If I have caffeine, even a small 20mg at 7am, I'm up 4-6 times the next night, going to the bathroom, superficial sleep.
Without caffeine, I'm in a deep sleep. So much so that I don't change positions at all, and my body slightly aches from being in the same position so long. My bladder nearly feels like it's going to burst, because I've slept so long.
There was a study I saw while back that said eating cruciferous vegetables speeds up caffeine metabolism. I've tried that, but that didn't seem to help. The caffeine still seemed to disturb my sleep. I tried BrocoMax, a broccoli supplement, that didn't seem to help either.
Exercise helps a little bit. But it's still not the quality of sleep I receive with zero caffeine.
I think much faster when I drink caffeine. Recently I revisited this issue and tried micro-dosing 5-Hour Energy (2mL). At first it seemed promising. But then it seems to slowly build up in my system. Sleep quality deteriorates slower. But the deterioration is there. I prematurely posted this status.
I have the same issue, it's truly unfortunate. What's odd is I forget about what caffeine does to my sleep and after a few weeks/months of drinking it, I'm wondering why I'm so stressed, tired and can't get ANY sleep.
I stop drinking coffee and BAM, I sleep like a baby. It doesn't MATTER when I drink it, I can drink it at 6AM and I will not have a good deep sleep. I am unsure if this is coincidence, but I also notice I remember way less dreams when I am on caffeine than not. I also find it's a compounding effect which is why it's slightly annoying.
If I drink 1 cup, in 2 weeks, my sleep will be fine so I will think, okay, it's not the caffeine. Then I will continue drinking it for weeks and suddenly I haven't had a good nights rest in weeks and I'm wondering what is going on. Not having deep sleep for weeks really has a big impact on your stress levels, memory, emotional well being and general energy levels.
The annoying part is coffee is so good for productivity so I go through cycles (also you start to think it's the stress not the caffeine that's causing the sleep issue!)
Weeks of stressful work - drink more caffeine to get all the work done - bad sleep, bad mood, bad energy levels, aka all the negative affects from not having enough deep sleep.
Weeks of less stressful work, no caffeine, great sleep, great mood/energy levels, etc.
I've always convinced myself that not drinking caffeine for deep sleep is just placebo, but I've tested it so many times that it just can't be.
Is there a way to test if you're a slower metabolizer? I know my partner can drink 3 cups and she is totally fine, lucky her! I'm 100% convinced I am, but it would be cool to test by some sort of blood/urine test?
Stay away from 23andme if you have any privacy concerns. I've worked with providers of DNA insights and advice that don't build their revenue model on selling your data. For example DNAPal.me
They do not sell your data; Facebook and Google also don't sell your data.
Your DNA is worthless[0] and impossible to hide. If someone did want your DNA there is nothing you could do to stop them. You leave it everywhere you go.
[0] except to your children you don't know you have
Yeah, but why not support companies doing "the right thing" and nudge the trend towards companies that respect and preserve the privacy interests of their customers.
I really wish there were more outlets like how for the legal/news junkie circuit we have things like MeidasTouch or whatever its called and the other YouTuber journalists (they deserve that umofficial title because what they do is top shelf journalism or at least investigative YouTubing.
CYP1A2 is the whole gene- you need to look at marker rs762551 within CYP1A2. Both the C/C and A/C genotype are slow caffeine metabolizers. The most common genotype is A/A, which is a fast metabolizer.
This seems to be the original paper. I don't find this paper particularly meaningful, but the effects they did observe showed A/C and C/C to be about the same, and both different than A/A.
This is based on a 5 hour after caffeine ingestion blood test in smokers. They found no differences in the non-smokers, but those were urine tests taken at variable times (whenever they peed), which seems sketchy to me.
Based on this study, subsequent studies (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16522833/) seem to group A/C and C/C together, and not look at them independently. C/C is rare enough that studies have trouble getting many individuals from that group.
This sounds like the same cycle I go through, especially the forgetting part. I've found that cycling caffeine through the week (taking a break on weekends) and just not having too much even during the week can help maintain the productivity, but it also means spending my weekends in a tired daze. I think I just need to commit to not having any caffeine, or if I do, only taking it temporarily before stopping again.
For anyone reading this and wanting to get off caffeine, but finding it difficult because of withdrawal symptoms like headaches, here’s a trick that makes it easier.
If you’re drinking a morning coffee you’ll be getting 100-200mg of caffeine. But even a small amount of caffeine will take almost all the edge off withdrawal and prevent headaches. A 75g dark chocolate bar at 70% will give you 20-25mg of caffeine. Costco sells boxes of Lindt chocolate bars that meet this criteria. Eat one in the morning instead of coffee (the sugar and theobromine seems to help as well). Once you’ve done this for a week it’s easy to just stop because most people won’t get withdrawal symptoms from 20mg.
I typically weigh my coffee, either for making espresso (20g) or for pourovers (25g). Last time I quit, went like this:
a) move from two espressos -> one espresso for a few days. Once steady on a single 20g espresso...
b) move from 20g espresso to 20g pouroer.
c) each day take a few grams off the pour over. The last time I made one I used 5 mg beans, and then quit pretty easily the next day.
This taper method made it totally doable for me, no headaches. The hardest part was going from 2 espressos to 1, mostly because of the habit. I substituted in herbal tea for my second cup....
Why americans drink 20g espressos is beyond me. Thats a triple espresso in european standards. A single espresso is 7 grams. Having double espresso in america would basically translate to 6 espressos in europe. I moved from Europe to New York City a few years ago and I always ask the baristas how many grams is their espresso and they dont know. I ask them if the single espresso drink they have is essentially dopio espresso and they have no clue what i am talking about. And on top of that it costs 4$ for an espresso + taxes which equals to around 4.50$. Coffee culture in NYC is subpar to any major european city, and I am afraid to even find out hows it like in other cities in the US! Even the shit third world european country I come from (in the balkans) has better coffee culture than NYC! Then they're wondering why nobody can sleep here!
Yeah, good point. I didn't even realize that they make e61 baskets as small as 6g (I just googled).
I don't know, though, about size. I get espressos in europe a lot. Last time I was in Paris, most my espressos seemed like american size ones. Maybe because I was drinking mostly third-wave coffee shops?
When I was in Italy awhile ago, the espressos were definitely small 7-10g singles that cost 1€.
Traditional cafes serve espressos that are 7 grams and its 1eur, 1.50 eur perhaps. I assume some would do 14 grams that are more modern as you say third wave, but 20 grams is a lot of caffeine in there I dont think its common in europe for an espresso. Take it this way, if you order a cappuccino or a fredo espresso, they need to put double espresso in there with the foam, and in a place where they serve 14 gram or 18 gram espressos that means you're getting 28 gram or 36 gram total in there, and thats a heck of a lot of caffeine. Once I tried just a normal american drip diner coffee with my bagel in nyc and besides that it tasted horrible as if i was drinking just pure mud water i somehow got so much caffeine from it that I got jittery, and I am a coffee drinker with usually have 1-2 espressos a day. I think everyone in the US is overdoing coffee to be totally honest with you. Not to mention the starbucks large iced coffees, they're like straight adrenaline in a cup basically you might as well inject it at that point.
Yeup, agreed on the overdosing caffeine. When you start talking about those Venti starbucks (and large Dunks), those have upwards of 300mg of caffeine [1], which is probably equivalent to the five shots you have. We don't sleep enough and have to work too hard here. :(
However, if you're comparing drinking crappy NYC diner coffee to coffee culture, there's a ton of great coffee places and third-wave coffee in NYC.
NYC has nice cafes for sure for their coffee, just to name a few, Devocion, Afficionado, Everyman Espresso, Blue bottle, and there's some other ones that I haven't tried yet. But in all the places I've been so far an espresso was upwards of 3.75$ without tax, and not once it was an actual solo 7-9 gram shot, it was a dopio basically. There were some baristas that knew what I was talking about and told me they can make a solo but it would cost the same amount. In addition, the cafes are filled to the brim with people working on laptops, theres barely any coffee culture in NYC in the european sense, and most have big drinks so they can sip it over hours just typing on their keyboards. One other small fact is that you cannot choose what kind of beans you want in your espresso, except for Devocion which has a blend and a single origin but they're not that different since all their beans are colombian. Quite a few specialty coffee places in Europe have a few bean varieties from different regions and you can choose which one you want. In addition, european coffee culture means sitting outside under the sun sipping an espresso and talking to a friend or reading a book or just enjoying life, not typing away on a laptop and working. I really miss that. Another thing is affogatos are not popular but its an amazing drink.
I found switching to green tea easy. Got infusion jug and still have morning routine to do it, it's actually much more convenient to have it at the desk to refill. You can also control how intense you want it - with water temperature and quantity - as even very light version is great to sip through the day.
It took me far too long to realize caffeine was the cause of my restless sleep issues. Even just 80mg at 10am. I thought it was stress. There’s definitely millions of other people that don’t realize caffeine is killing them slowly due to lack of good sleep, and just continue the cycle.
This was also a good lesson that if I continued to listen to the pop science, the general consensus was that coffee was a net positive.
And that was my stance for a long time.
I didn't realize that there could be such a distinction in one's reaction to caffeine intake.
"The genetics of caffeine sensitivity also have implications for cardiovascular health.
In a 2006 study of more than 4,000 people, researchers found that for slow metabolizers, consuming more cups of coffee per day was associated with an increased risk of a heart attack. Fast metabolizers had no such increased risks."
Similarly, it was wild for me to learn recently that the standard deviation for how many calories our body utilizes for a given calorie intake was WAY bigger than I thought.
Everyone intuitively knows that if 100 people each consume 100 calories, there will be some variation in how much of those 100 calories is "used" by each individual. But I had no idea the distribution is on the scale of 330%!
Meaning in this example, some people would only get 30 usable calories, and some would get the full 100! That was way larger of a spread than I thought.
Do you have your source? This doesn't make much sense from an evolutionary perspective, for natural selection to be indifferent to inefficient energy intake. Unless it's the increased efficiency that is new, like adult lactose tolerance.
