The mention of deep sleep being necessary to memory formation is especially interesting to me.
I went 5-8 years or so with poor quality sleep. While it is difficult to estimate correctly at home, my Zeo was regularly giving me 15-20m of deep sleep a night and I had a very hard time fixing it. While I performed fine at work, I had a hard time recovering from any sort of physical symptoms (such as tension) and building muscle memory. I certainly felt pretty bad, and it was like things didn't 'stick'.
Nowadays I get 40m on average. Still not great but getting better.
Good old saying - if you work hard manually, rest by doing something mentally challenging, and vice versa. For most of us vice versa applies hard.
I do something every day or evening, even if its just 1.5-2h evening walks. Days I don't do anything are definitely harder to fall asleep, to say the least, and some small achievement is missing.
I take a stimulant for my adhd. If i didn't have physical exhaustion (usually a 10km 2h walk before sleep) I don't think I could sleep at all. It still affects the quality of sleep (not much deep sleep) though.
Now, sleep quality really affects everything. I think in general, mental health/sanity is hardly taken seriously in the tech industry. If I had employees I'd rather they had enough physical activity and sleep over a long and sustainable period than them sleeping under their desk hacking through the night.
I’m the same way when it comes to motor skills. I play electric guitar, and it’s pointless to practice technique if I did not sleep enough the night before - nothing will stick anyway.
One of the first episodes in the huberman podcast, he references a study where insomnia was cured in 100% of study participants by taking them camping for a week. I think sleeping is like weight loss, it's really simple but people don't want to do what's necessary. Non-sedentary lifestyle, eat right, wake up and go to sleep with sun, don't use electronics, etc.
I notice it goes up when I’m doing as much as I can of the following: get 20-30m sunlight, talk with friends in person, avoid alcohol, work out, and be more active in building my life (vs having it built for me). Also, doing necessary emotional work with a counselor. All of those IME reduce my low grade anxiety.
It’s basically all eating your vegetables stuff. Way more impactful than any supplement or protocol.
> May I ask what you did to improve your deep sleep?
I think Steve Gibson (of the Security Now podcast, and absolutely not a doctor), had a "healthy sleep formula" of taking a time release melatonin and a time-release niacinamide supplement, and he claimed his Zeo would register more deep when he took it. I got the impression he thought his own sleep was poor and was trying to fix it, and just talked about his personal project on his podcast.
I tried it, and anecdotally I did feel like I slept deeper.
sleep disruption could be used to prevent
memories from entering long-term storage,
which could be useful for people who have
recently experienced something traumatic,
such as those with post-traumatic stress
disorder
This makes sense, but it's hard to see how this would work in practice.
You'd have to induce this sleep deprivation right after the traumatic event. "Sorry you watched your house burn down today with your favorite hamster inside. Here's some modafinil so you won't sleep for two days. It will help you not remember this."
When you say "in practice", you're thinking of artificially operationalizing it and how one would force that through medication or whatever. Of course that would be hard to sensibly apply in practice! How would you distinguish a traumatizing experience from a manageably negative one in time to formulate a prescription, how would you prescribe wakefulness to someone who didn't seek it themselves, how do you know how much wakefulness is appropriate or what other trouble you might be causing by artificially amplifying it?
But if you step back, the real "in practice" is the thing that bodies already do. Sleep is often a mess after truly shocking experiences, and this mechanism suggests some reason why. For the folk that need scientific studies to justify things that their bodies naturally want to do, this is the study that says it's okay to toss and turn and have weird sleep hours when something bad happens.
Hmmm. I guess it is this way for a lot of people. Although, this is not usually my experience. I think it's because high stress physically exhausts me, so I sleep like a rock afterward.
But (some stressful relationships aside) I've never really experienced chronic traumatic stress, like living in a warzone, where as I'm going to sleep I have to worry about my physical safety. Now that would most definitely wreck my sleep.
> people who have recently experienced something traumatic
As a parent of a 5 month old baby, I can say that nature has already provided a mechanism for this to work. If it were not for the lack of memories of the first 3 months, I would never agree to have another child. It appears evolution has found a use for this quirk of our brains already.
I've attempted that in the past out of similar naive idea. I didn't use any stimulants, just slept on a chair without proper blankets. It did seem to get rid of a lot of unwanted data, though it also posed cognitive penalties, possibly some permanent. I guess it's a last resort option, not something generally recommendable.
