As somebody who is currently 9 timezones away from home and just barely beginning to be normal (going back home tomorrow, of course) I was kind of hoping that they would have some sort of procedure, drug, diet or otherwise advice on how to avoid or compensate for jet lag. Im glad they know about its mechanisms, but I sure would like some applied science in this topic.
I've also started reading this book after one of your recommendations, and I agree that it would be beneficial for people who have never questioned what sleep is and how it works. But if someone is interested in sleep (has basic understanding of what is jet-lag, circadian rhythms, melatonin, REM phases etc), the amount of new information would be pretty low. I'm halfway through the book and I can't say I've read something you can't find in popular articles on sleep – i.e. how caffeine works and why jet-lag is more bearable eastwest.
It would have been nice if there were some actionable items. What are the best segments? Is there something wrong if I can sleep 8 hours without trouble?
Does anyone have links to more research, perhaps with something a little more actionable of a conclusion?
This summary omits context for what the “grueling travel schedule” is, similar results for REM sleep and cognitive function, player reactions and countermeasures, and interpretations by sleep science experts (Czeisler and Walker).
I’m not sure how a few sentences about testosterone is an adequate recap.
I expected something more insightful. As someone who don't have sleeping problems, but have family members who does, from what I seen the most effective impact happened when:
- You are going to bed only when you're tired, don't try to go to bed and hope you will become tired by just laying.
- Have at least one long walk a day (it helps my sister when she is doing it when it's still daylight, but ofcourse it depends on where you live)
- Don't drink coffee after 14:00
- Stay off social media after dinner time
- If you are reading a book using a screenreader or laptop make sure you filter the bluelight
I have extensive experience with it. I would disagree that there’s nothing irresponsible.
I don’t recommend anyone try skipping a night just to see. Blood pressure, heart rate, and glucose levels can easily go to shit and exacerbate underlying any conditions. FWIW it would take me 1-2 weeks after shifting to a polyphasic before seeing any benefits (which makes sense, respective to jet lag). I can easily skip a single night (without stimulants, etc) and run off adrenaline the next day, but the day after sleeping again I’m useless state of sleep-lag-wtf.
Mediocre analogy: something like polyphasic sleep with extremely disciplined sleep-hygiene is like using a stack of high-interest credit cards for the rewards/benefits, but if you make a mistake then there’s a high cost and it’s not really tenable forever. Skipping a night of sleep outright is basically a pay-day loan.
Pretending like the need for sleep can be ignored, given our current physiology, is absolutely absurd. But I would be very much interested in any work towards fundamentally reconfiguring our biology. I was hoping this was the topic of the article, and was disappointed.
Part of the problem with most other studies are that it is very had to metricize on-the-job performance and sleepiness. Some of the cool things about this study are:
1) very clear metrics to measure performance (reaction time)
2) very consistent testing (repeated trials over an actual 9 hour flight, then over 4 days of additional flights)
3) additional non-subjective metrics for sleepiness (the teams strapped an EEG on the pilots while they were flying to monitor brain activity!!!)
It's frustrating, but most health and wellness magazines are a bit like an echo chamber with no clear references to source data.
Yeah, as someone with crappy sleep (this night for example I slept 4 hours, with only 36 minutes deep sleep according to my smartwatch), this kind of headline doesn't cheer me up one bit :(
I guess things are what they are, though. Good that we uncover knowledge like this.
That is an excellent book. However, it doesn't contain a lot of practical advice (other than the 12 points at the end of the book, which were released already by National Sleep Association)
Somewhat tangetial, check out "The Circadian Code" as well - a lot of more practical advice in this one. They actually disagree on couple of delicate points, so not sure how can one make up one's mind as to which one's correct (e.g. one thinks there are night owls , one thinks it's a myth; one thinks we need 7 hours of sleep, one thinks that less than 8+ hours of sleep is devastating).
But in general, the message is the same - sleep well, try to fit into your circadian rhythm because all organs have internal clocks and being in rhythm benefits them all; some of them are interconnected, some are dependent on SCN, etc
In particular, the clinical trials with TRE (Time-Restricted eating, as in putting all calories in 8-12 hour intervals daily) seem amazing. Not a single side-effect, and all health markers seem to be improving under it.
One important study on mice concluded that mice that ate their high-fat, high-sugar food in 8 hour intervals (lets say, 8AM -> 4PM) compared to the control group of regular mice that had high-fat, high-sugar food all the time, ate more or less the same amount of calories daily, but the TRE-group had no increase of blood sugar or body fat.
Seems too good to be true, but apparently the study has been replicated..
Ah, thank you. I was attempting to find a source for something that I vaguely remembered, while rather tired. The irony of delaying on sleep while reading an article about sleep loss was not lost on me.
I was excited to read this article because I am trying to learn a new language... but I found it quite lacking. What was the advice? Just to sleep more?
This article was particularly frustrating, because it inspires but never answers an incredibly obvious question: does antioxidant treatment help prevent the effects of sleep deprivation in rats, or only in fruit flies? Surely that would have been the next thing on the researchers' list of things to try.
They may have addressed this, and I just missed it. But in general I agree that this isn't the best format for describing this type of research to nonspecialist readers. I don't mind a slight dose of human-interest fluff, but the facts should come first.
(I take it from the patented HN instant downvote that the article did, in fact, answer my question, and I just missed it.)
He lost me at "sleep debt" I have to be honest. All the current research I've read suggests there is no such thing (unless he just means "your a bit tired" :) which he could well do).
Im not convinced this is a good idea though (I'd like to see a link to the research he cites - done a bit of digging but I cant find it offhand).
Better to wake yourself up with Orang Juice and exercise.
The title reminded me of the late SlateStarCodex's "more than you ever wanted to know" blog posts, which were pretty informative. The one on melatonin was particularly useful, I think.
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