But remember that the largest effects are from darkness, not sleep per se. True darkness (can't see your hand), at very regular times and long enough to create biphasic sleep. Red light doesn't trigger ipRGCs, and melatonin leads garbage clean up in mitochondria.
That's interesting, because I've acquired an aversion to having the light off when I sleep. For some reason it doesn't inhibit me from falling asleep with it on any more and while I can sleep with it off, it doesn't feel quite right somehow. I also have developed irregular sleep patterns, spending anywhere from 5 to 22 hours awake, and 8-10 asleep.
Alcohol also doesn’t inhibit one from falling asleep (on the contrary), but sleep phases are messed up. I feel quite rested after one night with alcohol, but things fall apart after 2-3 consecutive nights.
What I mean is.. if I were you, I would try sleeping in pitch black for a week and then check how I‘ve adjusted.
It sounds like something is really messing with your sleep, you may want to try fixing your sleep hygiene and forcing yourself to adapt. Before I was diagnosed with ADD I had serious sleep hygiene issues, now that I'm medicated and taking better care my sleep is much better and more regular.
What the light inhibits is melatonin, etc, and healing. Which is why those who sleep extra, but sleep into morning light, have shorter lives; not longer.
ipRGCs are very sensitive to UV, and kill melatonin production; so I'd love to see a source. Red LED light is fine - as long as you aren't subject to seizures. But most people with seizures have them at night and are never diagnosed. LEDs flicker imperceptibly.
I can highly recommend the book - Why We Sleep - mentioned at the top of the video. It goes into quite some depth on the reasons for and mechanics of sleep in a way I found approachable for someone with only a layman's understanding of chemistry:
It says in the article, clearing away happens at the same rate, but production happens at a higher rate when awake. Your peak concentration of this protein will be higher, thus causing more damage. This seems to indicate that frequent naps and polyphasic sleep may be good.
I'm guessing there isn't enough research yet to say what effect your sleep pattern might have. It could be that concentration is important above some particular point and as long as you are getting sufficient regular sleep you keep it below that point.
It sounds like there is also genetic variation in production, so if you have a generally lower production then a higher level due to your sleep pattern might still not be that high relative to others (or if you have higher than usual production then long days could be more likely to cause trouble).
As someone with a circadian disorder, the thing I would worry about most from your sleep pattern is triggering a circadian disorder. At least Non-24 seems likely to have both a genetic predisposition and require triggering in many people (some have it from birth). This would be most likely if your normal rhythm seems to normally be longer than usual, although even there it isn't necessarily a problem since cave studes show people slip naturally into the type of sleep pattern that you describe. It might depend on how you do the transition (and how close you get to a two day cycle on your long days). But I would suggest at least being very observant of your circadian rhythm. Things like when you get hungry, feel tired, and have to pee can indicate how your circadian rhythm is doing and if those things change when you aren't staying up late then that could cause serious trouble eventually.
The amount of harmful protein cleared is likely proportional to the product of concentrations of the harmful protein and the clearing protein, because the two need to interact. That means that clearing becomes slower as less harmful protein is left.
Prolonging the clearing process would mean that you spend a longer time at very low concentration, but not that the minimum concentration would be much lower. If the harm of high concentrations is disproportionally higher, the longer time at lower concentration would be unable to balance that out.
However, this is only based on my rough intuition and I didn't even do any napkin math. If you want to really get a quantifiable comparison, you'd better find out about the concrete interactions in question and calculate it yourself.
Or you could ask a physician who specializes in sleep (I forget what they are called), but if it isn't already published science somewhere, it's unlikely they could tell you anything other than that what you're doing is highly unusual and you should probably stop.
Are you doing this for some exogenous reason, like work shifts, or are you lucky enough to be able to sleep in a “normal” (for you) phase? In the latter case I think the best guess is it’s just fine; those hours are at the edge of normal but don’t sound extraordinary (ISTR 28-hour cycle is apparently quite common though I can’t find a ref this instant)
I responded about why I do it in a sibling comment. If you ever find a link to other sleep cycles I’d appreciate it. I’ve heard of people taking many shorter naps before but not staying up longer and sleeping longer.
I know I've told people not that long ago that I wished the day was a bit longer - 28 hours seems about right, so I could stay up a long time and sleep for more than 8 hours.
But I started logging my sleep times after an appointment with a sleep disorder clinic and found maybe I am not sleeping for as long as I assumed - it's just that when my sleep is interrupted, I don't complete my 8 hours until 12 or so has passed.
There’s quite a bit in a google the 28 hour cycle specifically. A friend of mine did this for six months and was quite happy, except he missed his wife and child who I didn’t join him, so didn’t extend his experiment. I don’t remember why he chose 28 hours but iirc it was what he felt was his natural cycle. I don’t know if he reads HN but I just pinged him.
I make mobile apps with my brother. We’ve found that we’re much more efficient when we can work in long uninterrupted periods of time. It takes a while to get reloaded into the program, so if we do an 8 hour work day we may have 5 hours of productive work, but on a 16 work day we will have ~12. We only do this when we make new apps which we aren’t always doing. But the latest we’ve been working on for 3 years. It makes planning social activities hard cause we never know our schedule much more than 48 hours in advance. My body has adjusted but I am legimately concerned if there’s long term health impacts to doing this (but I guess not concerned enough to see a doctor). But if anyone has more knowledge on the risks Id love a response.
I do this too, for similar reasons. I just like to keep working when I'm on a roll. I'm always looking for research on it and never really find anything.
It’s worth pointing out that while b-amyloid and tau proteins are suspected of playing a crucial role in Alzheimer’s, disease it isn’t actually confirmed.