I imagine this correlates somewhat with having children.
It's both a "traumatic" single event (especially for the mother) and also traumatic over time in that your sleep schedule is affected, big changes to your life etc.
People joke that evolution made it so we don't remember how hard it is to have small children but maybe there is some truth to that statement.
I have personally experienced this. I went to a concert in NY while living in the midwest. I was a pretty broke grad-student at the time and hence opted not to get a hotel for the night before the return flight. The concert ended late and we reached the airport by around 3:30 AM for a 7AM flight. I think I took some naps at the gate before the flight and got very little sleep on the flights.
I barely remember anything from that night. The concert itself is mostly blank except for one or two moments. I remember some moments of driving late at night afterwards (getting lost at one point) and having a very late night dinner at an IHOP. I barely remember getting on my connecting flight.
Overall a very surreal experience.
Now I make it a point to get proper sleep on such trips. What is the point of doing these things anyway if we don't get to keep the memories?
I've attempted to use the effect strategically. Not sure if it really worked or not. It's certainly not healthy, and it certainly didn't improve the quality of my work, but I've pushed thru some unpleasant times with an eye toward trying not to form long-term memories by way of sleep deprivation.
"Clinically, trauma-exposed victims often experience acute insomnia, indicating that such insomnia might provide prophylactic benefits in reducing the development of posttraumatic stress disorder via extinction of the fear-magnifying effects of memory."
I'm 29 years old, and I have definitely noticed my memory getting worse over the last ~5 years. I've always wondered if this is something to do with sleep deprivation, increased stress from work/school, or just the natural effects of getting older.
Try doing a 24 hour water fast. It will feel awful during the fast, but you may notice your mind is sharper the next day after a good sleep. Cleans out the cobwebs at a cellular level (autophagy). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/
EDIT: I'm getting rate limited so cannot reply to the comment below.
Water fast means only drinking water. Tea or coffee is acceptable if black (meaning without milk or sugar).
"Water fasting is a type of fast during which you're not allowed to consume anything except water."
I would never do a fast that cuts out water/liquids. That is stupid.
The problem is not a lack of will or capability to sleep for 8 hours a day. It's usually the lack of ability to allocate 8 hours, because of various commitments and other circumstances.
(It's like telling a poor guy to start saving some money. While it's technically absolutely correct, the problem is usually not the lack of the desire to have savings.)
My experience from an increasingly long time ago was that starting at around age 24 (which was ~5 years ago for you), I got worse at staying up late or going with little sleep. I would try to pull all nighters for work, and it would absolutely kill me, whereas younger than that I could do it.
My dreams are so vivid, and movie like, that I frequently wake up very tired. My memory is shockingly poor, and I have often wondered if it could be connected to poor quality sleep. I also suffer from Aphantasia and suspect the vivid dreams are somehow compensating for that. Mostly it feels like 40years programming has rewired my brain!
This may be a feature, particularly for mothers. The pain of the sleep deprivation and challenges of the early days of motherhood are not stored strongly, as to not interfere with the desire for more children.
Have a 3 month old and I recently embarrassed myself when a coworker asked "how'd you go with problem x yesterday afternoon" and the best I could do is "sorry, I can't remember".
It feels accurate to me. Whenever I experience a manic episode, my sleep patterns are severely disrupted. Often, I don't sleep at all, or I manage only brief 1-2 hour naps. During these periods, my memories become fragmented and disjointed, making it difficult to recall events clearly. The weeks or even months during these episodes blend together, creating a haze of scattered memories.
Readit News
I went 5-8 years or so with poor quality sleep. While it is difficult to estimate correctly at home, my Zeo was regularly giving me 15-20m of deep sleep a night and I had a very hard time fixing it. While I performed fine at work, I had a hard time recovering from any sort of physical symptoms (such as tension) and building muscle memory. I certainly felt pretty bad, and it was like things didn't 'stick'.
Nowadays I get 40m on average. Still not great but getting better.
One point from that post related to this discussion:
"Once I became a bike messenger, I slept like a log for 8 hours every night."
In my own life, having worked both manual, physical labor and been a tech worker, I noticed the following:
- When I worked construction, my body would be exhausted but my mind would be very active when I tried to go to sleep.
