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.
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.
I looked up numbers for the USA and 2025 54% said they consume alcohol. So it's most people but millions don't.
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.
The topic is sleeping.
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
>Weird responses from those two users. Ignore them
Some might say you are the one worth ignoring.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
That's just incompatible with modern life right?
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.
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! :)
I don't think this is how humans usually raised kids...
That's a very important statement
I couldn't live with my grandma and couldn't live with my mom anymore. I needed space.
My parents are the village, and the village is the law.
Raising kids is the hardest and most fulfilling job.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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 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.
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 :(
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.
What is name of the product?
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...
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!
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).
It's an impressive achievement, really. Here's a shorter page of his I've found more digestible:
Helped me start going to bed at 10pm
This is very easy to say when you're not suffering from insomnia and other sleep disorders.
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.
"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."
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.
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 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.
> 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?
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.
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).
It seems like we're all just looking at the title and talking about our sleep habits.
Also, I'm really curious to know if some of it is no longer valid. 14 years is a long time in science
downbad_•6h ago