I, too, would like a source here, as most consensus is that, for a hundred people of equal physical activity, eating habits, height and weight, the necessary caloric intake for a day is only +-75 or so.
I have zero response to caffeine up to a certain point, and then past that I get shaky and anxious. One cup of tea, no response. Two is too much. Coffee is often on the edge. But no effect on alertness no matter how much or little I take.
And if you're someone like me - beware that 'decaf' really isn't. Even as little as *5 mg* of caffeine causes me everything from sleeplessness to migraines (verified with a double blind study administered by my wife!)
It's definitely easier with a 3rd party, but here's what we did. Note that before this experiment I hadn't had any caffeine at all for several years because I was pretty sure it affected me badly.
(1) Experimenter dissolved measured weight caffeine powder in water, and divided it into various measured portions, and labeled them with unique numbers. Then made identical measured portions of pure water, also labeled. She sealed the number assignments in an envelope.
(2) On experiment days, I chose a water portion, recording the day and number in secret - she could not see which portion I chose or what number it was. I then poured the water into whatever (zero caffeine!) drink (or whatever else I could mix it in with) I was having. I used drinks and food with strong enough flavors that I definitely could not taste the possible caffeine addition.
So now neither of us knows whether I took one of the caffeine ones.
Decaf coffee tastes about the same as regular coffee (some people claim to tell the difference, but I can’t except that when I get decaf it’s the cheap mass produced stuff and for regular coffee I like to support local roasters). Maybe the taste was triggering the same effects?
Apologies for the lazy comment (I know I could do the research, but I'm busy atm).
I 100% agree this is an affect of caffeine, but I'm also interested in what research on the following shows:
1. How does caffeine compare to other factors (stress, exercise, diet) in affecting sleep?
2. Does caffeine have a placebo affect on sleep quality?
I ask these questions, as I've found that caffeine does affect my sleep quality, but at the same time stress levels are probably a better predictor of how well I sleep.
It's very interesting how different reactions to caffeine are.
I can take a 200 mg caffeine pill 5 hours before sleep and have no trouble sleeping. My Samsung smartwatch doesn't indicate any loss of deep sleep either (1-2 hours usually).
I do have a high tolerance though, but I don't weight much either.
I find being in caffeine withdrawal definitely makes falling sleep easier. But in steady state being on or off caffeine seems to be about the same?
It's hard to say though! Sleep onset is one of those things that's very strongly affected by placebo/nocebo effects (i.e. the person in this thread who says drinking caffeine /permanently/ worsened his sleep even after discontinuation .. )
For those of you in this thread who know you're slow metabolizers... is the effect on sleep obvious in a way that's distinguishable from nocebo? Or is it pretty subtle?
You know, I've been saying something similar to what you wrote for a long time: if I have a coffee at 7am I struggle to sleep and everyone around me has been always looking at me like I'm crazy. It's a relief to know that there are more people having the same issue. It's a shame, because I do love the taste of coffee but I cannot cope with this specific side effect.
"Because it’s not just the half life, caffeine has a quarter life, meaning it’s still has its hooks in my patient long after that morning sip. According to sleep scientist Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep, caffeine’s quarter life is about double its half life. This means that slow metabolizers like my patient may still be feeling the effects of their morning coffee well into the night. No wonder caffeine has been shown to be so disruptive of sleep. 4 After all, it binds to and blocks our adenosine receptors, the signaling pathways the body uses to fall asleep each night."
The error in your reasoning is that you're replacing "quarter life" and "half life" with "1/4" and "1/2" (scalars), when the definition is actually about the number of hours the caffeine stays in your system. You are also putting the (2 *) on the wrong side. It should instead be:
half_life_hrs * 2 = quarter_life_hrs
Think of it this way: if caffeine's half life is 6 hours, and you drink 100mg, it means that after 6 hours you still have 50mg in your system.
Given that, you could try to extrapolate and say that after another 6 hours, you would have 0mg left in your system.
However, since "caffeine's quarter life is about double its half life", that means that:
6hrs * 2 = quarter_life_hrs
Therefore, after 12 hours (6hrs * 2), you would still have 25mg (a quarter of 100mg) of caffeine in your system.
Interesting! I am the exact opposite - I can drink coffee any time, and it doesn't affect my sleep at all. The reverse side of it it that it doesn't wake me up at all either. If I'm sleepy, giving me a cup of coffee is useless. I like the taste of it, but if I want to boost my alertness, I will need something else. I used to drink a lot of caffeinated drinks in my youth, so maybe I developed a tolerance - or maybe it's just my genes.
I'm an A/C, neither AA nor CC. Not a lot out there on that, some say "slow" is dominant, but that leaves me confused because I have none of the problems you've described and I drink 200-400mg of caffeine a day (monster energy + 3x 12oz soda).
A/C is still considered a slow metabolizer. This is just one allele that affects caffeine metabolism... there is still probably a ton of variability from person to person within the same allele here. I am A/C and have all of the problems described here.
You make it sound dark-side / light-side. Might I interest you in a pleasing shade of gray?
Hemodialysis.
Join the 'penumbra-side'.
More seriously, sorry you have that issue. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything useful I'm familiar with. You could look into 'inducers'. Wikipedia has a small list.
At least, though, it's good to know about the trade-offs - knowing that caffeine specifically comes at that kind of cost. Some suffer for years before determining what the actual root cause of some difficulty has been. With awareness, at least there is the possibility of volition / decision.
It's interesting because this was me. I couldn't drink coffee, even in the morning, without getting pretty strong jitters AND not being able to sleep at night. I didn't know it could be because of slow metabolizing.
But I've been forcing myself to drink coffee for some of its benefits (heart and focus) and now I can drink coffee at 3pm, no jitters, no effect to sleep. I'm actually wondering if I sleep better by drinking coffee because I'm more active during the day and much more tired when I hit the bed now.
I don't know how people put up with waking up to pee. Is it really worth it to eat/drink within a few hours of bedtime if it's going to wake you up at 3am?
It's a circadian rhythm thing. You get into a habit of peeing at specific times, and that can include in the middle of the night.
You can fix the habit by waiting a half hour longer to pee each night until you can make it to the morning, but this does involve lying awake in bed for a while, which is much worse for your sleep than just getting up quickly to pee.
If I drink past 2pm I'm up...weird but only started after I was 40 really. I'm starting to think my sleep just sucks so my mind is more aware that I have to go and not that something has changed with my bladder
Interesting, I've been working on my sleep and read this from the article you posted: Curcumin is an inhibitor of CYP1A2.
I sleep really well with a 200-400mg of Ibuprofen but it's not something I want to take often or at all for sleep. Curcumin/turmeric is also anti-inflammatory. I'm starting to think that cutting out all caffeine (cup of black tea in the morning) and taking some curcumin might be the way to better sleep.
Hey man, I’m in the same boat and i’ve had to eliminate caffeine.
As a replacement, I do Yoga(Sun Salutations) for either 4 or 12 minutes depending on how my body feels in the morning (or if i need energy in the afternoon). It provides much cleaner energy than caffeine: no crash. Just thought i’d share :D
Yours and all of the child comments are fascinating to me. I can drink a cup of coffee right before bed and it doesn’t seem to affect my sleep noticeably (e.g. I feel just as refreshed the next day as when I don’t).
I have even tried to give it up multiple times and have lasted well over a month before deciding that I was still more tired (and irritable) than when summoning it.
Thanks for pointing this out! I'm a slow caffeine metabolizer also, and it took a long time to notice what is happening in my body, and not listen to other people that say things like "just stop drinking coffee before 5pm" or "limit to 4 cups a day" that totally don't work for me.
I also hate that I have to choose. I purchased 10mg caffeine gummies and was optimistic, but, like you, even if I have two at 7am I feel the effects at 11pm when trying to sleep.
I wish I could alter the amount or intake mechanism and be fine, but it’s fundamentally what happens once it’s in my bloodstream.
Selling data is the credit card and ad tech industry, not genetics. Your 23AndMe data has approximately no value unless you take the research surveys, since there's nothing to associate it with.
Kava. It's calming unlike caffeine, but also seems to help concentration. It seems to flush out of my system very quickly, so that I haven't noticed it affecting sleep either way.
If you have ADD or ADHD, Ritalin might help. I have severe ADHD that I refused to treat for decades, but I recently gave in.
I am _hugely_ sensitive to caffeine and feel a buzz even from decaf. It ruins my sleep in a similar way to what a couple people in this thread describe.
I take 10mg of instant-release Ritalin at 7AM each day, and it allows me to focus and deliver. It wears off by around 2-3PM, and I sleep like a rock most nights.
There are downsides as well: once it wears off, it leaves you mentally drained until you've slept. Also, there's a potential for building a tolerance, as well as potential for addiction. I've been lucky in both cases so far, but ymmv.
I do recommend switching to tea. Anecdotally I do feel better on tea than coffee, but coffee has a long-lasting addictive pull. I guess it's a good time to quit coffee again.
FWIW There are sleep aids a doctor can prescribe that will put you into a deep sleep. Would be worth trying to see if you can get the best of both worlds.
Eating cruciferous vegetables, sleep, nothing has seemed to help much.
I tried taking BroccoMax for its Sulforaphane content. As suggested in the article below. Even when taking BroccoMax, ingesting a cup of coffee, my sleep still suffered.
Fast Caffeine Metabolism for Better Sleep with Sulforaphane
The alertness and anxiety just stacks with every cup and never wears off. The next day, it's even higher with that day's caffeine. The next day, moreso. Eventually, you reach, and then surpass, supernatural levels of mental overdrive, like cheesing INT in Morrowind, and you never come back down. With every sip, you know nothing will ever be the same.
Sort of, but not exactly. More like quitting it doesn’t change me back to prior me. I will just be current me but without the addiction. I’ll still long for her just the same. Once you start drinking it black, you never go back.
Actually I envy you. I can drink one expresso or two one hour before sleep and will sleep the same. It is kind of annoying because sometimes I wanted to pull an all-nighter and coffee doesn't have the effect in me that I wanted and I end up sleeping anyway.
The million dollar question is though "How do we improve deep sleep?"
