 8 hours of sleep a day. He then looked into the research, and completely changed his mind:
https://peterattiamd.com/category/sleep/
When I was looking into the dual n back stuff a while back, I remember reading one report where the person would feel subjectively fine when sleep deprived, but his nback score would go way down.
In other words it's possible to "feel fine" on little sleep and yet be significantly cognitively impaired. Worth measuring that, if possible.
(It might have been Gwern, he's got a big page on the subject.)
0 regrets now doesn't mean 0 regrets decades later.
That's totally fair, and I'll cross that bridge when I get there like everyone else :)
My philosophy is: either I'll live to benefit from technology that can repair the damage caused by aging, in which case health micro-optimizations early in life are not that important, OR this won't be achieved within my lifetime, in which case I prefer a short life with concentrated happiness, vitality and intensity in my youth.
There is some new scientific finding that in deep sleep, fluids from the brain drain out and if that flushing doesn't happen, it might lead to Alzheimer's disease.
You should at least monitor your deep sleep using a smartwatch. Less than 1.5 hours and I would be worried.
Thanks, I am aware of reduced cerebrospinal fluid flushing as well as the increased neural inflammation in general and I am trying to compensate for that as best as I can.
I am not too worried about Alzheimer's as it tends to start pretty late in life (I think average onset is around mid-60s?). If I get that and we don't have a reliable cure by then, I wouldn't really mind ending it quickly after getting the diagnosis. I'm a bit more worried about heart disease as that tends to hit earlier.
I believe you, but if you are ever in a position of authority, please don't expect anyone else to function well on 4 hours of sleep.
You are at one edge of the gaussian curve of the sleep requirements of the human species. The problem is that many think they belong there, but are not. Enjoy what you have and let the haters hate.
How are we meant to read and discuss this page? It's huge!
It seems like we're all just looking at the title and talking about our sleep habits.
thats what I was thinking when reading the comments. How the heck have people had time to read it all and comment? I guess not :)
Also, I'm really curious to know if some of it is no longer valid. 14 years is a long time in science
As a Spaniard I am trying to honor my ancestors and nap when I can, but man, it feels almost impossible most of the days. It could be that I am having too much anxiety/stress, too much coffee in the mornings, lack of practice, or maybe all of them. Any experiences related to learning to nap or what worked for you over here?
Fellow Spaniard here. Our ancestors were definitely onto something! I think the most important thing when it comes to napping is to show up: find a comfortable spot, use an eye mask, and set a timer for whatever time you have (I typically do something between 10 to 30 minutes). Just close your eyes and don’t open them until the alarm goes off.
I don’t always nap, but I make sure to do so if I haven’t had enough sleep or when I’m stressed or overworked. The more work I have, the more naps I take. Three back to back meetings? 15 minutes nap for your brain to organize and process the information dump. You get the gist. Doesn’t have to be after lunch, just a few minutes when you need/have them.
I used to do the Dali nap: find a comfortable spot, hold a spoon in your hand, and close your eyes. Once you fall asleep the spoon will fall from your hand and wake you up. That makes sure you go into hypnagogic state, great for problem solving as the brain is in a creativity sweet spot.
The technique I use now is not strictly a nap but a relaxation technique called NSDR: Non-Sleep Deep Rest. It’s kind of a guided meditation that deeply relaxes your body and nervous system. Just 10 minutes can feel as restorative as hours of sleep. You can check Andrew Huberman's scripts or Youtube videos for a more body-hacking, science-backed vive, or channels like are Ally Boothroyd's [0] for a more spiritual take on the concept, also known as Yoga Nidra.
I hope that helps. And best of luck with your napping, honor the ancestors!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19-3B-OVYoc1sdjBBKLB...
Thank you so much for your detailed answer! I definitely try to show up, but I am an anxious person and sometimes trying to nap makes me even more anxious. However, it is true that even when I don't manage to sleep it helps relaxing me and giving me some extra energy.
