Just a comment : the possible outcomes table for ‘hacking’ your sleep includes premature aging and dementia. I don’t think the inverse is true. I’m just saying, even a small risk of such a hideous consequence—not to mention a guaranteed risk of feeling like crap—is going to sway many people to the ‘sleep as much as their body wants to’ side.
Given that one of the hallmarks of depression is increased sleep and that short-term sleep deprivation is literally one of the most effective treatments for depression, you ought to at least consider the potential harms of sleep.
The “think” here is more prosaic, as in, it’s just not my intuition that this is the case and I think that applies for most other people based on the memeplexes I see circulating out there.
As for why my intuition is that I can boil it down to, say I said in the post: Everyone told me so and everyone warned me about the effects of not sleeping but not vice versa.
Is this correct if analyzed on a rational basis?
I don’t know, it’s not relevant as far as the post is concerned.
From personal experience I know that for myself I associate shorter sleep with:
increase cortisol (urine, so arguable quality)
Increased time getting into ketosis (and overall lower ketone+glucose balance, i.e. given an a*G + b*BhB = y where y is the number at which I feel ok and seems in-line with what epidemiology would recommend as optimal glucose levels for lifespan | I will tend to fall constantly bellow y given lack of sleep, which manifests as being tired and sometimes feeling lightheaded and being able to walk, lift and swim less … hopefully that makes sense? I’m not sure how mainstream of a nutrition framework this is )
increased heart rate (significant, ~9bpm controlling~ish for effort and, ~7bpm o.o at night), *
feeling a bit off and feeling time passes faster.
But that’s correlated, not causal, e.g. if I smoke or vape during a day I’m likely to sleep less that night, so is smoking/vaping fucking my body or is lack of sleep or is the distinction even possible given the inferential capabilities of biology in the next 500+years? I don’t know
More broadly I know that looking back to months with plenty of sleep I feel much better than when i sleep less. But maybe that’s because I sleep less overall when I’m feeling down and also feel less happy (by definition) and am less productive, and maybe low sleep is actually a mechanism against feeling even worst.
Overall I assume most people notice these correlations, though probably less in-depth, based on how commonly people seem to complain about bad sleep, needing to get more sleep… etc and how rarely the opposite is true.
Yeah a ton of bad things and stress tend to fuck up sleep and make us sleep less! That’s why there are all these correlations.. The rest of your arguments (bpm, cortisol..) apply fully to sports as well I believe.
re: not encountering info re dangers of oversleep: do you want to comment on the bit about sleep deprivation therapy? Isn’t this rather compelling evidence of sleep directly causing bad mood?
The rest of your arguments (bpm, cortisol..) apply fully to sports as well I believe.
I don’t think so. BPM is slower when one practices sports (see athletes heart), in that it will be higher during the activity itself, but mean BPM during the day and especially at night is lower.
Personally I’ve observed this correlation as well and it seems to be causal~ish, i.e I can do 3 days on / 3 days off physical activity and notice decreased resting & sleeping heart rate on the 2nd day of activity up until the 2nd day of inactivity after which it picks back up.
With cortisol, the mechanism I’m aware of is the same, i.e. exercising increases cortisol afterwards but decreases the baseline. Though here I’m not 100% sure.
This might not hold for the very extreme cases though (strongmen, ultra-marathon runners, etc). Since then you’re basically under physical stress for most of the day instead of a few minutes or hours.
re: not encountering info re dangers of oversleep: do you want to comment on the bit about sleep deprivation therapy? Isn’t this rather compelling evidence of sleep directly causing bad mood?
Sleep deprivation, I’d assume, would work through cortisol and adrenaline, which do give a “better than awfully depressed mood” but can’t build up to great moods and aren’t sustainable (at least if I am to trust models ala the one championed by Sapolsky about the effects of cortisol).