It is hard to tell from this article, but looking at the paper the key thing they were focusing on is the mechanism for the previously observed diurnal variation in amyloid beta. They do some modeling that they say suggests that the main factor allowing levels to decrease at night is reduced production rather than increased clearance. One implication of this is "Given that there are many approved therapies targeting sleep, the effect of sleep-inducing drugs on CSF Aβ should be tested in individuals with sleep disruption and promising candidates investigated in AD prevention trials."
I recently found out that it inhibits REM sleep, which really starts to feel after few months being stoned. The worst part is coming back from it - the dreams are extra vivid.
Now the article mentions long-wave sleep being the cause tho, but I can’t help to think that constant REM sleep deprevation has to have some sort of impact in the long term, perhaps we haven’t discovered it yet.
Given that the etiology of Alzheimer's is tied to the very same proteins that must be cleared out during sleep, and that the requirements of sleep decrease with age, there seems to be a cyclical feedback loop at play here, insofar as healthy aging does not typically difficulties with R&R. (This example becomes more salient in the case of supergenarians who can rest and let little stress them a great deal.) Compound that with a likely immunodeficient response during sleep (where the brain is supposed to become more spongy) for these proteins to be cleared out and a poorly functioning blood-brain barrier, it would seem finding treatments that focus on these self-restorative responses would be most beneficial. Whereas treatments that temporarily boost processing capabilities will only somewhat delay the onset clearly shows that this is most likely the case.
I wonder what study on general EEG signatures may reveal with respect to the efficiency with which the cleanup process can be facilitated thereby. Perhaps meditative practices could be demonstrated as a form of protein-cache clearing even when in a waking, albeit altered, state of consciousness.
It sounds like production is the key here not clearance but I am also interested if meditation affects that. I did a quick search and didn't see anything.
Really a recovery process for everything including injuries and illness. It's not just the brain. Conversely if there is such an effect on the visible parts of the body, the same is happening in the brain. Scary to think, really.
Waking ups levels. Sleep lowers them. This is the natural cycle/process. Remove sleep and yes levels will increase. But the cause isn't being awake, it's the lack of sleep. Yes?
My understanding is that they are saying that the cause is being awake. I don't understand the modeling they are doing, but they are saying that the time curve of the concentration should be different if clearance was changing at night, so they think there is little change in clearance but only in production.
They mention one alternative that would also fit the data: "In order for decreased glymphatic clearance during sleep deprivation to increase soluble CSF Aβ, a decrease in irreversible losses (e.g. to the bloodstream or lymphatics) due to prolonged overnight waking would have to be perfectly matched by an increase in Aβ clearance to CSF. This is plausible but unlikely and not identifiable from the current data."
They say "The SILK kinetics results unequivocally show that glymphatic clearance alone, without compensation from other clearance mechanisms, would be ineffective in protecting the brain from AD because overall clearance rates are not changing. Glymphatic clearance may potentially contribute to the protective effects of sleep against AD, but changes in production rate seem to be the necessary and critical factor."
Also worth noting that they were unable to test if changes in slow wave sleep made a difference because sodium oxybate didn't actually increase slow wave sleep in that group vs normal sleepers.
They do cite that paper but do not have a detailed analysis of how their results could be consistant or are contradictory to what that study found. In that study radioactive amyloid beta was directly injected into mice and then how much of it was left was observed after varying amounts of time later and in sleeping vs. awake vs anesthetized. Maybe newly produced amyloid beta could be cleared instead of the radiolabeled amyloid beta or maybe the injected amyloid beta had different clearanace properties than naturally generated amyloid beta, but I don't know if either of those are plausable. Maybe they are just contradictory results.
If it is correct that the production changes are what makes the difference, I wonder why that is the case considering the much larger fluid exchange that happens at night. Also I wonder if some of the other similar substances that cause problems if they accumulate too much have a similar issue. Maybe stuff that can be cleared at high rate is easier to get rid of with relatively little sleep and stuff that can't is more likely to cause trouble over time.
The answer is going to sleep, at a regular time. Put down the computer, put down the cell phone, put down the games. Go to bed early. Above all else I make sure I get my eight hours every night. If I'm tossing and turning, I'll call into work. As a result, I am NEVER sick. Ever. Anecdotal sure, but if I don't get sleep, I feel like I'm coming down with something.
Also naps, take advantage of them. I'll often go home on lunch, and take a snooze for an hour.
A large part of it is schedule/balance. Before I could get sleep in any condition. But now if I eat too late, I will have acid reflux at times. If I don't have physical activity I'll be too anxious. If i delay sleeping time I'll go off and sleep during the day.
Don't eat late, cut anything too mentally addictive (socnet, binge watching). Relaxing env. Eat well, move a lot (I never sleep better than when Im drain post jogging).
It won't cure all, but even in bad times (I am just past one) it makes a good difference.
Is this why living life according to a stupid fucking alarm clock, where I have to blast my ears with noise at 6AM, to snooze until I actually get out of bed at 7AM every morning, be out the door by 8AM, and wade through shitty commuter traffic until 9AM, makes me want to stab people?
I honestly am not worth talking to before 11AM, and I need at least half an hour to settle in and check emails. Oh, you’re taking lunch at noon? Good for you. See you at 1PM. I don’t care. I’ll stay until 8PM. Just give me my mornings back, please?
Why the fuck am I in 10AM meetings? Why are people awake at 9AM? I have to drink a gallon of coffee to make it to 5PM, and that fucks my shit up until 2AM. I fucking hate all of you.
https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/lack-sleep-boosts-levels-alz...