I've also read about NSDR and wanted to try it, so having some sources is really helpful. Do you always practice it with some guided meditation or can you do it on your own? I kind of not like guided meditation. (No reason, it's just that kind of feel wrong. Probably I should just open my mind and try it more.) Thank you so much!
Practice makes perfect! Keep on showing up and it will most likely get easier :)
I currently do not do guided NSDR that much, but it helped a lot at the time learning how to calm my thoughts and become deeply relaxed, especially the Ally guided sessions (as everything else, takes practice) so I would recommend to try the guided ones even if it feels awkward, until you learn how to stop your mind from wandering. I find it helps both with quick reset/recharge naps and falling back asleep if I wake up in the middle of the night (happens often for me).
The relatively late dining hours (9pm or later) in Spain wouldn't work for me at all. I'm an early-to-bed-early-to-rise kind of person and if I eat within 3 or 4 hours of bed time my sleep suffers.
I learned recently that Spain uses the same timezone as Germany (GMT+2 currently, according to Google) despite the GMT line passing through Spain. I've visited Spain and did feel like we ate late, but the timezone being "wrong" has made me wonder if it would have felt as late if I knew about their timezone while I was there!
Set a timer for 20 minutes, lie down (or at least close your eyes) and force yourself to stay motionless until the timer rings. Try to let your thoughts float freely... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you should try at least a few times. (And yes, maybe limit yourself to just one coffee in the morning.)
I try, but apart from the coffee (I usually take two, probably the second one interferes with my nap), I think it's the lack of consistency/practice what's making my napping difficult.
I'm extremely sensitive to poor sleep. I also have nothing in my schedule that really prevents me from going to sleep early and sleeping late most of the time, and generally I at least achieve the former. The problem is that I have unbearable horrible nightmares every time I sleep. To the point where going to sleep is akin to going to hell itself, and I generally choose to forcibly wake myself up around like 6 a.m. just to get away from it all. I haven't really figured out a way around this.
I have as a kid. It might help you. As a kid, I instinctively (and later also consciously) have trained myself to become lucid while dreaming. When I become lucid, I gain some power. Then I trained myself to be more powerful in dreams.
For example, I can't fly, but I can (apparently) move the whole universe by a specific offset. I can also change the specific offset at a specific motion. So basically, I don't have flying powers, but I do have the powers of treating my dream like a Unity3D scene. And in that way, I can mimic flight.
I can also turn into a monster myself, usually into a worse monster than whatever I'm facing. I have become my nightmare's nightmare at certain points.
Nowadays though, whenever a nightmare hit I'm just unfazed. What also helps is that I let my nightmare and the creatures within it know that I am immortal. No matter what they do to me. In my dreams I am The Beginning and The End. I am all that will be there. They are there because of me. I'm essentially the only god that there is (I'm not religious but as far as my dreams are concerned, I am a god).
That throws off quite a lot of nightmares. The ones that persist, it's fine. They can test my immortality.
I've trained myself to have powers in the dream, but I rarely, fully know that it's a dream, so it doesn't really help when it's all psychological.
Can I just say that I agree with the other poster. I used to have a lot of nightmares. I didn't do it purposely, but I did figure out that lucid dreaming was the way to solve that issue.
I got interested in lucid dreaming for its own sake, and trained myself for it. I did all the common stuff in the guides, and eventually I had a habit of many times a day rubbing the back of my hand or something else tactile and asking myself if I was dreaming. After quite some time it did start to actually work in my dreams. I would frequently become "aware" in my dream and realise I was dreaming, and in my dream I would dream I would have control, but once I woke up it didn't even really feel like I had full control. It was not the experience I had been expecting, where everything becomes clearer, you can literally consciously control the dream. It was more like dreaming that I knew I was dreaming, and then controlling the dream, but I could never quite control it to the full extent I wanted to. No matter how much I practiced, this is all I achieved.