Granted, I think it depends, and afaik most people don’t feel the need to sleep more than 8-9 hours. The ones I know that “sleep” a lot tend to just hang around in a half-comatosed state after overeating or while procrastinating. I think it becomes an issue of “actual sleep” vs “waking up every 30 minutes, checking phone, remembering life is hard and trying to sleep again | rinse and repeat 2 to 8 times”.
I’d actually find it interesting to study “heavy sleepers” in a sleep lab or with a semi-capable portable EEG (even just 2-4 electrodes should be enough, I guess?) and see if what they do is actually “sleep” past the 9 hour mark. But I’m unaware of any such studies.
But I have low confidence in all of these claims and I personally dislike epidemiological evidence, I think that there’s a horrible practice of people trying to “”“control””” shitty experiments with made-up statistics models that come with impossible assumptions built-in. My main decisions about sleep come from pulse-oximeter based monitoring and correlating that with how I feel plus other biomarkers (planning to upgrade to an openbci based eeg soon, been holding out for a freeEEG32 for a while, but I see only radio silence around that). So ultimately the side I fall on is that I dislike the evidence on way or another and think that, much like anything that uses epidemiology as it’s almost sole source of evidence, you could just scrap the whole thing in favour of a personalized goal-oriented approach.
re: bpm. yeah i’m not saying never sleep or always undersleep. but if you undersleep one time, you’re going to have higher bpm and then on the recovery day it’s going to be normal
Ah, ok, maybe I was discussing the wrong thing then.
I think sleeping 4-6 hours on some days ought to be perfectly fine, even 0, I’d just argue that keeping the mean around 7-9 is probably ideal for most (but again, low confidence, think it boils down to personalized medicine).
That most people want to sleep as much as they can and sleep hacking is the controversial choice, but nobody will bat an eyelid if you want to try sleeping more than average.
And what I’m saying is that I agree. As in, I’m not arguing that there’s no reason for the slope to be the way that is, I’d think most slopes are asymmetric exactly because of very real asymmetric risks/rewards they map to.
Just a comment : the possible outcomes table for ‘hacking’ your sleep includes premature aging and dementia. I don’t think the inverse is true. I’m just saying, even a small risk of such a hideous consequence—not to mention a guaranteed risk of feeling like crap—is going to sway many people to the ‘sleep as much as their body wants to’ side.
Why do you think that inverse is not true?
We eat as much as much as our body wants to, and the result is that >73% of US adults are overweight or obese.
Given that one of the hallmarks of depression is increased sleep and that short-term sleep deprivation is literally one of the most effective treatments for depression, you ought to at least consider the potential harms of sleep.
The “think” here is more prosaic, as in, it’s just not my intuition that this is the case and I think that applies for most other people based on the memeplexes I see circulating out there.
As for why my intuition is that I can boil it down to, say I said in the post: Everyone told me so and everyone warned me about the effects of not sleeping but not vice versa.
Is this correct if analyzed on a rational basis?
I don’t know, it’s not relevant as far as the post is concerned.
From personal experience I know that for myself I associate shorter sleep with:
increase cortisol (urine, so arguable quality)
Increased time getting into ketosis (and overall lower ketone+glucose balance, i.e. given an
a*G + b*BhB = ywhereyis the number at which I feel ok and seems in-line with what epidemiology would recommend as optimal glucose levels for lifespan | I will tend to fall constantly bellowygiven lack of sleep, which manifests as being tired and sometimes feeling lightheaded and being able to walk, lift and swim less … hopefully that makes sense? I’m not sure how mainstream of a nutrition framework this is )increased heart rate (significant, ~9bpm controlling~ish for effort and, ~7bpm o.o at night), *
feeling a bit off and feeling time passes faster.
But that’s correlated, not causal, e.g. if I smoke or vape during a day I’m likely to sleep less that night, so is smoking/vaping fucking my body or is lack of sleep or is the distinction even possible given the inferential capabilities of biology in the next 500+years? I don’t know
More broadly I know that looking back to months with plenty of sleep I feel much better than when i sleep less. But maybe that’s because I sleep less overall when I’m feeling down and also feel less happy (by definition) and am less productive, and maybe low sleep is actually a mechanism against feeling even worst.