I have a sleep tracker at home and my weak point is always not getting enough deep sleep. I'm not sure there's a way to force deep sleep somehow...
Lots of low hanging fruit in this arena for people who haven't made a serious effort yet. Cutting out caffeine and alcohol entirely from my diet were by far the biggest improvements I made, then regular exercise, and finally a midday nap during my lunch break.
I have always had insomnia and have to maintain very good sleep hygiene. Here's a few things I have found that help me get to sleep:
- No exercise after 18:30/6:30pm
- Absolutely avoid Vitamin D and Vitamin B supplements in the evening. These will suppress deep and REM sleep and I'll sleep lightly all night long if I take them.
- Hot sauna, shower, or bath before bed.
- Anti-histamine (cetirizine hydrochloride aka Zyrtec) as needed - I'm allergic to my wife's dog and some nights I feel like I have bugs crawling on my skin. It can even wake me up.
Things that keep me from waking up at night:
- Gas X as needed to avoid acid reflux
- Anti Inflammatory helps keep me from having to use the bathroom when I know I'm inflamed (getting old sucks).
- No alcohol in the evening
- No videogames, interesting books, or French lessons right before bed, or I'll be sleeping lightly and find myself ruminating in light sleep over these mentally engaging topics.
> - Anti-histamine (cetirizine hydrochloride aka Zyrtec) as needed - I'm allergic to my wife's dog and some nights I feel like I have bugs crawling on my skin. It can even wake me up.
Antihistamines are associated with increased dementia if you take the wrong ones, so it's not a good way to get more sleep. Melatonin, trazodone or a newer sleep drug is safer.
Benadryl does nothing to me except kill my deep and REM sleep and leave me "sleeping" but conscious. I'm exhausted the next day. I only take cetrizine.
Most off-the-shelf antihistamines are now non-drowsy.
I asked the pharmacist for a drowsy antihistamine the other day and they gave me something from behind the counter (no script required). No idea if it was anticholinergic: most drugs require compromises so if something works better for sleep for me I'll judge the risks for other side-effects.
Normally I use a loratidine if I wake in the early hours and that usually gets me back to sleep, even though it is non-drowsy.
I wanted to try a different antihistamine to see if it worked better: jury's out on that at the moment.
Personally I think it is very important to experiment on yourself, and test a variety of solutions. I will even test alternative medicine for important problems. I strongly avoid dangerous solutions. I am fairly conservative and I especially dislike taking pills, but I believe in the value of trying a bit of science on your problems.
The antihistamines that make you drowsy are first generation antihistamines like benadryl that research has suggested are very bad to take more than occasionally (linked to dementia risk, etc.)
If you need something for sleep I highly suggest you either try melatonin if you want something OTC or talk to your doctor for something that requires a prescription.
Aside from melatonin, pretty much every OTC sleeping drug you can get is an anticholinergic drug which is better to avoid.
I have a wealth of experiential data on this, validated as recently as this previous July over a two week period. Like clockwork, if I take my Vit D supplement in the evening (like before bed), I will have almost zero REM sleep and will wake up from 8 hours of sleep exhausted. I have no idea why this happens but it's very repeatable.
Suggests there's other variables involved, like time of day taken, other supplements taken simultaneously, metabolic processes, diet, and maybe even the placebo effect.
What really kills me is acid reflux. If I get it at night I just have to wake up and sit down or stand up until it passes... fortunately it happens rarely enough and I kind of know what will trigger it, but it still sucks.
FWIW and for others reading this. If you experience reflux regularly, go get checked. I had an undiagnosed H Pilory infection for years (can lead to cancer). 2 weeks of antibiotics fixed it.
Alka-Seltzer always knocks reflux down for me pretty quick. Still get woken up by the reflux and have to haul myself out of bed to get the goods, but a few sips and I can get right back in bed.
I have some from Costco and IIUC you need to take it in the morning or something for 2 weeks? Never seemed to do much to me though, especially when I really need it.
> I'll be sleeping lightly and find myself ruminating in light sleep over these mentally engaging topics.
Huh, interesting. I find that I sometimes force myself to think on mentally engaging topics as it helps quiet the other, more negative things I might instead be ruminating on. It's counting sheep for me, really.
It helps reduce bloating. If you have bloating + weak esophageal sphincter (or just really bad bloating) you can get reflux as a result.
Actually, more accurately, gas-x has an enzyme that helps break down oligosaccharides. The mechanism may be more complex than above if your acid reflux is somehow related to microbiome stuff (oligos are favorite food for all kinds of gut bacteria).
Something that helps me is to do something physically exhausting during the day. Probably not right before bedtime though. For me it's weightlifting, that's the only exercise I've been able to stick with. If that's not your thing, try to find something else that elevates your heart rate/makes you sweat for 30 minutes or so, that might help you sleep better. Even some deep stretching/yoga can get your muscles firing and get your heart rate up.
You might also try no screens/TV/computers after dark. Keep interior lights at low levels and a warm color temperature after dark. Be intentional about doing calming, quiet things before bedtime.
I thought vivid dreaming was an indicator of sleep interruption, not quality sleep. IIRC dreaming happens during our deepest sleep when you would not normally be easily woken up. Remembering your dreams mean you woke during that time.
I thought that too, but what seems to happen is that I wake up remembering a very long dream rather than just a jumble of dream snippets from the night.
I take Ibuprofen, and only when I can tell there is a problem (like when I've been up several times on preceding nights). It also seems correlated with junk food and alcohol. I generally have a very clean diet, and if I slip, I generally feel like I have inflammation a few days later which keeps me up at night when I wake up needing to go.
Im jealous of anyone who can sleep well. I have been doing all of the above for years as well as testing out different temperatures and also not looking at screens for well over an hour before going to bed.
I just can’t get good consistent deep sleep. I will say one thing that did help was i use to live in the city and after i moved outside of it and it was much much quieter at night (no trucks driving through or random sounds or honking in the middle of the night) i did notice an improvement.
Urban sounds are a big problem for me as well, but you may want to try a white noise generator (phone app or even a small low-power fan) to hide some of those noises.
The fan for me doubles as a way of getting air circulation. I keep windows open in other rooms, but not the bedroom - due to street noises. Having a CO2 monitor may give you some insights into another key factor impacting your sleep quality.
I might want to try! Do you have a particular product / brand you use that’s convenient to buy? I saw another comment of your mentioning then separated, is that how you take it?
Yes, I'm taking Glycine in powder (it's very cheap) from Vitality (UltraPure Glycine) and NAC from Chrisana - but I'm based in Switzerland. You should be able to find it anywhere, I'd think any brand would do just like any brand of vitamine C is likely ok.
1. Can't be sure that the effect of caffeine is more worth it than the possible impact on sleep. Better sleep probably has a wider range of benefits compared to caffeine.
2. Might not have to be one or the other - just make sure caffeine consumption is very early in the day
It's not necessarily 0 or 1 is it? E.g. a "short espresso" in the early morning hours at least from my sleep tracking / particular (heavy) physiology doesn't make a difference vs when I'm off of caffeine (on weekends usually). I'd start with dropping afternoon coffee and experiment backwards from there.
Without reading this paper but having read a bunch of this research in the past, it’s definitely inconclusive due to poor quality data. The people who don’t consume caffeine category too often includes those with major health issues that prevent them from doing so.
Your link literally says: “ Epidemiologic studies have provided inconclusive evidence for a protective effect of caffeine consumption on risk of dementia and cognitive decline.”
Context is key. You've just cited the concept under challenge. The summary and conclusion literally says it "may reduce the risk of dementia and cognitive decline, and may ameliorate cognitive decline in cognitively impaired individuals."
You drink coffee because it makes you do more things at work / you are a slob without it because of addiction. You are not drinking it because it might make you better in bed or have less dementia in 50 years.
On the other hand we all need to sleep so doing it properly is a net positive
Caffeine is really not unhealthy. It's one of the most studied supplements ever. If you drink one cup of coffee before noon you will be perfectly fine.
If you only shoot heroin once a week you will be perfectly fine
How many people resist the urge and only shoot heroin once a week?
We are humans, not perfectly diligent robots.
The first thing you say to a person with eating disorders is to throw all the junk food from their home. It’s close to impossible to resist even the “simple” temptation of food.
It’s much easier for a person to never start drinking coffee in the morning to “wake up” than starting and then quitting
Actually, I have to side with the original commenter on this. A great deal of today's public health issues in the first world stem directly or indirectly from people being unable to properly moderate use of a good thing. That's why I switched to decaf - I'd have to drink 10 times the amount of coffee I normally do to get an equivalent dose.
Ah yes, heroin and caffeine are equivalent, that's why we see all those caffeine addicts lining the streets of San Francisco looking for their next fix.
If you want to have an honest discussion, stop using these terrible analogies and bring actual scientific evidence.
This mentality of finding these shallow similarities and drawing these insane conclusions indicates that someone has very low intelligence.
This is your "deep" thought process
1. Caffeine is a drug
2. Heroin is also a drug
3. Caffeine can have negative effects on people when used in excess
4. Heroin can also have negative effects on people when used in excess!
There's a Starbucks in town whose unfortunate positioning has led to a great increase in wrecks (it's just past a hill, on a fairly busy road with speed limit of 40mph, and it doesn't have enough space for a large drive thru so cars are backed into the road).
It's like website blockers for productivity: eventually you realize you can just undo the work you did and go back to business as usual, especially if there's an excuse ("I need this youtube video on software architecture for my research, so I'll just unblock youtube and...")
You are constructing very weird strawman here. Me and a lot of my friends have beer in the fridge or some stronger spirit on the shelf and yet they don't get drunk first thing in the morning before work. Similarly I don't observe them gulping liters of coffee at 10 pm. There are always people who have harder time moderating their addictions, but absolute majority seem to be able to control their caffeine consumption just fine.
"One cup" of coffee doesn't mean anything by itself since the effects depend on both genetics and tolerance. Do you have data that confirms that majority of adults either consume so much coffee that it causes unwanted side effects (sleep problems) or that they want to reduce their consumption and struggling to do so due to the dependency?