- In tech work, it's my mind that is exhausted but my body still has energy
- I've also worked jobs that required a high amount of both physical and mental focus and that's when I usually sleep the deepest.
I do something every day or evening, even if its just 1.5-2h evening walks. Days I don't do anything are definitely harder to fall asleep, to say the least, and some small achievement is missing.
Now, sleep quality really affects everything. I think in general, mental health/sanity is hardly taken seriously in the tech industry. If I had employees I'd rather they had enough physical activity and sleep over a long and sustainable period than them sleeping under their desk hacking through the night.
I notice it goes up when I’m doing as much as I can of the following: get 20-30m sunlight, talk with friends in person, avoid alcohol, work out, and be more active in building my life (vs having it built for me). Also, doing necessary emotional work with a counselor. All of those IME reduce my low grade anxiety.
It’s basically all eating your vegetables stuff. Way more impactful than any supplement or protocol.
N=1 and all that. HTH
But if you have enough time than you need to try everything, beginning with air quality, noise and light reduction, bedding quality.
I think Steve Gibson (of the Security Now podcast, and absolutely not a doctor), had a "healthy sleep formula" of taking a time release melatonin and a time-release niacinamide supplement, and he claimed his Zeo would register more deep when he took it. I got the impression he thought his own sleep was poor and was trying to fix it, and just talked about his personal project on his podcast.
I tried it, and anecdotally I did feel like I slept deeper.
It's still not as good as it was before as I've not been able to get sporting properly and, well, they kids do wake us just not every night anymore.
You'd have to induce this sleep deprivation right after the traumatic event. "Sorry you watched your house burn down today with your favorite hamster inside. Here's some modafinil so you won't sleep for two days. It will help you not remember this."
But if you step back, the real "in practice" is the thing that bodies already do. Sleep is often a mess after truly shocking experiences, and this mechanism suggests some reason why. For the folk that need scientific studies to justify things that their bodies naturally want to do, this is the study that says it's okay to toss and turn and have weird sleep hours when something bad happens.
But (some stressful relationships aside) I've never really experienced chronic traumatic stress, like living in a warzone, where as I'm going to sleep I have to worry about my physical safety. Now that would most definitely wreck my sleep.
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As a parent of a 5 month old baby, I can say that nature has already provided a mechanism for this to work. If it were not for the lack of memories of the first 3 months, I would never agree to have another child. It appears evolution has found a use for this quirk of our brains already.
It's both a "traumatic" single event (especially for the mother) and also traumatic over time in that your sleep schedule is affected, big changes to your life etc.
People joke that evolution made it so we don't remember how hard it is to have small children but maybe there is some truth to that statement.
I barely remember anything from that night. The concert itself is mostly blank except for one or two moments. I remember some moments of driving late at night afterwards (getting lost at one point) and having a very late night dinner at an IHOP. I barely remember getting on my connecting flight.
Overall a very surreal experience.
Now I make it a point to get proper sleep on such trips. What is the point of doing these things anyway if we don't get to keep the memories?
Sleep deprivation facilitates extinction of implicit fear generalization and physiological response to fear - PubMed https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20889142/
"Clinically, trauma-exposed victims often experience acute insomnia, indicating that such insomnia might provide prophylactic benefits in reducing the development of posttraumatic stress disorder via extinction of the fear-magnifying effects of memory."
EDIT: I'm getting rate limited so cannot reply to the comment below.
Water fast means only drinking water. Tea or coffee is acceptable if black (meaning without milk or sugar).
"Water fasting is a type of fast during which you're not allowed to consume anything except water."
I would never do a fast that cuts out water/liquids. That is stupid.
The problem is not a lack of will or capability to sleep for 8 hours a day. It's usually the lack of ability to allocate 8 hours, because of various commitments and other circumstances.
(It's like telling a poor guy to start saving some money. While it's technically absolutely correct, the problem is usually not the lack of the desire to have savings.)
In the referenced study water was available ad libitum.
It’s food that was restricted, for 24-48 hours, that promoted beneficial cellular autophagy in mice.
[Longer (“chronic”) fasting was detrimental (in rats, further removed from humans; (and not examined in that paper, just referenced))]
[This is why I like HN, replies backed up with literature references to further meaningful interpretation and discussion #ThumbsUp!)
EDIT: TIL: a “water fast” is not fasting on water but on food… with ample water…. should be called a “water feast”
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