Overall I assume most people notice these correlations, though probably less in-depth, based on how commonly people seem to complain about bad sleep, needing to get more sleep… etc and how rarely the opposite is true.
Yeah a ton of bad things and stress tend to fuck up sleep and make us sleep less! That’s why there are all these correlations.. The rest of your arguments (bpm, cortisol..) apply fully to sports as well I believe.
re: not encountering info re dangers of oversleep: do you want to comment on the bit about sleep deprivation therapy? Isn’t this rather compelling evidence of sleep directly causing bad mood?
I don’t think so. BPM is slower when one practices sports (see athletes heart), in that it will be higher during the activity itself, but mean BPM during the day and especially at night is lower.
Personally I’ve observed this correlation as well and it seems to be causal~ish, i.e I can do 3 days on / 3 days off physical activity and notice decreased resting & sleeping heart rate on the 2nd day of activity up until the 2nd day of inactivity after which it picks back up.
With cortisol, the mechanism I’m aware of is the same, i.e. exercising increases cortisol afterwards but decreases the baseline. Though here I’m not 100% sure.
This might not hold for the very extreme cases though (strongmen, ultra-marathon runners, etc). Since then you’re basically under physical stress for most of the day instead of a few minutes or hours.
Sleep deprivation, I’d assume, would work through cortisol and adrenaline, which do give a “better than awfully depressed mood” but can’t build up to great moods and aren’t sustainable (at least if I am to trust models ala the one championed by Sapolsky about the effects of cortisol).
Granted, I think it depends, and afaik most people don’t feel the need to sleep more than 8-9 hours. The ones I know that “sleep” a lot tend to just hang around in a half-comatosed state after overeating or while procrastinating. I think it becomes an issue of “actual sleep” vs “waking up every 30 minutes, checking phone, remembering life is hard and trying to sleep again | rinse and repeat 2 to 8 times”.
I’d actually find it interesting to study “heavy sleepers” in a sleep lab or with a semi-capable portable EEG (even just 2-4 electrodes should be enough, I guess?) and see if what they do is actually “sleep” past the 9 hour mark. But I’m unaware of any such studies.
But I have low confidence in all of these claims and I personally dislike epidemiological evidence, I think that there’s a horrible practice of people trying to “”“control””” shitty experiments with made-up statistics models that come with impossible assumptions built-in. My main decisions about sleep come from pulse-oximeter based monitoring and correlating that with how I feel plus other biomarkers (planning to upgrade to an openbci based eeg soon, been holding out for a freeEEG32 for a while, but I see only radio silence around that). So ultimately the side I fall on is that I dislike the evidence on way or another and think that, much like anything that uses epidemiology as it’s almost sole source of evidence, you could just scrap the whole thing in favour of a personalized goal-oriented approach.
re: bpm. yeah i’m not saying never sleep or always undersleep. but if you undersleep one time, you’re going to have higher bpm and then on the recovery day it’s going to be normal
Ah, ok, maybe I was discussing the wrong thing then.
I think sleeping 4-6 hours on some days ought to be perfectly fine, even 0, I’d just argue that keeping the mean around 7-9 is probably ideal for most (but again, low confidence, think it boils down to personalized medicine).
Isn’t that kind of the point I’m making?
That most people want to sleep as much as they can and sleep hacking is the controversial choice, but nobody will bat an eyelid if you want to try sleeping more than average.
I think Gerald is making the point that perhaps the slope is asymmetric because the risk is asymmetric.
And what I’m saying is that I agree. As in, I’m not arguing that there’s no reason for the slope to be the way that is, I’d think most slopes are asymmetric exactly because of very real asymmetric risks/rewards they map to.