I usually consume two double espressos per day (both before noon) and don't have trouble falling asleep afterwards.
I'll add that I take a small magnesium supplement mid to late afternoon as well which helps me relax and if dreams are any indication of deeper sleep I have many more memorable dreams when I'm taking magnesium.
I 100% shill for magnesium when I can, and sleep is a huge reason in my experience. I was recommended it by others for sleep, and I have got a lot of people started. Within a few days our sleep is just so much better, including deeper dreams. I do 100mg lysinate glycinate. My brand's bottle recommends two per serving, but one has worked great. I take it right before bed and have never looked back.
Dreams are an indication of REM sleep, but improvement in REM may be a general indication that you're getting overall better sleep, including deep sleep.
I also take Magnesium and swear by it. I also suspect I have some underlying kidney issues retaining many electrolytes and started taking a potassium with the magnesium at bedtime and it has transformed my sleep into baby-land. I sleep so hard now and when I wake up, I have no problem getting right back to sleep. I feel so refreshed the next day it is honestly shocking to me. I have always said that before I started taking both that I felt like I was on a one-way track to dementia. That is just how I felt. Very anecdotal, but I believe it in my bones.
I take about 150MG of magnesium and 100mg of potassium before bed. The magnesium is Chloride, but in liquid form and causes no laxative effect (but tastes terrible!). It is a product called ReMag. I am sure other forms will work just as well. The potassium is Gluconate as it is PH neutral. Potassium Citrate and Chloride would work just as well. I just get the Gluconate from Walmart as it is cheap and effective.
I've read that Magnesium L-Threonate is better taken in the morning to help your brain function better during the day. So, I take this in the morning and Mg glycinate at night.
I currently use magnesium oxide in a tablet form (I use half a tablet, ~125mg). I have previously used magnesium glycinate but I don't remember what dose I used of that.
I'll add, the mag oxide always prevents leg cramps when I take a full tablet (250mg) when I am working outside all day (and staying hydrated).
ETA: In my experience magnesium citrate is the one mostly likely to cause diarrhea though they all can.
I use a powdered drink called 'Calm'. It's got a bit of a berry flavor to it. Start with a small amount though or you'll be shitting your pants. There are a lot of studies showing magnesium levels are far too low in people anyway so it's a good idea to supplement it.
Not OP but given the context, yeah. CPAP machines help you breathe better and not wake up hundreds of times due to respiratory blockage. It’s almost a necessity for fat or muscular people to sleep really well.
I'm 145 lbs and use a CPAP because my nasal turbinates majorly swell up during the night or when I lay down. I'm urging my insurance company to cover the ClariFix procedure to hopefully fix my issue.
- no alcohol after dinner (none at all is better)
- eat dinner as early as possible (before 7pm, even earlier is better)
- turn off screens after 9pm (Kindle doesn't seem to impact, but phone/tablet/TV do)
- exercise regularly, but not too close to bedtime
- regular bed time and wake time (we go to bedroom 9:30-10, lights out 10:30, alarm at 6am).
Meditation and breathing exercise can help too, but I haven't had to try those much.
I agree, it's hard but worth it. I have the data to back it up through sleep tracking. I've always felt somewhat unfazed by coffee, yet caffeine flashbacks can be very subtle and do seem to have a measurable impact on this "user" at least.
Also really darkening the bedroom and keeping the temperature as low as possible.
Now if there only were a consistent solution for energetic "night owl" toddlers to go with that ever more optimized regimen :D
I‘m intrigued by the midday nap, because I think I remember reading that daytime naps worsen night sleep. I do like naps though, and find them refreshing. Have you found research that supports this?
The primary benefit from mid-day naps is that they simply help you relax and get some rest. You don't want them to be long, just refreshing. This is well known in athletics where most major athletes take naps as a matter of recovery and to improve their sleep quality. Presumably, feeling relaxed and rested when you go to sleep helps you get some deeper sleep and improve sleep quality.
I recommend to read https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Best_time_for_napping
The key takeaways is that naps won't affect night time sleep much if it's timed well. I also don't recommend stopping them artificially (I've heard the "keep them short" advice a lot), naps are usually short if you aren't sleep deprived and time it well.
AFAIR was only the case if nap was longer than ~20 min? I don't remember if this was a consistent thing, I doubt it though as this stuff is inherently individual. Experimentation is the only way with sleep optimization..
It does not worsen night sleep, this is a misconception. It is better than nothing but often not as good as regular sleep since you often does not goes through a full cycle.
Naps are terrible sleep hygiene. Any deviation from a regular set sleep schedule is bad hygiene. Better to get less sleep than to nap and disturb the sleep schedule. Many people develop insomnia this way, especially shift workers.
The siesta is natural and is different from the naps taken from shift workers that are likely either interrupting night time sleep or are shifting their circadian rythm so that their "biological night" is in the day. Same thing for the "biological day" (it will be put at night)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siesta?wprov=sfla1
It’s almost like we are not some robots with scheduled downtimes - physiology is much more complicated than to have such a mathematical truths. The only true thing we can conclude is always: this factor might correspond to this effect (and sometimes may even say that it is not only correlation)
>Cutting out caffeine and alcohol entirely from my diet were by far the biggest improvements I made
Are you sure the latter improved deep sleep? Alcohol is known to interfere with REM sleep, but I've actually found it lengthens the amount of time I spend in deep sleep if I have a single beer or something at dinner. I tracked this over months with a sleep tracker.
Yep, as I get into my 30s I notice alcohol consumption drastically affects my sleep quality and time to fall asleep.
I've also cut out coffee and that has helped my sinuses/upper throat a lot in the morning which were being irritated. I drink some varieties of tea instead.
That sounds like the opposite of sleeping too deeply to me. That sounds like you aren't getting enough.
Do yourself a favor. Take off the nightcap, put on the striped pajamas and the old-timey candle holder, and book out a full 10 hours for a few weeks. Make it non-negotiable. Full darkness, clean air, quiet, the works. Maybe even get tested for sleep apnea if you're overweight.
If you go through that for 3 weeks religiously and return to the nightcap I'll eat my words and consider you a medical anomaly. But I think you'll come out of it convinced it's worth the sacrifice.
Been there, I just sleep a full 10 hours and can't fall asleep the next night. I sleep 7 hours, that's the right amount for me. If I don't feel like drinking, I'll eat something heavy to lighten my sleep quality. I obsessively track my sleep, and this is all I've found so far. The other option is polyphasic, but that's limited in terms of practicality.
I think the other key question is causality - do people who get less deep sleep develop these diseases, or do people who are developing these diseases get less deep sleep, or both?
I wonder if they could design an interventional study in which people who are predisposed to dementia are given more sleep or melatonin, and then demonstrate whether it protects against the disease.
You're right about the journal paper, but the pop-sci title implies causation. So, for those who didn't click all the way through: There is zero proof of causation. It may well be that people getting dementia have increased problems sleeping. Or both may be caused by some third factor.
I mean one of the common correlations between dementia and 'something else' is stress, people who are stressed get dementia more often. I guess people who are not getting enough deep sleep are also stressed.
One thing I’ve found that really helps is actually not worrying too much about sleep. Try to follow good basic habits, but you can become neurotic trying to follow every suggestion that people make or thinking that a few nights of horrible sleep is going to damage you for life. If I get a few nights of poor sleep nowadays I try to just shrug it off.
I have a feeling that the more "advanced" tips seen in this thread are more (personal) solutions/improvements for the situation of "I am stressed and so I cannot sleep well". I.e. to make a non-optimal situation a little better.
Which is fine, but in general I'd think having the luxury of being in a calm, comfortable and unworried state of mind is the most beneficial.
Personal anecdote, but I sleep with earplugs most of the nights as I have a very light sleep. I would wake from really small noises multiple times every night. In contrast, sleeping with earplugs feels like entering a dark and quiet chamber and then suddenly emerging after 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. YMMV, but for me it's a godsend.
I have the same problem but I've yet to find earplugs that I can wear every night. The only only ones I've been able to sleep with at all are silicone ones that mould to the shape of the ear. I can only sleep which makes things significantly more difficult but with some practice I can get the silicone ones flat and not feeling like there's pressure inside my ear which will stop me sleeping.
I don't travel without these now and they have been great, but after several successive nights of use I find my ear starts to get sore and sensitive to them.
The best thing, of course, is to live somewhere actually quiet. Most noise is from cars. But failing that I have to sleep with some white noise source like a fan.
I use these earplugs every night and whenever I'm exposed to noise, like vacuuming. For me, it helps me sleep better and also seems to reduce tinnitus. Note: I'm not saying wearing earplugs directly reduces tinnitus, but IMO it reduces ear stimulation because my ears are processing less sound, so my ears don't get as tired, and that seems to make my tinnitus less noticeable.
I re-use the same set, washing them when I take a shower. I bought the above set of 50 years ago and still have many left.
A couple of tricks I use with these:
- I cut about 1/4" off the small end. If I don't, the earplug starts to hurt my ear if I wear it a lot, I think because it goes too far into my ear.
- before using a new earplug, I wash it several times with bar soap. There is something in a new ear plug that makes it stay mashed. Maybe it suppresses more noise with that, but it also makes it hard to fit for me. I keep washing it until it is springy. This is a one-time thing with a new ear plug.
The "stay mashed" property is by design for these types of earplugs because they are meant to go right into the ear canal. The idea is you mash them (well, carefully roll and compress) then insert them while still mashed, holding them in as they slowly re-expand.
But this is, of course, to ensure protection in the case of dangerously high sound pressure levels. Cutting them would also compromise them in this regard. Perhaps different if you are using them to block out low noises for sleep.
Yes, but I think to a lesser extent. I have not felt uncomfortable in the night due to this, but my ears definitely feel more moist in the morning which probably contributes to the soreness/sensitivity over time for me.
The Bose sleepbuds were helpful for me in masking snoring sounds. I found conventional earbuds too uncomfortable the way they seal, while these make up for the lack of perfect seal with white noise. Looks like the product has been recently spun out to a new company.