However, it wasn't nothing. It did let me start to realise I was dreaming in nightmares, and immediately just change them and become "in control" to the point where I could push back on whatever the nightmare was about, dictate on my terms. It still wasn't full lucid/awake control, but it was enough that I become the power in the dream, not the subject of the nightmare.
I really encourage you to keep trying. It took a lot of repetition during the day for the habit to finally enter my dreams. A lot more than I expected. But it did eventually work, to the extent I mentioned.
You can train for that. There are enough guides on the internet how to do it
Is the author suggesting people to have to live with going through a phase of being nocturnal? In the free running algorithm, we're supposed to sleep 15 minutes later each day until we're falling asleep at like 9AM?
That's just incompatible with modern life right?
I once tried an extreme version of this. I became single and I already didn't have a fixed work schedule, so other than societal convention there was no reason for me to adhere to any regular day-night cycle.
So I tried sleeping when I was really tired, waking up without an alarm, eating when I was hungry, etc. I ignored watches, daylight and society. For context, my internal days have always been much longer than 24 hours, often finding myself going to sleep at sunrise; so I thought this was gonna be great, not having to spend an hour awake in bed.
It was horrible. And I mean HORRIBLE. I became a zombie, even though I was sleeping more than ever. I felt deeply depressed within two days. I lost all concept of the passage of time, and could never tell how long ago something had happened. I couldn't think properly or comunicate with other people. It affected me physically too, my weight, my stomach.
The experiment didn't last long. But I couldn't tell you how long.
Hopefully you made it out of it, but I have to say that was a hilarious read! As not a stranger to pseudorandom sleep cycles I can relate.
That part didn't make any sense to me either. Yes, the natural circadian cycle in a vacuum is slightly over 24 hours, but exposure to light keeps it synced to the normal 24-hour day. If you free run sleep your cycle should stay locked to 24 hours, just like it has always been with our ancestors who lived without artificial light.
I believe Mathew Walker writes in 'Why we sleep' that people's natural circadian cycle varies but on average is 24h and 15 minutes. But yeah sounds pretty inconvenient for most people.
Putting my laptop to sleep unfortunately didn't increase its memory
I stopped drinking caffeine and sudenly I remember everything
No wonder I sleep a lot but still wake up feeling tired and constantly sleepy. Maybe following proper REM sleep cycles could help solve this. I’ll give it a try.
Has someone found that they have better alcohol "recovery" if they are pursuing intense or at least regular(at least 3x a week) stamina building exercise like running/swimming?
Unfortunately not in my case. I wouldn't be surprised if hangovers are worse if you're fit.
But what I've found is that forcing a run when hung over does help me move past it. Maybe it helps expel the metabolites from my body.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10782443
Biphasic/polyphasic sleeper here (not by choice). Makes the work week a lot trickier. I will be reading through this article for insight on how to get the most out of my situation.
I really liked the idea of "Free running sleep". Not sure how feasable would be to make it part of my routine TBH. I need to adhere to external schedules (job, family). Maybe someday I'll give it a honest try!
The explanation of the memory consolidation process during sleep was surprising and made me rethink my habit of using alarms and cutting back on sleep for overtime work.
justgetflux.com
Helped me start going to bed at 10pm
Clickable link: https://justgetflux.com/
Best bullshit and industry cutting phrase for better sleep: Follow the sun. Follow the sun for a fixed reference point for when to wake up, and for when to sleep, and guard yourself from artificial lights like it's your professional job. Bryan Johnson says to treat sleep like a professional job, and I take it further: break the standard industrial-factory based paradigm around sleep, work and life and say no to the clock based wellbeing-adversarial system.
edit: hours and minutes cannot replace our natural light-based circadian rhythm that evolved for millions of years entraining our hormones and energy cycles around the sun's light.
is this jesus of sleep
Closer to the Time Cube of sleep!
It's an impressive achievement, really. Here's a shorter page of his I've found more digestible:
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Curing_DSPS_and_insomnia