I feel like there’s much stronger evidence that those things are beneficial than that acute sleep deprivation is. So it’s not clear to me how sleep deprivation is a lot more like those things than like stubbing your toe really hard.
My impression is that people who are used to sleep deprivation (new parents, military, shift workers) are not as impaired by it as people encountering the same level of deprivation for the first time- even when the former group is running on a prolonged sleep deficit, and the latter is going into sleep deprivation fully rested. You never stop being impaired, but past deprivation lets you cope with it better. This pattern matches to me with e.g. fasting will always make you dumb eventually, but people with fasting experience can go much longer before getting dumb.
I agree that this sort of adaptation probably occurs, but I don’t see how this makes sleep deprivation a lot more like those other things you mentioned than to stubbing your toe. Guzey also claimed that “[o]ccasional acute sleep deprivation is good for health,” not only that it promotes more efficient sleep, and for each of your examples of things that are more like sleep deprivation than toe-stubbing is (fasting, exercise, and infections in some cases) the claim does not seem to be that those things impair you but just less so with time.
(For that matter, I would guess that there is also some adaptation to stubbing your toe. It shouldn’t ever stop hurting or lightly and temporarily damaging you, but if you do it a lot you’ll probably find a way to cope with it better, and go back to doing work five minutes later rather than ten.)
This clearly isn’t fair. For one, the “really hard” modifier is completely made up (did Guzey ever imply that the way to train sleep deprivation resilience is to go “really hard” at not-sleeping rather than easing into it?), and for two, physical stress to ones toes is clearly a much more local thing than caloric or sleep deprivation so the hypothesis would be “kicking things in a controlled fashion strengthens the thing you’re impacting with”.
And I’m not sure if it’s true or not, but it’s definitely a thing that professional fighters do, and it does not at all strike me as “obviously false”.
I feel like there’s much stronger evidence that those things are beneficial than that acute sleep deprivation is. So it’s not clear to me how sleep deprivation is a lot more like those things than like stubbing your toe really hard.
My impression is that people who are used to sleep deprivation (new parents, military, shift workers) are not as impaired by it as people encountering the same level of deprivation for the first time- even when the former group is running on a prolonged sleep deficit, and the latter is going into sleep deprivation fully rested. You never stop being impaired, but past deprivation lets you cope with it better. This pattern matches to me with e.g. fasting will always make you dumb eventually, but people with fasting experience can go much longer before getting dumb.
I agree that this sort of adaptation probably occurs, but I don’t see how this makes sleep deprivation a lot more like those other things you mentioned than to stubbing your toe. Guzey also claimed that “[o]ccasional acute sleep deprivation is good for health,” not only that it promotes more efficient sleep, and for each of your examples of things that are more like sleep deprivation than toe-stubbing is (fasting, exercise, and infections in some cases) the claim does not seem to be that those things impair you but just less so with time.
(For that matter, I would guess that there is also some adaptation to stubbing your toe. It shouldn’t ever stop hurting or lightly and temporarily damaging you, but if you do it a lot you’ll probably find a way to cope with it better, and go back to doing work five minutes later rather than ten.)
you’re right, it’s not quite analogous. I still low-confidence believe in the homeostasis disruption thing, but this isn’t evidence of that.
This clearly isn’t fair. For one, the “really hard” modifier is completely made up (did Guzey ever imply that the way to train sleep deprivation resilience is to go “really hard” at not-sleeping rather than easing into it?), and for two, physical stress to ones toes is clearly a much more local thing than caloric or sleep deprivation so the hypothesis would be “kicking things in a controlled fashion strengthens the thing you’re impacting with”.
And I’m not sure if it’s true or not, but it’s definitely a thing that professional fighters do, and it does not at all strike me as “obviously false”.