Regarding some of the comments: Yes, I had trouble sleeping with earplugs initially myself. It's definitely something you have to get used to, but once you do you don't notice them at all. Then it feels like having acquired a new super-power. I use Bilsom 303 type of disposable plugs, the type you'd find on a worksite, although I only change them after a few weeks of use.
I still struggle to get really good sleep. I've slept with ear plugs (nearly) every night for the last 30 years. Now there is almost zero chance I can get any sleep without them, even in very quiet environments. Also just checked my CYP1A2 marker and have the A/A variant so I'm a "ultrarapid" caffeine metabolizer and I only drink 1 cup of caf-coffee in the mornings, so this is probably not a big contributor to low quality sleep. Maybe Alcohol (straight whiskey only), but maybe not. When I go through periods of not drinking I see no apparent improvement in my sleep. Still looking...
This works very well for me. I have tried just about every type but most were not comfortable. Finally found 3M ear classic NRR 33 earplugs and have bought them 200 pairs at a time. Super comfortable and effective.
Exercise HARD. Try doing some Zone 2 cardio for +1 hours, and see if this makes a difference. Or try some HIIT workout (Zone 5) and see how your body responds. A good overall workout machine is a rower. Try to set some kind of PR, like a 2k time trial. Push beyond what you think is possible and see how your body responds. My best sleeps are when I am physically exhausted - so weak that I could fall asleep on a couch (which is normally impossible for me).
I have some mixed feelings about this. I used to do this ~10 years ago when I was a distance runner, but now exercising so hard will throw my body off in other ways and I don't feel good having pushed so hard. Perhaps this is exactly the point you're making, but I don't target zone 5 for long these days. Deep sleep, sure, but at what cost to the rest of my body?
All exercise causes fatigue and fatigue management is not really discussed but it's actually not that difficult. Most of your cardio should be done in zone 2 (look up the 80/20 rule). You also may need to start with easier workouts and work your way back up to what you expect you can do. I was also a former endurance athlete and in college I stopped exercising. Numerous times I kept on trying to get back into it and I didn't succeed at getting back into it until I realized that I needed to start from square 1.
I'm not fully back into it yet mind you, but I'm running 20 miles a week and lifting weights 6 days a week. A lot of my workouts are zone 2. I sleep at least 8 hours and I get roughly 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight from my diet (i also make sure all my other macro and micro nutrient needs are met).
The excessive fatigue goes away if you are meeting your nutrient and sleep requirements and not consuming drugs or alcohol. Look up the "repeated bout effect". I feel like a teenager again after getting my exercise, nutrition, and sleep routine locked in.
edit: To clarify what I mean about "the excessive fatigue goes away", when I first started running there would be mornings where I would wake up and have significant mental and physical fatigue and the very thought of going to exercise was repulsive to me. That goes away with time, it's also a signal to maybe take it easy for the day and do zone 2 cardio instead.
For sure, there is some kind of optimal balance to target. I've pushed myself so hard at times that I disrupted my sleep. For example, I bought a used Kickr and decided to do a FTP test at 9pm. This was not the smartest idea.
Running has been the goto for me. Can push myself on a 5k run in the evening (6pm) and when 10pm hits, I'm 2x more tired than normal.
And, depending on your situation, be careful. I was a collegiate athlete back in the day and recently tried to recapture some of that. The result? Torn labrum in my left hip that really can't be repaired (per doctor). I'm all for hard workouts, but respect your age (and prior injuries) if you're going to go down this path. Definitely ease your way into it.
This probably doesn't help you directly, but I suspect the older people mentioned in the article may often have some sleep apnea, preventing them from reaching deep sleep. I just started using a CPAP machine, which has greatly improved it for me. Making sure it is always treated could help society wide.
According to this researched I heard an interview with about 15-20% of the population has some level of intolerance for histamines. Having high histamine levels affect sleep.
I find it interesting that it is never addressed in these common list of what to try to improve sleep. It's not rocket science managing it, just a matter of avoiding high histamine food after 5pm or so. Good sleep might be worth it.
My deep sleep has massively improved recently and consistently for the last month. Two things I've done differently (and I'm not sure which is to thank) is taking magnesium before bed each night and inhaling fluticasone. No more snoring, no more waking up tired.
What kills sleep for me is any feeling of unfinished business. If I feel like there's a thing I need to do, good luck sleeping unless I'm completely exhausted. So I think mental health is really important, learning to have your mind at peace. Or rather, learning, one by one, how to deal with the 1000 things disturb you individually until there's not many left to keep you up
If your sleep tracker is one of these consumer devices that you put on your wrist, they are notoriously unreliable (here is a study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7603649/ ). Worse, they have been shown to cause unnecessary stress by causing people who are actually perfectly fine to chase numbers.
As for how to improve sleep, there are plenty of advise, many of them commonsense (see in this thread). But I think that unless you are actually followed by a healthcare professional, in which case he would probably give better advise than random people on HN, how well you feel the next day is probably a better metric than some number on a smartwatch. And if the answer is "fine", I don't think there is a reason to worry much.
Somewhat ironically, the sleep apnea screening device I was sent is also meant to be worn on the wrist. There were three additional sensors connected to it. One for monitor chest movements for breathing, one for monitoring breath itself, and another for blood oxygen level.
I've been stuck on <30 minutes of deep sleep for as long as I've had an Apple watch and probably much longer. Some observations I recently made:
- Japan has these drinks with 200mg of GABA, I don't know if it was the 20,000 steps we were doing every day or the drinks but on the days I had it deep sleep was often (not always) closer to an hour. Strangely enough GABA is illegal here in NZ so I'm trying L-Theanine with less obvious effects.
- Exercise (even 2h+ moderate) doesn't have any effect, adjusting caffeine doesn't seem to either
- A warm shower immediately before bed strangely did seem to have a considerable although not perfectly consistent effect
- Just got put on Concerta for ADHD and although im getting less sleep i'm also getting 40+ minutes of deep sleep. After recently doing research into GABA + Dopamine + etc it seems to be a bit of a brain circuit thing for me.
I have improved my deep sleep by taking lavender oil extract capsules. They help relax and give me a 'knock-out' feeling that rapidly induces sleep. I also don't wake up in the middle of the night anymore when I take them. Unfortunately the quality of the extract varies wildly, I would get the same effect with 80mg as I would with 400mg from another supplier. Doubly unfortunate is that one rapidly builds tolerance to it. I use it every 3rd day, so I get a deep, restful sleep twice a week.
Quite a few sleep supplements have started adding it to their formulas recently, using melatonin to initiate sleep and lavender oil to sustain it. It remains to be seen what side effects it has taken long term - there aren't any studies about this available as far as I could tell.
Just a note that lavender oil is estrogenic and topical use has been associated with precocious puberty or gynocomastia in children. Small doses in adults may not be a huge issue, but I would not use it as a sleep aid for kids.
Sleep, like digestion, wound healing, or respiration, seems to be one of those complex bodily processes that can suffer from dysfunction for a variety of reasons we're only now beginning to understand rigorously. A quality polysomnography is a good place to start.
I went through a series of traumatic events before a deployment and I stopped sleeping. I started experiencing psychosomatic events where I'd see and feel bugs crawling on me. When I saw the Wizard™ he had me start doing breathing exercises right before bed, clearing my brain, and centering myself in a space with no distractions. For me that was a endless white room. It worked and I continue to do it today when I have stressful days and I generally sleep on a consistent schedule and wake up (nearly) on the hour of when I need to wake up. From my sleep tracker I get roughly 1.5-2 hours of REM each night and roughly 6-7 hours of "sleep".
Since then? Probably better managing stress and emotional events. Setting aside time to think about and feel my stress, grief, or anxiety and allowing myself to defer those things to an appropriate time has helped me a lot. Learning to bend with life a bit more than being fed up with its twists and turns has also helped. I say that in the light that in a lot of twists and turns I've figured out how to make the best of things.
The study is about duration of deep sleep, not quality. And that's an easy one, you can increase the amount of deep sleep with cannabis.
> Cannabis users demonstrated significantly longer sleep latency and less REM sleep overall; no other differences occurred in objective sleep measures between groups.
Your link does not support your statement, which may not be the case. Even your quoted bit suggests that cannabis just caused less REM sleep that was replaced by taking longer to get to sleep. I couldn't find a particularly good citataion but some say that THC doesn't affect deep sleep (N3) while CBD actually reduces it. All say that the situation is unclear and needs more research.
no alcohol, no coffee after 12:00, try to eat less(caloric food) at dinner & try to eat no closer than 3h before your sleep, make sure the room you sleep in is fully dark, make sure you have comfortable temperature (if you are rich, you may as well get that ultrafancy mattress that regulates the temperature), make sure pillow is comfy, not too hard¬ too soft
We're doing neurostimulation to increase the effectiveness at deep sleep, and have spoken with the research team at Monash (where the study took place) which is looking to use our tech in some of their future studies.
There is a large body of research supporting this, a selection of which you can find on our website at https://soundmind.co
We don't alter the amount of time you sleep, we increase the synchronous firing of neurons, which is the hallmark of deep sleep.
I remember reading in Why we Sleep[1] about devices that you could wear which would increase the intensity of deep sleep brain waves, thereby causing deeper sleep. Not sure how legit this is seen these days or how close such devices are to becoming available to regular consumers, but was interesting to read about.
I got helped by the usual suspects like avoiding caffeine after 14-15, earplugs, thick curtains and light cover over the eyes as well as cool temperatures in the sleeping room, but the big improvement came after I stopped eating after 20 in the night, and preferably earlier than that.
There was a device called the Dreem headband that would use EEG and specially timed tones to increase the duration of deep sleep (look up "sleep spindles"). Unfortunately that specific feature was blocked in the US and they took it off the market. But I hope that something like that will be launched again.
It should be noted that Valerian works on the brains GABA system in a very similar manner to alcohol or benzodiazapines (valium, xanax, etc). This is why it is effective, but also why it should only be used short term.
That’s what I don’t get and would love someone to post full text of the study. They claim this is a “modifiable” risk. I find that claim dubious and would love to see how they support that, and why this isn’t simply descriptive/correlational.
try nasal dilators. they can be a little uncomfortable to start and some brands like to fall out mid sleep (or I subconsciously take it out and drop it in the bed), but I can attest that I sleep much deeper when I use one, or atleast the increase in quality and quantity of dreams make me think I do. also I wake up in the morning in the same position I fell asleep in and not feeling tired more often, where I usually am sleep flopping all over the place according to my other half
I've had good luck with nasal strips (like Breathe Right) along with an anti-snoring mouth appliance. I got one from my dentist that worked OK but it cost $1K and broke after a year. I've had good luck with the non-prescription SnoreRx mouth appliance; not so great with ZQuiet which I found hurt my front teeth.
you really can't. You can play around with caffeine, melatonin, magnesium, weed, whatever to improve falling asleep but very little is understood about these sleep stages to begin with except "you need them" and "everyone needs a different amount of them"
by far the most important thing you CAN do is have a consistent sleep schedule (every day! Including weekends!) and make your bed for sleeping and sex only.
This guy over here https://youtu.be/BQMIAkt4P48?si=XQY6jLLKFpS4wkzv is always testing fitness / sleep devices and he compares to better machines that are known to more precise. The latest Apple Watches do pretty well overall.
I've been going down this rabbit hole for a while and don't have any conclusive answers.
I have always slept 7.5 hours in my adult life. I wake up a couple times a night briefly (and usually recall 1-2 time a night that it happens) but fall back asleep quickly.
My room is dark, and cold. Most of the times when I wake up it's because I am warm from my mattress (casper wave).
I am now purchasing a chilling pad for my side of the mattress to address that so I sleep deeper and more consistently.
I take magnesium because I am very active and have suffered for the last year or so from hypnic jerks, which are terrifying but have gone away since I started taking magnesium supplements before bed.
I occasionally have a hard time falling asleep or wake up early and cant get back to bed, but I still average 7.5hrs over a year -- and over 3 years since ive been tracking my sleep nightly.
I get sufficient REM, dont drink alcohol, gave up weed, and only have caffeine from 9am - 11am daily (1 coffee usually, sometimes a shot of espresso in addition).
Yet my deep sleep averages are ~45 minutes a night.
I am about to be 39, and I am unclear what to change beyond the mattress cooling pad which I will measure.
I've also started cold showers when waking up (60 seconds of cold to end my shower, working towards 2 minutes).
My family has zero history of Dementia so I am not as worried, but I am concerned with staying in tip top cognitive shape if possible.
I am tempted to try a sleep study and see what I might learn.
Edit: Lots of comments to address here.
- I exercise 60-90 minutes daily.
- I play a high level of hockey 4 days a week, snowboard or mountain bike 5 days a week.
- I am slightly over weight by scale, but I am just an athletic build.
- I eat healthy and cook nearly every meal I eat (I live in an expensive ski town with only high end eateries so I avoid them). Lots of brown rice, protein, fruit, and veggies.
- I walk 30-60 minutes a day (active dog).
- I get plenty of sunlight (within 30 minutes of waking)
> I take magnesium because I am very active and have suffered for the last year or so from hypnic jerks, which are terrifying but have gone away since I started taking magnesium supplements before bed.
I'm guessing you're taking magnesium L-threonate (Sometimes goes by Magtein). If not, it's worth a try.
> I've also started cold showers when waking up (60 seconds of cold to end my shower, working towards 2 minutes).
I do something similar. 3-min cold showers in the morning, yoga to regain the heat, then meditation, then breakfast. I feel it's relevant to my struggles with attention (doesn't throw me off like adderall does)
Best I ever slept was when I was cycling 45 minutes to and from work every day. It looks like you're doing quite a lot (of the same things I do) but if you're interested in throwing more in there... there's soemthing magical about the kind of cardio that lets you explore your limits.
I discovered by accident that glycine (~3000 mg) + NAC (they also sell it combined as GlyNAC) before bed made my sleep noticeably deeper. I'm not taking it to cure sleep but the effect is strong enough that I have noticed change, quite big actually.
ps. NAC can have sulfury/rotten-egg like scent, don't throw it away thinking it's outdated or something, it's normal
> I am tempted to try a sleep study and see what I might learn.
I strongly recommend to get sleep study, they will help to find the root of the symptoms.
10 years ago, I have issues with my sleeping pattern, waking up tired and still tired during the day. After my sleep study, I discovered I have sleep apnea which affects how I breathe during my sleeping cycle. After the diagnosis, I got a CPAP from my insurance and been using it ever since. It improved my sleep quality and I am able to dream more often than before.
If you have the same diagnosis as mine in the future, it will take some time to get used to Bi/CPAP. It can take up to a year to get used to it, it took me two years get used to wearing a mask. I was horrified to learn from my Somnologist that 90% of his patients are not consistent with CPAP usage or don't bother to use them. I know a friend's husband, who is a Physician Assistant, have the same diagnosis and refused to use the CPAP. His wife been begging him to use it because she can hear how he sleep during the night. Still to this day, he refused to use it and still complaining about the sleep quality.
It's been well over a decade of CPAP usage every night for me, but I still haven't gotten used to the stupid mask. I fight with it literally every single night. I own about 4-5 different masks and have tried probably double that number of variants in an attempt to reduce my frustration with it. I can't sleep without out it though, so there's no other option. I wake up gasping for air within ~3 minutes of sleep. That makes me a 100% compliant user over many years. My sleep neurologist was blown away by that statistic, citing the same issues you described: most people do not consistently use their CPAP machines.
I’ve had two sleep studies. I have once been diagnosed with type 2 narcolepsy and then later as my sleep hygiene improved that was changed to idiopathic hypersomnia. I don’t have sleep apnea.
At any time I call basically fall asleep within 5 minutes and I’m always tired. Has anyone else dealt with this?
I tried modafinil but felt horrible for weeks as I hoped my body would adjust. I’ve also considered armodafinil, but I fear the same effects.
The doctor wants me to try xyrem but it scares me, doesn’t have a lot of studies on it, and it’s basically a nonstarter because I have young jerks and need to be able to wake up if needed.
So all of that to say, is dementia inevitable for me? My guess is that I just sleep terrible.
I'd at least try the xyrem. I've tried it - didn't work for me (my sleep issues are caused by something else), but it's not as incapacitating as it's made out to sound.
I've had a long struggle with sleep. The most effective supplements are:
* magnesium (threonate form before bed)
* D3 BUT MUST BE TAKEN WITH magnesium. 5000IU + 500mg magnesium. These two are linked. Taking D3 without magnesium can make a magnesium deficiency worse. This made a monumental difference for me.
The B-100 complex has helped me a lot. I have to use it twice a day to undo the damage done from drinking energy drinks that have high dosages of inactive B vitamins which compete with the active forms and was leading to deficiency and nerve issues.
I'm not an expert and you should probably listen to the other comments but for me it turned out to be stress. I have been using a Garmin tracker extensively and when I go on a longer vacation and stop thinking about work my stress drops tremendously and correspondingly my deep sleep goes up. The Garmin is not super accurate, but I find it does a good job pointing out trends. Something to consider and it's a lot harder fix than just reducing caffeine consumption or stopping alcohol consumption.
Stress is hard measure so I don't have a way to say I am more or less stressed than normal.
As another poster asked -- I have had tons of trauma but also put work in to overcome it. I have a great, healthy life.
I always work hard to quiet my mind but sometimes its hard to. I am an entrepreneur but rarely find myself ruminating late at night about it (these days). When I am stressed I find it harder to fall asleep for sure, but that isn't as often as it was when I was younger
As another poster linked, you may be a slow caffeine metabolizer. I am and avoiding caffeine entirely makes a big difference.
Another thing that might be making a difference is what you do in the hour to two hours before sleep. If I do anything exciting, like sports, suspenseful media & games, or anything analytical, then that will delay how quickly my body relaxes into later in the night, which messes up the beginning of the night when deep sleep mostly occurs.
Lastly, if you're measuring your deep sleep based off of a device that isn't on your head, then take that data with a huge grain of salt. I compared sleep data from an Oura ring with the Dreem 2 headband and the ring was consistently so wrong as to be useless for driving better sleep behavior.
My ring - thus far - has been extremely correct about my sleep, as far as my wife and I can tell.
However, its activity recording is extremely inaccurate. I get moderate/low activity scores every day despite engaging in intensive weightlifting sessions, riding bicycles, and going to jujutsu class. I lift till I cannot lift; I roll until I gas out... yet my ring tells me, day after day, I need to be more active.
This is a great recommendation -- I dont really need caffeine but its a ritual I adore. I can definitely give it up so I think its where I can start. Thank you!
See my comment above about using chocolate as a bridge to deal with caffeine withdrawal. For me the brain fog and headaches always made it hard to transition to getting off caffeine, but chocolate is a good methadone for a week.
Not really. I feel tired during the day sometimes but way less than when I used to work in an office every day. Usually a quick walk shakes it off if I have no cardio planned.
I think I’m mostly trying to understand what I can and cannot control in my life as I age
Nothing has helped my sleep more than using 3M medical tape to tape my mouth shut during sleep. So I'm forced to breath through my noise when I sleep. (Or I wake up and remove the tape if I'm stuffed up.)
I had sleep issues all my life. My dentist said it looked like I had sleep issues (one side of my teether pushed on more than the others) and a surgeon recommended increasing the size of my nasal cavity. But I didn't want surgery. When the book "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art" by James Nestor I saw several unrelated people report success with this. It's completely changed my life and I wish I had started this long ago.
(Obviously not medical advice, I'm not a doctor at all, do your own research etc.)
>However, we do know that moderate aerobic exercise increases the amount of slow wave sleep you get. Slow wave sleep refers to deep sleep, where the brain and body have a chance to rejuvenate.
Having gone down this route recently, I can +1 the cooling pad. I used Ooler, there are many options now.
However also worth considering a better mattress, memory foam is really hot. I just upgraded to an innerspring base / latex & microcoil top, and my previous issues with overheating are gone. YMMV, there are arguments for cooling even if your passive situation isn’t too hot.
I avoid all "cooling foam" or "gel foam" as it has a relatively fixed capacity to absorb heat. In other words, it seems cold in the store and also for the first few hours of the night. But after it does its phase-change magic, it gets dramatically hotter and can wake you up around the time cortisol starts increasing like 3-4AM.
Can confirm... I have a foam mattress that claims to have the fancy cooling stuff built in. It's actually all-around fine in the summer when the temps are 75F inside and I can sleep with few/no blankets, but I live in the Midwest and the house thermostat is set to heat up to 65F for 2/3 of the year. For the first 15 minutes, it's like crawling into a very soft refrigerator. And a few hours later, I'll wake up dehydrated and soaked in sweat.
I've managed to mostly tame it by putting a quilt or two under the bottom sheet.
Have you ever tried a different sleep schedule? Or have you ever noticed a difference in a different timezone?
For me I get deep sleep best between around 8-10Pm and about 9Am-1pm. My sleep at night is fairly restless even if I try and do all the proper steps, but I can get great sleep pretty much no matter what during those hours.
"We also examined whether genetic risk for Alzheimer’s Disease or brain volumes suggestive of early neurodegeneration were associated with a reduction in slow-wave sleep. We found that a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, but not brain volume, was associated with accelerated declines in slow wave sleep"
This sounds like the arrow of causation is pointing the other way.
The study found that []longer[] time spent in bed (TIB) was associated with significantly []increased[] dementia risk. Those in bed for more than 8 hours were far more likely to show a cognitive decline during a Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE)
[...]
The time individuals went to bed was also highlighted by researchers as a critical contributing factor [...] The research paper stated that “every 1 hour advance in bedtime [before 10 pm] was associated with a 25% increased risk of dementia.”
Stick these tubes up your nose (all the way in!) and enjoy free-flowing air passage all night.
The first couple of days will be a bit uncomfortable and weird to have these things jammed in there, but you forget about them very quickly, and the huge increase in oxygen intake is amazing. I hate sleeping without them now.
Well, try this simple experiment. Tilt your head 90° and nose-breathe. Now grab your up-facing nostril and pull it wide open. You're probably taking in a lot more air now, with zero resistance. That's what these tubes do.
It probably advertises to snorers because that's a big draw. In truth it simply makes it easier to breathe through your nose, similar to Breathe Right nose strips. (So yes it can benefit anyone who wants better nose breathing.) Snoring happens farther back in your throat.
Exactly. It's not about snoring. It just keeps your nostril flared open so it doesn't choke the amount of air that can flow. And, much more comfortable and effective than those sticky strips.
I've had chronic insomnia my entire life, and when I do sleep, it is never deep sleep, to the point that I typically retain enough brain activity to lucid dream.
Dementia isn't an if for me, it's a when. I also think that they have the causation backwards.
The root causes that lead to my lifelong chronic insomnia are likely the same root causes that will lead to dementia. Genetics, environment. And that says nothing of my ADHD and physical disability which lead to not exercising enough and phases of poor dietary choices, it all swirls into a high risk factor for dementia.
It does seem to be like 90% about being privileged enough to spend a lot of time outside in the sun, running around with people in a group. Maybe in the distant future we will revert to this kind of hunter gater life just because this one kinda sucks.
I feel you. In addition, I'm on a nightly hypnotic. Both the insomnia and the marginally effective drugs are implicated in dementia and I'm beginning to make my peace with it. Medicine has no answers and doctors don't usually take it very seriously.
I have a plan when it starts to show up, or if the strings of terrible days get to be just a little too long.
Dementia is one thing but a string of terrible days is worth holding out till the end. If you're having trouble making the equation work for you, my advice is to devote yourself to alleviating the pain of others. Works for me anyway. Hopefully it's a universal approach.
Maybe I'll get lucky! I certainly believe that one's outlook can have huge impact on their overall health, and that focusing on such things might just make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. For now, I seem to check off a majority of the risk factors. Focusing on diet and exercise and just taking things one year at a time.
Anecdotally, Steve Gibson's "Healthy Sleep Formula" [1] has been a lifesaver for me.
As I've gotten older, the biggest challenge has been falling back asleep in the middle of the night after a wake up (for whatever reason, i.e., bathroom, noises, etc.), but the Niacinamide esp. from the formula seems to fix this and I sleep great. Thank you Steve!!
I put together this audio for falling to sleep fast, using the military method from
“Relax and Win” by Bud Winters.
-
About 100 years ago the US military developed a technique for helping fighter pilots rapidly fall asleep. About 95% of people find this helpful. Use this guided sleep sequence to relax your entire body and have a deeper, faster, more restorative sleep. From your friends at http://EarthPilot.org
I have some unconventional sleep tips for those interested.
DURPLEDRANK'S GUIDE TO BETTER SLEEP:
Line your sleeping room with books. They are an inexpensive way to soundproof your room. If you have noisy neighbors upstairs, you'll "hear" them, but more importantly, you won't "feel" it.
Use comfortable earplugs and a baggy winter hat as a sleep mask. Sleep masks can be uncomfortable, so this is a great alternative.
Play a BROWNIAN NOISE loop on speakers in your room. You can easily generate this in Audacity with a few mouse clicks.
Take antacids before bed. Many sleep problems are linked to acid reflux. Drinking carbonated water or water with baking soda can make you feel tired instantly. For any scientists out there, please credit me for this discovery. If you have acid reflux, your brain won't let you sleep.
Stay warm. Being warm often makes you sleepy, although the reason isn't clear.
Use red lights in your sleep room to avoid blue light. Replace your reading lamp with a red light to help your brain switch into sleep mode.
Limit screen time. Dim the brightness and enable blue light blocking mode on your devices. Older devices may be less disruptive to sleep than modern ones.
Keep a notepad for quick Google searches. Whenever you have a random thought, jot it down on a to-do list to avoid grabbing your device. This helps you stay off screens.
Consider taking 1g of melatonin, but note that it may not be very effective if you have acid reflux.
Elevate your sleeping position to combat acid reflux. Even if you don't feel it, you might have some built-up reflux if you burp or fart after drinking carbonated water.
Invest in blackout curtains.
Cover every blinking light or power LED in your room with electrical tape to create a pitch-black environment.
TL;DR: In my journey to fix my sleep, the most critical factors are 1) managing acid reflux, 2) soundproofing and reducing light in the room, and 3) using red light.
The book insulation tip is great and could be a good segue into replacing reading habits for actual books vs e-reader / other displays.
Even with "nightshift red colours" I could stay up reading for hours vs even with something very interesting to me in actual book form + warm secondary light source = getting sleepy and quickly so.
I'm guessing melatonin does get depressed significantly as soon as you start looking directly into a light source.
I don't have much problems falling asleep but I feel I slept much better if I took a benzo so I occasionally (rarely, humble doses) do whenever I want to really recharge myself with what feels like a great night of good deep uninterrupted sleep. In contrast to zolpidem (I tried it wehen I actually used to have problems falling asleep): zolpidem helps to fall asleep but promotes vivid (and visually beautiful) vigourous dreams and harms resting so I feel satisfied but very tired in the morning (like if lived through the Avatar movie instead of sleeping). Such is my experience. What am I missing?
Melatonin supplementation seems a questionable idea except for adjusting your circadian "inner clock" - according to this article:
Perhaps sleep quality doesn't always directly relate to how rested you feel afterwards? I've been having a very varied amount of sleep for the last few months due to a newborn baby. It can definitely happen that a good 5-6 hour stretch (the max I get these days) leads to me feeling more tired. Sometimes running on fumes actually feels easier and more wakeful.
The way I made things better (though it’s always an ongoing battle) was getting more consistent about a few key things. Maybe you already do this, but the key strategy for me goes something like:
- go to bed earlier than you think you need to (9-9:30pm for me)
- get outside and moving as early as possible. Ideally in bright light, and without a time-sensitive objective. For example, leave early to walk to work so it can be leisurely. Or wake up early enough that you can just go for a 15-20m walk with no destination and wake up your body.
- No screens past 6pm or so. I allow my watch, but I hide my phone. I will let it ruin my sleep over and over and over. I’m only a hairless ape, and I need to plan to prevent myself from doing ape things. The watch doesn’t seem to harm my sleep, but it functions as my alarm/quick way to set reminders/way to see the time or weather/etc. But I need to keep the phone far away.
Different things work for different people, and maybe you’re already pretty close to something like this anyway. I only mention it because I started with magnesium threonate too, and it was a long path to better sleep. I wish I figured this out 15 years ago!
I feel like we basically know what we should be doing to avoid many illnesses. Get better sleep, be more active, eat better, etc. The problem is almost always finding the willpower to make the changes and maintain the good habits long term.
This is being too hard on oneself. Getting better sleep, being more active, and eating better are problems of modernity. When it got dark outside, our ancestors got sleepy. There was no need to exert willpower. Chastising oneself for not having enough willpower to flourish in an environment we were not designed for is not productive.
Instead, let us change our environments to better suit the primates we still are.
This. We have created a society where healthy eating, quality sleep and sufficient exercise are all considered luxuries rather than the default.
The cheapest food options are the unhealthiest. Hours of overtime and long commutes prevent sufficient sleep. And exercise is considered a leisure activity.
I agree, but I guess I don't have any hope that we will fix any of these problems. We continue to make all of this worse. Many of our jobs wouldn't exist if we weren't working on making these problems worse.
Disclaimer: I am not getting 8 hours consistently, but working on it...
For me the most beneficial is to reduce the fear of missing out. Especially if you have kids, the tendency is to want to spend the evening hours when they are already in bed to "live your old life": game, watch movies, do other hobbies or activities. And then you go to bed too late.
I am trying to accept that I can watch maybe 1 movie per month, watch maybe 2 series per year, and read at most 1 book per week in the time between ~20:00 and 22:00 that my kids are asleep and I can spend freely without impacting my 8 hours of sleep.
So, every year 50 interesting movies come out. I'll never see 38 of them. I'll never read that interesting longread. I will never read Liu Cixin's "The Three-Body Problem".
I used to easily sleep 8 hours, then I had a kid with colic, followed by 6 months of back to back to back illness from daycare. Now I can’t sleep longer than 3-4 hours consecutively.
For me, I think part of the problem is not having enough hours in the day to take care of myself. If you’ve gotten very busy with work or life, it’s hard to do the things you need to do to get healthy sleep.
You could look at biphasic or polyphasic sleep. If it makes you feel any better, humans would apparently sleep in 2 chunks for most of history (waking up for a few hours at midnight-3am and sleeping again). As long as the total sleep duration is adequate, some research shows that it's not necessary to get 8 consecutive hours.
> humans would apparently sleep in 2 chunks for most of history (waking up for a few hours at midnight-3am and sleeping again)
I have read this claim for decades now, but I have trouble believing it. To me, a claim about pre-civilization human behavior doesn't have a whole lot of merit unless it can be explained as being evolutionarily advantageous to mammals in general or humans in particular. Humans are diurnal and I can't imagine a scenario in which "wasting" a few hour of potential sleep is worth it somehow in the middle of the night when it's dark and there's nothing to do anyway.
The closest I can come is that _maybe_ some small percentage of early humans were polyphasic sleepers, which benefited the tribe by watching out for a pack of hungry wolves or enemy tribe attacking in the middle of the night or whatever.
Same here, since having a kid I only averaged 4 hours of sleep for over 5 years now. In the morning I’m just gonna coffee drunk myself to last the whole day and night. I think I need a plan at some point in the near future.
From someone who sleeps 8 hours almost every night: just go to sleep earlier and /or wake up later.
Impossible to give any better advice without any further information. Is the problem not enough hours in the day (e.g. time wasted on stuff like commuting etc.)? Or are you just unable to stay asleep longer than 6 hours?
Reading works for me. Recently I've improved that even more using an eReader.
My room is completely dark when I go to sleep. I use blackout curtains and have removed any sources of light from my room. In the summer it gets light very early in the UK (~04:00) and I require ventilation so I also wear an eye mask. I use a fan to mask any background noise and, in summer, this is blowing directly on me to keep me cool. I use a wool duvet which I found the best for temperature regulation; I require a weighty covering even when it's warm.
I use a Kobo which has an adjustable frontlight that can go both very low and very warm (redish). I set the Kobo's backlight to the lowest and warmest possible setting. I lie on my side with the Kobo on its side leaning on an adjacent pillow such that I don't have to hold it. Turning pages requires a light tap; there is no scrolling or swiping involved. At some point after a few pages of Iain M. Banks, or whatever I'm reading at the time (usually science fiction), I fall asleep. The Kobo automatically switches itself off after I stop turning pages and I wake in the morning with it next to me (or sometimes I've moved it but can't remember when/why).
It's important not to use something like TV that you need to actively switch off at some point and, if you use an object like a book or eReader, make sure it won't fall and wake you up when you start to nod off. Definitely don't hold it up with your hands. Don't use a phone because scrolling etc. is far too active and backlit screens just don't seem conducive to sleep. An eReader is perfect because it means you can turn the lights off but the frontlit e-ink screen is more like a book than a phone.
This method has been tried and tested with a partner in the same bed. You just need to make sure any objects don't fall on or get tangled up with said partner. I have a pillow system propped up by my bedside table for this purpose.
Does any one have experience with rapid breathing while sleeping?
I've been trying to fix my long-term sleep issues for a while and I often don't get much deep sleep.
When I record my sleep through an Apple Watch and breathing microphone, I find my breathing rate goes up, often 25-30 breaths per minute but while awake it's < 20. I can't seem to find anything online that's relevant. It's been this way for the year I've been monitoring, does this happen to anyone else?
As someone who's had pretty profound sleep apnea related insomnia (resistant to sleep hygiene and CBT-I) for at least 20 years (since my mid twenties), this is super dispiriting.
So if anyone here is really desperate to get deep sleep and can’t despite lots of effort, it might be worth looking into Delta sleep inducing peptide(DSIP). My father has fibromyalgia and struggles to get any restorative sleep most nights, I came across DSIP while trying to figure out how to help him. Unfortunately I can’t speak to it’s effectiveness as neither of us can afford DSIP, although it has come down significantly in price in the last several years.
I'm not trying to be a sleptic, but that study says that.
"As none of the other measures, including subjective sleep quality, showed any change, it was concluded that short-term treatment of chronic insomnia with DSIP is not likely to be of major therapeutic benefit."
Nah, you read that right, thanks for sending me that. However, that study is on people with chronic insomnia. Here is a study[1] saying that it showed benefit for fibromyalgia patients. Both of these studies are tiny tho.
> I'd love to see if someone was able to be productive for 3+ years on polyphasic sleep.
Buckminister Fuller apparently was close.
> Fuller reportedly kept this Dymaxion sleep habit for two years, before quitting the routine because it conflicted with his business associates' sleep habits. (From his wikipedia page)
Here we go again confusing correlation with causation. The medical field is mired with these: eat less to lose weight, reduce cholesterol to prevent heart attacks, reduce stress to prevent stomach ulcers ...
Have they considered people prone to dementia just aren't able to get quality sleep, and both of these are due to some other underlying cause where fixing one doesn't really fix the other?
This kind of prospective study is not perfect but it's what is possible for this type of risk factor and disease. Researchers can't create an RCT study with blinded deep sleep intervention group with placebo and then after 17 years see which got less dementia. The authors avoid the C-word on purpose but it's implied that this kind of study brings more evidence than just association.
I sleepwalk and sometimes have night terrors (where I hallucinate an intruder or spiders on the walls/ceiling). Lately I've been having them almost every day, despite practicing good bedtime habits.
Am I going to have early onset dementia? I wake up almost every morning with a headache from sleep deprivation
Wow, are you me? I also experience this specifically. The hallucinations tend to be "spiders" or intruders (spiders in quotes because they're more shadowy and ephemeral than your standard tarantula) and incidentally, it's been "ramping up" for me lately, to the extent that it's a pretty dependable, nightly occurrence. I too think about it a lot and worry about the early-onset dementia angle.
Do you have any conditions in the broad spectrum of "anxiety" disorders? I've had a pretty rocky relationship with my sympathetic nervous system; variably severe anxiety, some panic attacks, occasional bouts of depersonalization/derealization. It seems pretty likely that these symptoms spring from the same root cause as the "night terrors." Fortunately I'm not personally aware of a link between these issues and dementia, though I wouldn't be surprised if someone replies with a link to some study that ruins my day.
Good sleep seems to be a component of long life (1). Intense daily exercise seems to be the best "treatment" we have for sleep issues.
Importantly, there are NO medications known to help with "sleep" all those pills they sell as "sleep-aids" are technically called sedatives, or "hypnotics" medically and don't give the same benefits of sleep.
I have been able to do lucid dreaming since I was 18 (over 30 years ago) and according to different sleep trackers I'm almost always over 25% deep sleep, sometimes a lot more. I guess they are related, but don't know for sure.
Depends on what it is; from shooting zombies to negotiating with a mob boss (last night). I cannot really guide what it’s about but I usually have control. I remember most and I usually want to get back in when it’s time to get up.
Research concerning sleep is very interesting, but also extremely counterproductive for me.
Now I have yet another thing to worry about if I don't sleep enough/correctly, and thus I _will_ sleep worse for a while.
Having recently started treating my sleep apnea the difference is startling. Being able to remember and think like this is unreal. I have no idea how I remained employed for so long in my previous state.
I recommend the book "Why We Sleep" - it opened my eyes to the importance of a full 8 hours of sleep. So many people are sabotaging their health and professional performance by only sleeping like 5-7 hours.
How is this study different from a study suggesting that taking off one's shoes before sleeping can reduce headache in the morning? There may be a hidden cause that leads to sleep reduction and dementia, no?
i love articles like this because they are quick to tell you how doing this "one sleep hack" will lead to possible health benefits in the future (maybe) but conveniently leave out that how you sleep once you're asleep is 99% out of your control
outside of setting a sleep schedule, getting a sleep study to rule out sleep apnea and stimulating sleep with melatonin, all you can do is let your body do its thing
Is this surprising anyone? If lack of sleep causes a myriad of symptoms like hallucinations, mood swings and etc. Then the opposite would probably true.
A simple realization helped me to get out of the loop of night thoughts a lot quicker:
At night your reasoning abilty is massively impaired by melatonin. Thats why your thoughts keep going in circles and one does not find the most obvious solutions for a problem.
There is only one thing to do. Let it go. You are at your worst, you're not supposed to reason right now.
This simple fact fixed crushing night thoughts for me and a friend of mine.
I can't simply put down the thought, even though it is often mostly circular, until I can resolve it. I can stop thinking about it, but then I'll just lie there awake and many hours pass :(
Main reason is due to purging of β-amyloid by the glymphatic system, which seems to happen during deep sleep. High β-amyloid plaque build up is correlated with Alzheimer’s disease.
CYP1A2
https://www.geneticlifehacks.com/liver-detox-genes-cyp1a2/
The difference in sleep quality is dramatic.
If I have caffeine, even a small 20mg at 7am, I'm up 4-6 times the next night, going to the bathroom, superficial sleep.
Without caffeine, I'm in a deep sleep. So much so that I don't change positions at all, and my body slightly aches from being in the same position so long. My bladder nearly feels like it's going to burst, because I've slept so long.
There was a study I saw while back that said eating cruciferous vegetables speeds up caffeine metabolism. I've tried that, but that didn't seem to help. The caffeine still seemed to disturb my sleep. I tried BrocoMax, a broccoli supplement, that didn't seem to help either.
Exercise helps a little bit. But it's still not the quality of sleep I receive with zero caffeine.
I think much faster when I drink caffeine. Recently I revisited this issue and tried micro-dosing 5-Hour Energy (2mL). At first it seemed promising. But then it seems to slowly build up in my system. Sleep quality deteriorates slower. But the deterioration is there. I prematurely posted this status.
https://twitter.com/aantix/status/1706020516060971399
Sadly, it doesn't appear that I can drink caffeine and have quality sleep.
I hate that I have to choose.